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I'm looking to find a 5 volt source to hook up some electronics, where would I find such a wire? Did searches to no avail. Thanks in advance.

 
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well, this is a gheto way of doing it, but works very well, in the end:

you can take a resistor, any resistor, and short positive and negative. this will create a voltage drop of 12 volts across the reistor. NOW, we cna do this with a series of resistors as well!

you put 4 equal resistors in series across teh 12 volt source, and the TOTAL drop is 12 volts... but EACH resistor has a voltage drop of 3 volts. so, in this case, if you were to take a piece of equipment, ground the negative terminal, and put the positive lead jsut AFTER the first of the 4 resistors, it would experience a 3 volt drop, the equipment would only see 9 volts!

so, do some math, and youll find you can knock down the voltage till you only get 5 volts left, then your solid!

here is where it gets fuzzy: if you put a 1 ohm resistor in there, alone, the drop is 12 volts. you put a 10000000000 ohm resistor in there, the voltage drop is 12 volts. so even tho you can get the same voltage drop from small and large resistances, the larger resistors will drain yoru battery less quick! (or, put in other words, yoru charging system can recharge the system faster than the setup can drain it, much like yrou AC, stereo, headlights, etc)

but there has to be a limit, as well, becuase a higher resistance might mean you cna leech less power from teh circuit, as well. so that might be a question to either test out, or ask an EE, but there are my 2 cents, at any rate

 
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you could set up a voltage divider, but it would depend on what you are hooking up for if it would work properly. here's the idea...

lets say you have a 12V source and 2 6 ohm resistors connected in series before ground. what is the voltage between these 2 resistors? 6V, because 6V is dropped across each of these resistors. you can easily acquire the voltage you need doing this, BUT connecting a load at that point will change the actual resistance of your circuit and cause the voltage to change at that point. rule of thumb is the load must be 10 times greater than the bottom resistance to neglect it. or if you need the 5V source for diodes, they are a fairly low draw and this setup might work for you. like WR said, if you use small resistances, you will burn more power, so it might not be practical

tell me what you're hooking up 1st

 
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Thanks for all the hints, but I figured it out Just had to splice into a sensor power line.