Dave L

After using a blue sea auxiliary fuse box and pre wiring relays in my jeep. I am ready to start adding some accessories and I'm a little confused on one aspect. In all the diagrams I see for wiring lights I see the hot wires from each light whether it be 2 lights or 4 lights all join together. and then a single wire connect to the relay. What is the proper way to join 2 or 4 wires together and come out with 1 wire. I'd prefer not to solder.

I assume the resulting single wire will need to be rated to handle the amperage of all the lights. My lights will most likely all be led's.

Thanks

Mark Doiron

A terminal strip is one way ...

http://www.mouser.com/Search/m_Produ...7vEBoCh-rw_wcB

Maybe you could cobble one of these to the task ...

http://www.spectrowireandcable.com/p...+Way+Terminals

But I think soldering is a more elegant answer.

And, yes, whatever answer you use, including fusing and relay, will need to handle entire current load.

Dave L

I like the idea of a terminal block, if I connected several pairs of lights to that and that had one wire going to a relay only the wire going to the relay would have to be sized for all the lights correct? Or do all the wires have to be sized for all the lights.

14Sport

I do it like this usually. This shows relays but I do lights the same way because personally I'm not crazy about having open terminals that have power running through them.



Sometimes I will run one wire for each light to the sPOD and stack them on the connection or combine them in one crimp at the terminal.

Dave L

Thank you guys for the inputs. So you can have multiple wires on one end of a crimp connector

webejeepin

Good advice posted I see.

Guess I'm old school...solder, heat shrink tube, wire loam, cable ties at equal intervals. (Broadcast Television Engineering will do that to a guy)

Multiple wires in a crimp, should be fine, you might need to size the crimp to accept x amount of cables based on their wire gauge I would suspect.

P1TBU11

I'm about to install my SPOD and LEDs and I'm wondering if I actually have to calculate wire size for each run or if there is an easier way.

Dave L

P1TBU11. Check out this link http://www.bulkwire.com/wireresistance.asp it will tell you what size wire to use. Simply put in the total length of cable (including the length of ground wire) and enter amps (watts/voltage) and voltage.

Mark Doiron

I'm not either. There are covers that can be used. Certainly, having a tool fall on the wrong place could be a real problem. Not much different than the battery, but I think most folks avoid placing loose tools around the battery area for that very reason. Having a new area could be inviting trouble.

Mark Doiron

That appears to be a handy calculator. I was also going to explain to P1TBU11 that there really isn't an easier way than properly engineering the electrical circuit. Most folks are aware that the wire needs to handle the current carrying capacity. But, there's another very important issue: Voltage drop. You can have wire that can easily carry the current load, but that gives too much voltage drop. One of the problems with LED lights (in general, not vehicle LED lights specifically) is that they are very sensitive to small drops in voltage. An LED flashlight provides gobs of light for only about 10-15% of its battery life. Then it drops to something good, but not nearly as bright for the rest of the battery life. That is just the nature of the beast.

So, in selecting your wire size, you should not only be concerned with current carrying capacity, but also with how much voltage drop you'll experience. The calculator Dave linked provides the "easier way" to do that engineering. FYI, it is certainly possible that vehicle LED light manufacturers engineer voltage regulators into the lighting assemblies to address this issue. And that may very well be the difference between the $1000 U.S.-made assemblies, and the cheap Chinese imports (besides the fact that I've witnessed those cheap Chinese imports vibrate apart when actually used off-road on rough terrain). I have no personal knowledge of this, but you may wish to investigate how well various assemblies perform at different voltage levels.