How would I go about wiring a power cable

Im new to the forum and any help would be amazing.
I have bought a satnav attachment for my mobile phone. In order to use it in my car I either need to fit a cigar lighter or hardwire it (see pic). I would prefer to hardwire, but not sure where to connect the power cable to. I have not yet got the cable (it's due to day and I need to fit tomorrow as it is a gift). The cable has two wires I imagine the are + -. I have fitted stereos etc in the past but the manufacturers were kind enough to provide wiring for them in this case there is none. Ideally I would like to wire it directly or close to the fuse box as I had trouble getting the stereo unit in the car and don't want to remove it unless forced to.

many many thanks

David H

Under the speedo there are cables provided for a radio - it's "always on".
You might need to loosen the three screws which locate one end of the parcel shelf to un-pop the tube which runs across the width of the car - then the "shelf" will drop down and you have full access.

Red/green cable from fuse 1, black is always earth (subject to poor connections at the other end :-)

I think there's a switched power there too (for back lighting), but can't recall the colour - update - Haynes says yellow/black.

The relevant cables terminate in spade connector sockets, as far as I recall.

You could get a connector to fit direct onto the bolt that closes the battery terminals together. Using that to connect a wire with an inline fuse direct to the unit you want to install.

The upside of this method is that you need not chop into any existing wire and you know your wiring is not going to cause problems in the car in other places or with other equipment.

The downside is that you will have an allways on system. Which isn't too bad.

Hope this helps

Darren

Thanks a million for the help and advice. I'll let you know how I get on.

David

Hi there i've hit a bit of a snag with the hardwiring of the power cable. It's in my friends Panda and she tells me that devices plugged into the cable no longer function when the lights are on. Is this fixable.
I am very grateful of any help you can give me.

Thanks

Could be a couple of things but I suspect you have wired the earth to the dash illumination so when the lights are turned on, the earth becomes live and the current in the cable is stopped.

Best bet is to wire the negative end of the cable directly to the body of the car (expose some metal) - because these cars are negative earth you will then have a permanent eath point irrispective of what the lights are doing.

Best of luck.

Kind Regards,


Steve Matthews

PS. Might be worth investing in a multimeter to check these things before switching them on!

Alfa

think you might be right I wired the cable to the two spare wires mentioned by john h in answer one. Don't have the car in from of me now so not sure. I was a spade connector type thing which was free and I wired it to that. What colour is the negative wire? Seems to be conflicting views in other posts.

Many many thanks