LightningVP
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- VY II 5.7 SV8
Hey people, wired up some of my lights over the last few days and thought some of you would be able to use this for installing things in your own car.
Basically, this is how to make a wiring loom (lengths of wire wound up by tape) and then wire up an object with a switch. This How To is based on wiring up multiple electrical items in my boot, but can be used for almost anything electrical related. I did do this for 8 different lighting objects, but I will only guide through one, as the concept is the same for everything else.
First of all, you will need to think of your path that you will take.
Then, if you are planning on having switches you will need to think of where you want them (My preferred locations are in the console, or on the air vent cover (which is where I will be putting them for this How To)
Next you will need to do some small planning for what materials/how much you will need, I shopped around and found cheap prices on my items in bulk (I would probably need the left overs for other odd jobs around the house/car. So here it goes.
Materials I used:
Loom
2x 30m rolls of 4mm wire (Orange and Brown, smaller rolls with more colour variety would be better) [$45.90 for the 2 rolls off eBay incl. shipping]
10 rolls of white electrical tape (I only used about 4 rolls for both parts) [about $10 for the 10 rolls from Super Cheap Auto]
Wire cutters [Not sure how much as I already had them in my tool box]
Spare time
Installation
On/Off toggle switches [$22.19 for 50 switches off eBay incl. shipping]
3 Way quick connector housing [A few dollars from Super Cheap]
Crimping pieces (For this you only need one (1) screw crimp piece to screw down the earth wire) [Few dollars for some crimping pieces from Super Cheap]
Wire joiners (There are a few things you can use, either crimping pieces, tape alone, etc.) [Few dollars from Super Cheap]
Cable ties [Not sure how much]
Wire cutters
Drill + drill pieces
Ruler
Whiteboard Marker
Soldering iron + soldier
Cloth
Scrap wire
Electrical tape from wiring loom
Screwdrivers
Pliers
Heatshrink (Recommended)
WIRING LOOM
Ok we start with the 2 rolls of wire...
But, first you need to estimate how much wire you will need, the easiest way I found was to do a rough path with the wire. From point A to point B. As I’m going to the boot, I put one end of the wire in the car where the switches will be (right hand side of the car), then send it to the left side of the car (see pic 1), then down to the back of the car (see pic 2) (I don’t want to go straight down the right side of the car as I have the cable for my amp running down there), and to the boot lid (see pic 3), putting a little amount of slack so it's not too short. Then cut it at the desired spot.
The end result is a length of wire.
I don’t want each item having its own earthing ground, so I am also making an earth wire (brown wire) for all the items to jump on. This wire needs to be the same length as the orange wire, but rather that estimating again, just measure it against the orange wire. And we end up with 1 orange wire and 1 brown wire.
I also need to more wires for other items so I will need to make 2 more pieces of wire the same length. This is where having more colours comes in handy. But I will solve that in the next step. For now we do the same as we did with the negative wire and measure 2 lengths of the orange wire again.
Ok...I have my lengths of wire, and to solve the problem of 3 orange wires, I put a bit of electrical tape on each end of the wires. Red for one wire, Black for another and Grey for the third.
Now it's time to tape them up with the tape. Grab all the wires in one hand and line the up so they are even, then leave about 4cm then starting wrapping the electrical tape around all the wires at once. There is no simple way to do this with 2 hands, if you can get someone to hold either (taped/non taped) side of the wire while you tape it, it makes it a lot easier, and will make it stronger.
And time goes by...Roughly half way
Now, not all my wires are going to the same spot, so instead of wrapping them all up to the end, I will stop about 60cm from the end, if that is too much we can always take some off later when we put it in the car. And if it is not enough, we can wrap some more tape around.
And that’s the wiring loom completed.
INSTALLATION
Ok now time to install our switches and wiring loom.
Ok, now I had already marked out a diagram of how I wanted to place my switches (It’s up to you how you want to put your switch(es)).
But to start, I need to mark out the border with the ruler so each switch is the same distance from the other...
then I put a dot in each box that I need a switch for...
Ok, now to drill the holes, get out the drill bits and see which one is the closest size to the screw part of the switch...You want a drill bit that is as close as possible to the width of the screw part of the switch. The closer the match, the better the switch will hold in place (If the drill bit is bigger than the width the tighter you will need to bolt the switch to the air vent cover, and too tight may break the switch or crack the plastic cover.
Ok now I have my drill bit, time to drill-dril-dri-dr-ddd....
Well there is Tip #1: Always make sure the drill is charged before you go to use it.
Ok, battery is charged and drilling is complete...
Once all the holes have been drilled you can wipe off the marker with the cloth. Looks slot better now.
Our next step is to bolt the switches in, but before you do that you need to work out how the switches operate. My switches are only On/Off with 3 pins.
Things to find out about your switch(es):
Which one is used as the main? (My switches are you basic switches so the 12V wire goes to the middle pin)
How does the toggle operate? There are 2 ways a switch will work, not sure if they have specific names but I call them “Equal” and “Opposite”. Basically if it is equal then while the switch is left (like it is in the picture) A and B are the pins that complete the circuit. If it is opposite then pins B and C will complete the circuit. My switches are “opposites”. Easiest way to find out when your switch will be on or off is to put them in a small circuit. Although is doesn’t actually matter unless you are a fussy person, I want all my switches to be off when facing down, and on when facing up, so knowing how it works is a must for me.
So now that you are all confused, we can do the easiest part, bolt the switches in. Bolt them hand tight, then tighten them a little bit more with the pliers. That way there not too tight, and not tight enough that they will come undone over time flicking the switch.
To make life easier (later on) I will do the pain in the butt job, rather than sending 10 12V wires to each switch I'm just going to jump them...Sounds easy in theory, but I want to make it as neat as possible. So using the soldering iron with the soldier and I’m putting jumping short pieces of wire onto the middle of each switch. (I used spare speaker wire I had laying around as I have small switches and the wire from the Loom is too thick. Once all switches have been jumped the last switch should have a piece of wire around 20-30cm to plug into the fuse box later on.
Now we need to “carefully” put wires onto the bottom of each of the 3 switches that will be going to the back of the car. 20-30cm for this is also fine. This is where using heatshrink can come in handy. I am confident with my soldering that I know nothing will touch. The good thing is, if the wires do touch, the only thing that will go wrong is that my lights will be on all the time...
You will notice in the picture that the 2 switches on the bottom left have been jumped together, these 2 switches will turn on the same thing (left & right license plate bolt) which was my plan in my first step.
Now it’s time to put the plug on the 3 wires that are connecting to the wiring loom. I used the position of the switch to know which wire is which (looking inside the plug, top pin is the switch on the second last row, left pin is for the middle switch on the last row, and right pin is for the right switch on the last row [in reference to the last picture])
And so we don’t have 3 wires running around loose, we can use the left over tape to tape them up and look near and professional ^_^
Now that the switches are done, it’s time to put the wiring loom in the car, start where ever you like as long as it runs in the path that you first thought of. I started in the middle and poked the taped end of the wires through the console from the left of the car...to the right where the switches will be located (The rest of the loom can sit on the front floor for now until switches have been wired up.
I nearly made the mistake of putting the plug on the loom just after I made it but it would’ve been very hard to weave it through the console. So now that it’s at its end location we can put the pins. Make sure you keep you coloured electrical tape on the wires so we know which is which.
Now to put the plug on, at this stage it doesn’t matter which pin goes where, as long as you remember which wire goes to which switch (which you will need to know when you wire up the stuff in the boot).
As I have a VP Commodore I know there is an empty fuse slot, so I can use that as my power. We take the power wire we did earlier on the jumped switches and wrap it around a fuse (I used a 10amp fuse, I’m not one to ask what kind of fuse you should use, but 10 is roughly in the middle, and if it is too small I can always change it later).
WARNING: IF YOU PLAN ON DOING IT THIS WAY MAKE SURE THE PIN WITH THE WIRE IS ON THE BOTTOM AS THE 12V WIRE FOR THE FUSE BOX IS THE TOP WIRE. IF YOU CONNECT IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND YOU WILL STILL HAVE POWER IF THE FUSE BLOWS RESULTING IN A BRICK FOR A CAR.
And for the earth, All I did was put a screw plug on the negative of the negative wire in the loom and put it on a screw (Used the screw that holds on the cover, that way if I take off the cover I lose all power to the switches)
Now to put the cover back on.
Now that's all done, time to send the wiring loom to the back of the car. Putting the wiring loom under the plastic on the door trim...
And then through the small hole behind the back seat.
Here is the reason why I didn't tape up the whole wiring loom, I only need to send 2 orange wires and the brown to boot lid...So the other orange wire goes its separate way.
And to end this, I wrapped up the 3 wires (2 orange and brown) to make it look neat and wired up the license plate bolts.
From here I connect the negative wire from my items to the negative wire in the loom, and the positive wire to the correct wire in the loom (Remembered from plugging in the switches). And now you will have neatly wrapped wires from one end of your car to the other.
Basically, this is how to make a wiring loom (lengths of wire wound up by tape) and then wire up an object with a switch. This How To is based on wiring up multiple electrical items in my boot, but can be used for almost anything electrical related. I did do this for 8 different lighting objects, but I will only guide through one, as the concept is the same for everything else.
First of all, you will need to think of your path that you will take.
Then, if you are planning on having switches you will need to think of where you want them (My preferred locations are in the console, or on the air vent cover (which is where I will be putting them for this How To)
Next you will need to do some small planning for what materials/how much you will need, I shopped around and found cheap prices on my items in bulk (I would probably need the left overs for other odd jobs around the house/car. So here it goes.
Materials I used:
Loom
2x 30m rolls of 4mm wire (Orange and Brown, smaller rolls with more colour variety would be better) [$45.90 for the 2 rolls off eBay incl. shipping]
10 rolls of white electrical tape (I only used about 4 rolls for both parts) [about $10 for the 10 rolls from Super Cheap Auto]
Wire cutters [Not sure how much as I already had them in my tool box]
Spare time
Installation
On/Off toggle switches [$22.19 for 50 switches off eBay incl. shipping]
3 Way quick connector housing [A few dollars from Super Cheap]
Crimping pieces (For this you only need one (1) screw crimp piece to screw down the earth wire) [Few dollars for some crimping pieces from Super Cheap]
Wire joiners (There are a few things you can use, either crimping pieces, tape alone, etc.) [Few dollars from Super Cheap]
Cable ties [Not sure how much]
Wire cutters
Drill + drill pieces
Ruler
Whiteboard Marker
Soldering iron + soldier
Cloth
Scrap wire
Electrical tape from wiring loom
Screwdrivers
Pliers
Heatshrink (Recommended)
WIRING LOOM
Ok we start with the 2 rolls of wire...
But, first you need to estimate how much wire you will need, the easiest way I found was to do a rough path with the wire. From point A to point B. As I’m going to the boot, I put one end of the wire in the car where the switches will be (right hand side of the car), then send it to the left side of the car (see pic 1), then down to the back of the car (see pic 2) (I don’t want to go straight down the right side of the car as I have the cable for my amp running down there), and to the boot lid (see pic 3), putting a little amount of slack so it's not too short. Then cut it at the desired spot.
The end result is a length of wire.
I don’t want each item having its own earthing ground, so I am also making an earth wire (brown wire) for all the items to jump on. This wire needs to be the same length as the orange wire, but rather that estimating again, just measure it against the orange wire. And we end up with 1 orange wire and 1 brown wire.
I also need to more wires for other items so I will need to make 2 more pieces of wire the same length. This is where having more colours comes in handy. But I will solve that in the next step. For now we do the same as we did with the negative wire and measure 2 lengths of the orange wire again.
Ok...I have my lengths of wire, and to solve the problem of 3 orange wires, I put a bit of electrical tape on each end of the wires. Red for one wire, Black for another and Grey for the third.
Now it's time to tape them up with the tape. Grab all the wires in one hand and line the up so they are even, then leave about 4cm then starting wrapping the electrical tape around all the wires at once. There is no simple way to do this with 2 hands, if you can get someone to hold either (taped/non taped) side of the wire while you tape it, it makes it a lot easier, and will make it stronger.
And time goes by...Roughly half way
Now, not all my wires are going to the same spot, so instead of wrapping them all up to the end, I will stop about 60cm from the end, if that is too much we can always take some off later when we put it in the car. And if it is not enough, we can wrap some more tape around.
And that’s the wiring loom completed.
INSTALLATION
Ok now time to install our switches and wiring loom.
Ok, now I had already marked out a diagram of how I wanted to place my switches (It’s up to you how you want to put your switch(es)).
But to start, I need to mark out the border with the ruler so each switch is the same distance from the other...
then I put a dot in each box that I need a switch for...
Ok, now to drill the holes, get out the drill bits and see which one is the closest size to the screw part of the switch...You want a drill bit that is as close as possible to the width of the screw part of the switch. The closer the match, the better the switch will hold in place (If the drill bit is bigger than the width the tighter you will need to bolt the switch to the air vent cover, and too tight may break the switch or crack the plastic cover.
Ok now I have my drill bit, time to drill-dril-dri-dr-ddd....
Well there is Tip #1: Always make sure the drill is charged before you go to use it.
Ok, battery is charged and drilling is complete...
Once all the holes have been drilled you can wipe off the marker with the cloth. Looks slot better now.
Our next step is to bolt the switches in, but before you do that you need to work out how the switches operate. My switches are only On/Off with 3 pins.
Things to find out about your switch(es):
Which one is used as the main? (My switches are you basic switches so the 12V wire goes to the middle pin)
How does the toggle operate? There are 2 ways a switch will work, not sure if they have specific names but I call them “Equal” and “Opposite”. Basically if it is equal then while the switch is left (like it is in the picture) A and B are the pins that complete the circuit. If it is opposite then pins B and C will complete the circuit. My switches are “opposites”. Easiest way to find out when your switch will be on or off is to put them in a small circuit. Although is doesn’t actually matter unless you are a fussy person, I want all my switches to be off when facing down, and on when facing up, so knowing how it works is a must for me.
So now that you are all confused, we can do the easiest part, bolt the switches in. Bolt them hand tight, then tighten them a little bit more with the pliers. That way there not too tight, and not tight enough that they will come undone over time flicking the switch.
To make life easier (later on) I will do the pain in the butt job, rather than sending 10 12V wires to each switch I'm just going to jump them...Sounds easy in theory, but I want to make it as neat as possible. So using the soldering iron with the soldier and I’m putting jumping short pieces of wire onto the middle of each switch. (I used spare speaker wire I had laying around as I have small switches and the wire from the Loom is too thick. Once all switches have been jumped the last switch should have a piece of wire around 20-30cm to plug into the fuse box later on.
Now we need to “carefully” put wires onto the bottom of each of the 3 switches that will be going to the back of the car. 20-30cm for this is also fine. This is where using heatshrink can come in handy. I am confident with my soldering that I know nothing will touch. The good thing is, if the wires do touch, the only thing that will go wrong is that my lights will be on all the time...
You will notice in the picture that the 2 switches on the bottom left have been jumped together, these 2 switches will turn on the same thing (left & right license plate bolt) which was my plan in my first step.
Now it’s time to put the plug on the 3 wires that are connecting to the wiring loom. I used the position of the switch to know which wire is which (looking inside the plug, top pin is the switch on the second last row, left pin is for the middle switch on the last row, and right pin is for the right switch on the last row [in reference to the last picture])
And so we don’t have 3 wires running around loose, we can use the left over tape to tape them up and look near and professional ^_^
Now that the switches are done, it’s time to put the wiring loom in the car, start where ever you like as long as it runs in the path that you first thought of. I started in the middle and poked the taped end of the wires through the console from the left of the car...to the right where the switches will be located (The rest of the loom can sit on the front floor for now until switches have been wired up.
I nearly made the mistake of putting the plug on the loom just after I made it but it would’ve been very hard to weave it through the console. So now that it’s at its end location we can put the pins. Make sure you keep you coloured electrical tape on the wires so we know which is which.
Now to put the plug on, at this stage it doesn’t matter which pin goes where, as long as you remember which wire goes to which switch (which you will need to know when you wire up the stuff in the boot).
As I have a VP Commodore I know there is an empty fuse slot, so I can use that as my power. We take the power wire we did earlier on the jumped switches and wrap it around a fuse (I used a 10amp fuse, I’m not one to ask what kind of fuse you should use, but 10 is roughly in the middle, and if it is too small I can always change it later).
WARNING: IF YOU PLAN ON DOING IT THIS WAY MAKE SURE THE PIN WITH THE WIRE IS ON THE BOTTOM AS THE 12V WIRE FOR THE FUSE BOX IS THE TOP WIRE. IF YOU CONNECT IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND YOU WILL STILL HAVE POWER IF THE FUSE BLOWS RESULTING IN A BRICK FOR A CAR.
And for the earth, All I did was put a screw plug on the negative of the negative wire in the loom and put it on a screw (Used the screw that holds on the cover, that way if I take off the cover I lose all power to the switches)
Now to put the cover back on.
Now that's all done, time to send the wiring loom to the back of the car. Putting the wiring loom under the plastic on the door trim...
And then through the small hole behind the back seat.
Here is the reason why I didn't tape up the whole wiring loom, I only need to send 2 orange wires and the brown to boot lid...So the other orange wire goes its separate way.
And to end this, I wrapped up the 3 wires (2 orange and brown) to make it look neat and wired up the license plate bolts.
From here I connect the negative wire from my items to the negative wire in the loom, and the positive wire to the correct wire in the loom (Remembered from plugging in the switches). And now you will have neatly wrapped wires from one end of your car to the other.
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