Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Stack Exchange
Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [wiring]

For questions about the wiring of a car(apparatus that connects electrical circuits).

This tag is for questions about the wiring of a car(the apparatus that connects electrical circuits). This includes the repair of wires and replacement for new ones.

316 questions
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6 answers

What causes battery terminal corrosion?

I put a new battery in my car about 8 months ago. After a problem starting a couple days ago, I found that there was massive corrosion under the battery terminals, so I cleaned them out and reconnected. I've never had this problem with this car…
Brian Knoblauch
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3 answers

Can I connect wires by just twisting them together and insulating with tape?

My cousin replaced a instrument panel cluster of a car with another one that is very similar. He did it by cutting the original junction/wires block that come out of the instrument panel and attached the junction block/wires of the new cluster to…
Diego Alves
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4 answers

What can I do to combat wire embrittlement?

I live in a very hot climate where temperatures regularly touch 45 deg C and the heat in the engine bay area means that under-hood wires, especially the thinner ones, endure high levels of thermal fatigue. As a result, when working on older cars…
Zaid
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16
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4 answers

40amp protection on 25amp rated wiring?

Q - why is the circuit described below protected with a 40amp fuse when the cable to the motor is 2mm² (I cut a bit of cable out and measured strand thickness and quantity, 37 * .26mm = 1.98mm²) and therefore likely rated for 25amps max. (All the…
Nathan
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14
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1 answer

Do I have to rely on wire color to correctly wire up an O2 sensor?

It seems that everyone and their grandmother has a different color-code convention for 4-wire O2 sensors, which complicates matters when one is trying to wire up a replacement "universal" O2 sensor. Is it possible to determine signal-wire polarity…
Zaid
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12
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2 answers

My 1999 Chevy suburban has a battery issue. One of the batteries is boiling hot and smells like it's burning up

My battery is boiling hot on one of my batteries in my 1999 Chevy suburban. I thought I had it traced down to two wires rubbing together on my starter and sparking and fixed that and it stopped. Now it's doing it again. I've already lost one battery…
Steven Hamilton
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12
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2 answers

Is it normal to connect the positive to a fuse and the negative to the chassis

I am try to install an after market usb breakout box on my vehicle. It has a red wire and a black wire coming out of the back. The instructions say to connect the red wire directly to a fuse in the fuse box and the black wire to the chassis. In…
Aaargh Zombies
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3 answers

How do I make all of this work together?

I have a friend with 1988 Jeep YJ. I'm not sure if this question is more appropriate for here or for Electrical Engineering. We want to mount this blender with an AC motor in it. I think it's 110 volts and 3.5 amps. We also want to put these…
DucatiKiller
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2 answers

Are there downsides to making an accessory socket always live, if accessories are removed when not in use?

In some cars, the power line from the battery to the accessory outlet (aka cigarette lighter socket) is always live. In others, it's off until ignition. It seems pretty much random which cars are wired which way, and some cars are wired differently…
user56reinstatemonica8
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10
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1 answer

Motorcycle Headlight Conversion

I've decided to install a new headlight on my bike. The current setup is two bulbs, one is on for low beam and both on for high beam, with two wires going out of each (h11?). Here is a short video of someone taking apart theirs (I have the same…
Bass
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9
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6 answers

Is it necessary to have two ground wires (1 to engine and 1 to car-frame)?

My jeep's stock wiring has two ground cabled coming from the negative terminal. I recently upgraded all of my positive cables, and now I'm on to the negative. Is it necessary to have one cable going to the engine, and one going to the frame - or…
Sponge Bob
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9
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4 answers

How to amplify car speakers without stereo?

I have a 1980 VW Dasher with its original speakers but no radio. It has an unusual (erroneous?) electrical configuration where most accessories (e.g. lights, cabin fan, etc) still run even with the ignition switched off and key removed (I've heard…
Troy
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1 answer

Where can I find a power adapter to run a car stereo from a wall outlet?

I have a car stereo head unit that I'd like to repurpose as a radio for my garage. Given that, I'm looking for some kind of power adapter / transformer that I can plug into a wall outlet and splice into the stereo harness. Presumably this would need…
Joseph
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9
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1 answer

Testing specific wires in harness cable

I want to do some electrical mods like adding a push/pull switch to my truck' tailgate to wire into my door ajar light to let me know if it is open along with splicing an electrical tailgate lock into the door auto lock mechanisms. To do this I need…
Gab
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9
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1 answer

Disconnected wires near battery in BMW e46

I noticed a disconnected wire dangling next to the battery in the trunk of my 2005 BMW 330ci. It was actually a red and blue wire that veered off from the thick red one in the middle of the image. There was a black attachment at the end with 3…
s g
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