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if im wiring several gauges in my car, i know i can tap into the power wire of the cig lighter yes? but is it safe to use three taps to wire three different gauges for power? keep in mind ive got a radar detector plugged into the cig, im not an electrical wiz so i didnt know if it put too much of a strain on the cig lighters power wire. thanks.

 
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Well, you'll be setting everything up in parallel... so the Voltage across everything will be the same... but the current won't. You should be OK, but I would tap the Cig lighter once, then run a bus wire (use a 12 or 14 AWG wire) and then splice your gauge leads onto that... Just a little cleaner and the equivelant resistance from the gauges wont be as large. Don't quote me on the eq. resistance thing, I have to think about it for a little bit and I'll get back to you, but you're ok on from a voltage standpoint... put a 5 Amp fuse on the gauges to be safe.

 
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hey thanks, youre always the first to answer my questions... so when you say run a bus wire, youre basically telling me to tap into the cig lighter with one wire, and then run the three taps for the gauges off of that. dont know if youre into computers, but its basically the same principle as a bus topology, where the lines to the nodes would be the wires tapped to the bus wire. thanks again.

 
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01wingswestcivic,

yup

http://webopedia.com/TERM/t/topology.html

 
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Aight... I said I had to think about the equivelant resistance... it won't matter which way you wire it up. You can run 3 gauges individually off the lighter wire or you can use a bus wire, either way, the effective resistance of the gauges will be the same since its all in parallel. It was kind of a no brainer now that I think about it, but its summer and my brain doesn't always work so well.