[The J]

Alrighty, then!

After many moons I have acquired all of the hardware components of my install. I still have to get a few odds and ends (and the rest of the deadening), so that left me thinking about how I'm going to wire all my stuff up. I need some way that I can distribute power to devices with smaller (18ga or so) wires and most distro blocks seem to have outputs that are meant to accommodate larger wires.

Here is a very accurate diagram of how I need to distribute the goods. These types of diagrams seem to be popular on DIYMA...



And a little more explanation:

• The wire going from the battery, through fuse, and to the distro block will be 4ga. From there, the wire going to the amp will also be 4ga. The amp is fused at 75A, but BCAE suggests that I don't need another fuse here since the fuse after the battery (100A) will protect that wire.[/*]
• The head unit will be connected to the distro block through its harness, which has pretty small (18ga, maybe?) wires on it. My plan is to wire the 12V constant through the distro block and use a Metra harness adapter to get the 12V switched power from where a stock head unit would get it. This goes off the assumption that most of the unit's power while running is taken from 12V constant and the switched line just keeps stuff in volatile memory and starts/stops the unit. Let me know if this is wrong. The head unit has a replaceable fuse in the unit body, but not in the wire.[/*]
• The HD Radio module and the backup camera get their power separately from the head unit from small wires. Each one of these has an inline fuse holder in their power wires. The camera uses a 1A mini-blade fuse and the HD Radio unit uses a 5A mini-blade fuse.[/*]
• I also have a Bluetooth module, but that appears to be powered off the headunit. I would also want to be able to expand this in case I get a processor or something like that in the future.[/*]

So my question, then, is what can I use to distribute all this stuff? The amp should be fine; I'm more concerned about the other three. I thought about just using a terminal strip since the HD Radio module and camera have inline fuses holders in the wire (I'd just cut the wire so that the fuses are close to the terminal strip); however, the headunit itself (JVC KW-AVX810) has its fuse in the unit body and not in the power wire. I'm not sure if that poses a problem. Also, I don't know if terminal strips can handle the current going to the amp.

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[thesavo]

I LOVE your diagram . LOVE it.

I would fuse the AMP separately and use this for your lesser-current draws.

Ebay "Fuse block"
Look for "Hella". You can get it in different total circuits capacities.

 

[fourthmeal]

Heehee, J that's good stuff.

Here's my experience: Just like the vehicle itself, you might want to consider branched fusing. Autozone sells for $7.99 a 6 spot mini ATC fuse block, less fuses. I use one of these for fans, lights, relay main circuit protection, and remote amp wire protection. Works like a darn charm.

You also don't have to fuse everything to one spot in the back. you can easily run a small 10 gauge or similar wire a short run at the front from the battery, come to the baby fuse block, and then spread out. You can also do it from your main distro block in the back too, its really whatever you want.

 

[sinister mob]

I never thought about adding additional fuses to certain items. I ran a fuse for the 8 AWG line to my amp (part of the amp kit). The only other inline fuse is for the Sirius adaptor 12v+ line and the fuse on the chassis of the HU. The HU harness and Sirius adaptor go through the fusebox so the constant and switched 12v+ is fused already. So really the only "powered" line that is unfused is my HU remote to my amp. Not a bad idea to add a fuse in-line for that I suppose. But my system is rather simple with one amp and factory plug in harness connections. Going multiple adaptors and amps creates a bigger need to protect wiring.

 

[The J]

Thanks for the input, all! This started as a simple install, but then someone on DIYMA had a nice deal on the headunit + HD Radio + Bluetooth + camera that I didn't want to pass up. To manage all that, I think I'm liking the branched block approach.

The first would be to have one 4ga line from the battery go to a three-way block. One output would be another 4ga line to the amp. The other two would go fuses blocks like you guys posted here and would be either 4ga or 8ga lines (since distro blocks with a 4ga input generally only have 4ga or 8ga outputs, it seems).

One fuse block would be for the head unit and its modules (and room for future expansion). If possible, I'd like to mount this one (and maybe even the main block) under the center console, along with the HD Radio module and Bluetooth adapter. There should be a good amount of room under there since I have the gear selector is on the steering column in my Escape.

The other fuse block would be in the back with the amp. This would power stuff like a fan, a future processor or whatever, and whatever else I can think of. This one I might not use right away, depending on whether or not I need the fan and other stuff, so I could just leave space for it in the back for now.

This would work out okay as long as the fuse blocks I use can accept an 8ga input and smaller guage outputs.

Also just to make sure, the head unit draws most of its power from the 12V constant, right? The 12V switched is just used to "activate" the head unit (with an internal relay or transistor or something)?

 

[fourthmeal]

100% correct, its an op-amp.

The 12V switched behaves exactly like the amp's remote turn-on.

If you only have one amp back there, consider just using a straight run of 4 gauge to the amp (fused at the battery of course), and a small 10 gauge run from the battery (fused at the battery as well) to the front of the car to a small mini-atc fuse panel like we've talked about, then fuse connect all those other goodies. If running more than one amp in the back, then this wouldn't work as well.

 

[The J]

Gotcha. That does sound easier now that I think about it. Thanks.