What ever circuit you tap into to power your accessories may not be adaquate to handle the added draw of you intended accessories. Anythime you add stuff to your electrical system without adding an additional circuit to power it increases the potential for an electrical fire, or to continusly blow fuses. I suggested the aux fuse block so that you will have a conveniant place to wire all of your accessories to one spot without having to worry about overloadeing your stock circuits, not just your tv/dvd system. There are cheaper fuse blocks available than the one shown above that are less complicated looking. I have seen 5 and 8 circuit blocks that look just like the ones in old cars for about $15 at auto parts stores. You can get as complicated or as simple as you want with them, that is all up to you. It is also your choice to wire your stuff to whatever wire happens to be available, but you asked for a better place to wire stuff, so this was my suggestion.

 

I appreciate the feedback. That's why I asked. I have been wiring car audio for 15 years, and only had a fire once (that was because my power inverter burned up, which technically wasn't a fire, but almost) but things change alot. If I really wanted to I could dig out all of my electronics engineering text books from college and figure out mathmatically what guage wire can conduct what current at what voltage, blah blah blah, but I'd rather be safe then sorry. I'll let you guys know what do. When I wired my light bar, I did it the right way and did more then I needed, but I grounded the entire light bar to the chasis, which means I probably am a driving lightning rod right now.

 

Well the cool thing about electricity is that all you need is a source of power from the battery, and the gound can be anything connected to the negative terminal. Grounding your lights strait to the body is fine. Actually, that is how every other circuit in your vehicle is grounded. I recommended a common ground only because if you have one item that has a poor ground, it can cause audio interferance with other things like the radio or make wierd noises when watching a movie, not to mention possibly making the accessory perform poorly. By utilizing a common ground, you can eliminate that because you know all of your grounds will have a solid contact and the same resistance.

 

Well, I mean, the entire stainless steel light bar is connected as a ground, literally. When I connected it I got lazy and decided to just run a wire attached directly to the stainless steel bar to the chasis, so the ground wires from the lights are soldered directly to the steel brackets that are bolted to the light bar. My wife wanted to know how lightning decides to strike what, so I tried to explain to her that lighthing takes the path of least resistance, and that in theory if we were driving in the middle of the desert in a thunderstorm, our entire light bar would probably be like a giant antenna for the lightning, since the whole steel bar is grounded to the chasis. Does that make sense, or am I just being paranoid?

 

You are correct about electricity (lightning) taking the path of least resistance, but your chassis and vehicle body are all connected to the negative terminal of the battery, so any part of it will work for a ground for accessories that you place on the vehicle. As forl ighting striking your vehicle, you really haven't increased your odds much, at least not by a reasonably measurable amount. Lightnig is a giant spark between masses of air to other masses of air, or from an air mass to the ground. There has to be a difference in electrical charge between the two for there to be a spark. This difference is cause by one mass moving over the other and either picking up electrons , or leaving some behind until the difference is great enough for the missing electrons to jumb back to where they came from. A static electrical spark casued by dragging your feet over carpet is a lighting strike on a very minimal scale. Where your vehicle fits into this mess is when the electron difference is between the groung and the air mass directly above it and your vehicle is the closest thing to the air mass, i.e. the tallest thing around with the least resistance. Your tires won't insulate the vehicle because there are steel cords in them and they are very close to the rims, which are directly attached to the chassis, and the tread depth from the ground. Besides, the foot or so from your frame to the ground is a lot less than the 1000 feet or so the lightning may have to go through to get to your car. To put any worry to rest about being killed in the car if struck by lightning, if you are in a full metal roofed vehicle, the electricty will travel through the sheet metal and down to ground,. If you are in a vehicle with a sun roof, try to stay away from it, but you are still pretty safe. If you are in a full convertable, buy life insurance and make me the benificiary. As long as you dont directly make yourself part of the path to ground, you will be safe.

 

That makes sense. I figured if there is no other metal objects around besides your H3 that it would just pick that. I dont have a sunroof and I'm not worried about getting hurt. I'm more worried about the lightning striking the H3 and blowing out all of the electronic components while I'm doing 80 MPH and having the engine sieze up, but then again, if I'm quick enough, I can take it out of gear and just coast to a stop, assuming the mental shock from what just happened didn't cause me to run into a guard rail

 

Ya Know..This is getting serious[&:]

 

I dont get it [&:]