General Forwards interior/dashboard - Permanent live, ignition live, earthing points. Use existing or find your own?

[Jamie KC]

This afternoon I’ll be pulling out the head unit to start the upgrade. I also need to find a permanent live, an ignition switched live, and a good earth point.

Current draw won’t be huge by any stretch, triggering and supplying a couple of relays for light components such as dash cam etc, supplying power to a couple of hidden USBs, prob adding some additional interior lights at some point.

There will be one larger current draw, a couple of heated dash fans for defrosting duty on winter morns, these will suck around 25a total for 5 mins or so. (I wanted but didn’t find suitable car with winter pack, the screen on our Ford is a godsend, so this is my compromised version!).

My assumption is that the factory wiring for the HU is up to spec for the unit, and not much else. The new unit will probably increase the load over factory a little.

Cigarette lighter prob a better bet, as it’ll never be used for its full power heating element duty, but actually the wires here not as thick as expected.

Happy to root around for my own, but thought I’d ask first if any known suitable points to tap in? For light duty/heavy duty.

Also, pulling cables into car from engine bay, best spots for smaller and larger wires (prob fit an amp at some point)?

Cheers for any advice

 

[Panda IIs]

This afternoon I’ll be pulling out the head unit to start the upgrade. I also need to find a permanent live, an ignition switched live, and a good earth point.

Current draw won’t be huge by any stretch, triggering and supplying a couple of relays for light components such as dash cam etc, supplying power to a couple of hidden USBs, prob adding some additional interior lights at some point.

There will be one larger current draw, a couple of heated dash fans for defrosting duty on winter morns, these will suck around 25a total for 5 mins or so. (I wanted but didn’t find suitable car with winter pack, the screen on our Ford is a godsend, so this is my compromised version!).

My assumption is that the factory wiring for the HU is up to spec for the unit, and not much else. The new unit will probably increase the load over factory a little.

Cigarette lighter prob a better bet, as it’ll never be used for its full power heating element duty, but actually the wires here not as thick as expected.

Happy to root around for my own, but thought I’d ask first if any known suitable points to tap in? For light duty/heavy duty.

Also, pulling cables into car from engine bay, best spots for smaller and larger wires (prob fit an amp at some point)?

Cheers for any advice

Re pulling cables through bulkhead check out tow bar installations on here. I think there may be something in the guide section toon (tow bar related)?

 

[Herts Hillhopper]

All the wires in the car (and all other modern cars) seem tiny compared to their expected load. Seems to be part of the weight saving to gain better official fuel economy figures.

The factory radio uses a single power supply feed to provide permanent and switched lives, using canbus. There was another post recently showing a link wire between two fuses that was probably to provide a permanent live to a non OEM radio.

The 12v (lighter) socket is marked as limited to 180watts max (15amps) - so that shows the expected current capacity of those very thin wires.