Car: 92' Civic Vx (All stock)

I'm going to install an Auto Meter mechanical vacuum gauge to the side pillar of my car. I'm looking for some instruction on how to hook up the illumination wiring WITHOUT splicing into any wires. I don't want to cut into the harness. I was hoping I could pop the "pins" out from a connector and twist the gauge wires in there. If that is possible would the "dimmer" switch on the left side of the instrument panel be a good spot to do this?

Thanks.





eH.

 

There are spare locations in the fusebox.

 

Well if you dont care if the light is dimmed or not, you can always connect to the option connectors on the fuse panel. Those are just spade terminals. I believe 2 are hot with the key on and 1 or 2 of them are hot when the lights are on.

 

I'd prefer that it dimmed with the instrument panel. I usually run that lower then full bright. But if it's a case of having your cake and eating it too...my priority would be to not cut the harness.





eH.

 

Then the answer is no.

 

In theory though, he could grab the illumination wire from the stereo if its not in use (like on one of those aftermarket harnesses for making it easy to install a radio. I am not sure if it would fry the dimmer however since the dimmer is meant to have a certain amount of pull on it.

 

Stock stereo. And I installed a factory clock as well. Would I have any luck tapping into the ashtray light? I'm not sure if that's on the dimmer.

If not, I'll go directly through the fuse box and find a way to "frost" the bulb in the gauge.





eH.

 

Are you tapping wires or not? Your criteria seems to be changing.

 

The stunt I did was to use a spade and slide it in on the backside of the plug of the wire I wanted. The plug casing held the flat spade in contact against the crimped part of the female/spade in the plug. Worked really well for a non evasive connection that was easy to remove.

The one drawback is periodically you will have to remove the spade and clean it up being it's not soldered it will corrode with current passing through it.

 

Slick.

 

To gain the dimmer function, you would need to connect the light to both the Red wire (ground) and Red/Blk wire (power) in the dimmer switch plug.

 

Poor choice of words on my part. By tapping, I meant using as a power/dim source, not splicing into the harness. Maybe I can disconnect the ashtray light plug and create an adaptor from another AT plug to power/dim the gauge? If I am explaining that poorly I know you'll let me know!

Something along this route is what I had in mind!

Can I use the "spade" or a "spade like method" to both power and dim the gauge from the dimmer switch itself?

One other alternative I would be comfortable with would be to splice into the dimmer switch or hazard light for power/dim function. That way I won't have to cut the harness and I can always source an extra switch from a yard pretty easily.





eH.

 

Yes.

But the next bit of information needed is whether the light in your gauge is on a completely separate circuit (has its own power and ground wires) from the gauge itself. This is the only way the dimmer function will work without negatively affecting the gauge.

 

Standby for pictures...

I suck at all thing electrical, i.e. understanding, application and correlation.

It has a +12v wire and a -ground wire. That's it for the gauge.









eH.

 

That'll work. It appears the gauge is purely mechanical whereas the only electrical part is the bulb. Does the manual say which color wire is power and which is ground? If not, they're probably interchangeable.

 

There's no indication of +/- anywhere in the instructions, on the bulb housing or the wires. I'll go with interchangeable.





eH.

 

The test is easy. Spade one wire into the red wire slot and the other wire into the red/black wire slot in the rear of the dimmer switch. Turn on parking lights. Does the light turn on? Dial the dimmer switch high and low. Does the bulb brighten and dim?

 

Perfect! I'll give that a shot. Thanks!





eH.