Technical is this a good way to tap 12v by an auto electrician?

[andy1]

before selling my old panda 169 i removed its aftermarket car alarm that was mounted by an auto electrician...

now i was in the process of mounting it on my 500 emulating his procedure.


but i got thinking, is this a good way to tap 12v?
he basically stripped the big red cable and wrapped the alarm cable around it, then covered with some tape
(he actually did this for the directional lights & canbus connections too)

as for the canbus connections,
i was rather thinking of connecting to the obd-port pins

 

[Mike1alike]

but i got thinking, is this a good way to tap 12v?

No, it is not. It is effective, as you get 12 V to the connected line, but is not the good way.
The good way is very easy. There is a panel nearby the one in your picture, a litlle to the right, kind of behind central console and it has the electrical connectors on it. I think for sure there are some free ones (nothing connected to them), that's the good way to do it.
On the panel, the left side gives DC when key is turned in, the right side gives DC all the time. You should mesure to be sure, it can be the other way around.

 

[chris3234]

Not really that's the main power feed to the fusebox
And it's especially bad if whatever he was feeding with that wire didn't have a fuse shortly after this connection

 

[g8rpi]

before selling my old panda 169 i removed its aftermarket car alarm that was mounted by an auto electrician...

now i was in the process of mounting it on my 500 emulating his procedure.


but i got thinking, is this a good way to tap 12v?
he basically stripped the big red cable and wrapped the alarm cable around it, then covered with some tape
(he actually did this for the directional lights & canbus connections too)

as for the canbus connections,
i was rather thinking of connecting to the obd-port pins

No it is not acceptable. Even worse the large red cable (main power feed) appears to be rubbing on the edge of a metal bracket. Both this and the "electrician"s work are likey to cause a fire in the car.
You should have this seen and repaired by a competent auto electrician as soon as possible.

Edit There are also bare pink and brown wires at the top of the picture.


Robbert G8RPI.

 

[andy1]

thank you guys!

don't worry i still didn't strip any wire on my new 500

Not really that's the main power feed to the fusebox
And it's especially bad if whatever he was feeding with that wire didn't have a fuse shortly after this connection

he did put the fuse on the car alarm wire wrapped to the big red
(to be fair to the auto-electrician )

 

[typecastboy]

Looks like a bodge to me. Certainly not something you would expect a professional to do.

Personally I like to use bridge fuse connectors where it doubles up one fuse slot with a fuse and a tail to connect to.

 

[AndyRKett]

If I were tapping into something to add a new electrical device to a car (and I’ve been doing car electronics for many years now professionally and as well as in my own cars, there is no harm in splicing into a wire like the large red wire, but I would then always solder the new wire in and would tape/shrink wrap around it.

Also you'd need to make sure the newly installed device had its own in line fuse holder.

Its a good idea to look at using one of the fuse holders in the fuse box but generally if it didn't leave the factory with a fuse in it for a system that was factory installed then usually there are no contacts behind the holes in the fuse box panel, sometimes there are, and with fiat they do weird things so they could have used one of those fuse holders for something that's not indicated in the handbook/inside of the fusebox cover.

If you buy a Van usually there are dozens of unused fuses with connection in place in the fuse box ready to be tapped into for anything you'd fit like flashing lights, extra interior (load area) lights, spot lights, electric tail lifts etc, but they don't do that on cars.

Just winding the wire round and taping it is a proper bodge, please tell me they did put a fuse in?

g8rpi, I’m not sure that the bit on the left isn’t plastic ?? But it does look tight, it does look like it’s been well hacked about.

 

[Ralf S.]

On my Stilo I found that the fuse that would be used for the sun-roof, if I had one, is available (it has wiring and connectors in it) whereas as Andy says, most of the other empty fuse slots had nothing behind them... so it's worth a look.

Also, make sure the fuse slot you select is live when it needs to be. I needed a temporary feed to the not working ciggie lighter to power my sat-nav (now fixed) but I noticed that the sun-roof fuse powers off, about 5 seconds after the ignition... so it's fine for a sat-nav (or lighting) but wouldn't work for anything that needed to be "live" with the ignition off (an alarm, for instance).


Ralf S.