Wiring interior neons to fuse box

[Doc 10+ year member]

I have 4 15" neon tubes and 2 6" tubes in my car right now but they are all running off the cig lighter. I would like to find a site or a detailed discription on how I can hook them into the fuse box and what is the best way to do so. Thanks

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[Doc 10+ year member]

Oh and I want to put a switch in too.

 

[NuGwUaR 10+ year member]

No need to wire them into ur fuse box, jsut use an inline fuse...wire the neons together as im guessing u allready have, and run a line from an ignition power wire, usually red wire...to your neons power, then connect a switch in the loop anywhere u want...and the earth to an earth ofcourse...

 

[Doc 10+ year member]

Thanks, and now since ur the only person that has helped me out maybe u can help me again... i want to put in another amp lower watts then the one i have... so i have 2... do i have to wire the lower watt amp to the battery as well as the other amp, or can i just run power out of the larger amp? 1000w and i havent bought the smaller yet but im guessing 222w or 444w.... i will be running 2 8" lanzars

 

[allyourblood 10+ year member]

you don't wire the lower (smaller) amp to either. what you need is a distribution block, like this: http://www.sounddomain.com/sku/STISTEE4

(that's not the exact one you'd want, just an example). you would run your main power wire (the one running to your current amp) to the distribution block, and then it splits into 2 connections. you run wire from these 2 outputs to your amps. and be sure to run another ground from your new amp as well.

abe m.

 

[NuGwUaR 10+ year member]

my thoughts exactly //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/driving.gif.c4dead4599dda895032b63e51f52b126.gif

 

[InhumanAcura 5,000+ posts]

1.) run a wire into your car. (connecting to your battery)

2.) put a switch on it

3.) run another wire to the lights from the switch

4.) ground the lights.

Flip the switch and they'll come on. I dont understand why these other guys over complicated something so simple. theres no need for a distribution block for some 16g wire. you can even run the + and the - directly from the battery.

it easy dude

 

[Chance89 10+ year member]

I don't see why u would want to run right off the batt???...fuse box is easier to me..just have a wire from the box to ur lights with a switch and an inline fuse wired in...then u ground ur negative connections on ur lights...easy as pie...@ least thats what I did with my *** lights(not neon though)...maybe neons are diff??

 

[InhumanAcura 5,000+ posts]

Well the manufacturer of the vehicle places paticular fuse rating for each of the cars function. Why would you have 2 fuses on the same power draw. i know its not your car but why are you going to cause problems to this guys.When you add like 6 lights to it your waiting for a problem to happen.

What are you talking about hard, is it hard to run a wire or two wires from your battery, dont be a pansey

 

[missionpilot 10+ year member]

lol ********

 

[cyberbob25 10+ year member]

OK...now I need help with some lighting from somebody with a little more electrical expertise than I. I am trying to install a cold cathode light tube (originally meant for computers) into a custom built amp rack. I have them wired into a common ground with the amplifiers, and they are receiving power through a relayed wire straight from the battery.

The problem is that I have is that the wires that came with it are not long enough, and I have to extend them on the light side of the transformer. I have tried using regular 18ga wire (the stock wire was 22ga) and get what seems to be interference problems. If these two wires coming off the transformer are ran anywhere close to each other, the light dims drastically, sometimes not even lighting the entire tube. Unfortunately, I do not have much room to work with on this rack, and I will be installing 3 lights, so it's near impossible to not have these 6 wires at least somewhat closer to each other.

I have tried using shielded wire (unfortunately, the only place I can find this near me is radio shack, and they only had shielded wire with two 24ga wires in it). Since I already know that these two wires are causing interference with each other, I cannot run them in the same shielded cable, so I connected one wire to one conductor in each of two lengths of the shielded cable. If I grounded the shield, then the lights wouldn't work at all, and if I didn't ground the shield, it had the same problems as before. I also noticed that when grounding the shielding, I would get a spark if I had it plugged in. Am I correct in assuming that you should not get a spark from the shielding copper?

Does anybody know what is causing this? Would heavier shielded cable fix this problem? What are my options?

 

[Doc 10+ year member]

Can I use a distribution block for the remote wire as well?

And thank you to everyones help with the neons but i think i like the idea of running straight off the battery with an inline fuse... Thanks again.

 

[cyberbob25 10+ year member]

Yes, you can use a distro block for remote as well, but if you are only going to be running two amps, I think that this is overkill. The remote wire is very little current, you could easily just splice into the remote wire you already have going to your current amp, or even run a wire from the remote terminal on your current amp to the new amp.

If you plan on adding many accessories down the line though, a small distro block could be handy, but you should plan on installing a relay on this circuit, as it is very low current.