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[Nathv6]

hi i wanna run some power cable through to my amp ust wandering the best wat through thr bulkhead and rcas is there a way through from behind the dash to the drivers side footwell so i can run them up other side??

[Steve1077]

How powerful is the amp? I just spliced a wire from the rear cigarette lighter and it works fine

[Dave DND]

I just spliced a wire from the rear cigarette lighter and it works fine

That is just bloody dangerous !!  

Wiring can cause a lot of hazards if done incorrectly - have a look at this link of some of the people that have come over to us

http://www.dndservices.co.uk/htmls/flash_htmls/blackmuseum.htm

[davlad22]

If you want a pro job and to minimise the risk of interference, the power should be run away from the RCA's i.e. down the other side of the car.

...and a cigarette lighter feed is not good enough for a car audio amp. Try and run a dedicated fused feed from battery.

[Steve1077]

There is plenty of power from the cigarette lighter if it’s not a massive amp, as I've said it works fine on my 400 watt alpine amp, and it’s not dangerous at all, its fully fussed, it’s almost impossible to run RCA cables without interference of some kind or another, just make sure the cables are well shielded, don’t buy cheap cables

[Kevin Wood]

There is already an unused live feed to the towing connector in the boot which will be capable of powering a small amp (might need a fuse installing in the fuse box) but for anything but the very smallest amp you need to run an appropriately rated cable from the battery protected, close to the battery, by a fuse rated to protect the cable.

An existing feed to a lighter socket will be rated for the lighter socket not the lighter socket plus an amp, so even though it might be capable of running the amp, what happens if someone plugs something big into the lighter socket at the same time? Hopefully the fuse will blow but whether or not you have a fire depends on how sensibly that fuse is rated, and whether you've then replaced it with a bigger one to stop it blowing! Not all circuits in an Omega are fused appropriately, IMHO.

Easiest way in with a cable is through one of the large grommets by the pollen filter and down the passenger side sill. This leaves the driver's side free for signal cables. The rest of the vehicle loom goes down the passenger side so it's best to keep the signal cables away from this anyway IMHO.

Kevin

[Admin]

Dave is absolutely right (it is his line of work after all!!  ), and I don't mean this offensively, but to run any amp let alone a 400w amp from the cigarette lighter feed is like lighting a slow fuse to a can of petrol under the car!

As other have said, run the power cable through the passenger bulkhead and intot the car behind the glovebox. the big rubber grommits have enough room to allow up to 4 gauge cable through.
Just make sure you fuse it as close to the battery as possible (ie no more than 6 inches).

[Dave DND]

Sound Advice !

 

[Steve1077]

How very odd then that it works, and has done for 5 years, I won't be losing any sleep over it, and who in their right mind would replace a 30 amp fuse for something bigger if it kept blowing? Give me some credit, I asked how big it was in the first place, if it's just one of those tiny Bose amps then it hardly needs a lot of power, and yes I know the proper way is to run a cable, but that’s mostly for a clean power supply with a big amp not because it’s going to melt, anyway, whatever