what wire to tap into for gauges that turn on when car turns on???
 

Ok just finnishing up the wiring in my car and was wondering what would be the best hot wire to tap into for my gauges when the key is turned to the on posision?? Thanks.

Take your pick, man- do you want it on your "meters" circuit? Look for a black/yellow wire running behind your cluster, also goes to one of the cluster connectors...

Where do you plan on mounting the gauges? That's going to determine where the easiest tap in is gonna be...

well I have two under the cd player and two on the a-piller. What do you think?
would the power antena be a good place??? I tried this however as soon as I put more than 1 power source on it I got 4.5 volts and thats it! as soon as I took the second source off it was back up to 12 volts.

no, power antenna should only turn on with the radio, assuming they followed covention (I never had a stock radio), and also, it's a very lower power line.. You're better off grabbing it off of the ACC (accessory) wire either at the deck, or down underneat the steering column. With either, if you're goign to be powering more than one component (and you are), use a relay with the battery as the actual power, and the ACC wire to just trigger the relay to open. It will be the easiest/safest way :)

what relay should I use???? A 30 amp??? Man I need to take a class on electronics. How would I wire it???

Gotta remember now, these are NA wire colors, so they may not be the same, but they should be (my official disclaimer for the day :))

Your meter circuit may work, for the A-pillar gauges, as mentioned above...Or your 10A "power steering" circuit, especially if you've removed the computer (black/green, under the steering column there)

Your 10A "cigar" (blue/black at the cig lighter) or your 20A "audio" (blue/white, which also ties in to your power antenna relay) might be good for the CD-area locations.

Just remember, if you start blowing fuses, you screwed up, either by mis-wiring something, or by overloading the particular circuit you're using (in which case the fuses are simply doing their job).

You haven't said anything about the lighting circuits for the gauge lighting, or do you already have that "wired", pun intended :)

Thanks wayne I'm going to try these wires out and see however I was wondering how I would just hook a relay up to the batery so that all of them could be on one relay so I would know if the gauges stop working the relay is bad. THanks!

Dude, you could do that, but the freaking relay coil is gonna suck down more power than your gauges ever would (assuming you're using the same circuit for the coil & contacts)

lol, your talking over my head :) I'll just use some wires already in the car !

Hey man, if in doubt, just use a different circuit for each gauge, and hook them up and ops check them one at a time. That will prevent any excessive loads on any one circuit...

If you're really adventurous, find a spare fuse location on your cabin box and wire you a whole new circuit...

Have you had any problems finding the wiring that I mentioned above?

I'm kinda on wiring overload right now, lol. Was at it all day today so tomorrow is a fresh day and should get done. Thanks

I had a burned fuse thats why my gauges stoped working when I went to add another one. Man I love this voltameter :)

Hey Honda Dude, you're back :)

What are you blowing up now?

Tap into ignition wire under the wheel, run all power lines into 1 10 gauge line and connect that to ignition, you can ground all into 1 10 gauge wire too somwhere, and then can get illumination from cig lighter light.

lol yeah I'm back! blowing up my damn car like usual :) Anyways thanks dDub for the advise but I think I got it right this time (hoping)