Taping into hot wire.

[bullpup]

First of all this is a great forum. I have never owned a Toyota before and will pick my Camry up on Monday. I have searched and read all the hardwire posts but have not seen anything mentioning the Scotchlok T taps. Has anyone used them or is it just a gypsy job? How about the pigggy back taps I have seen mentioned. I want to hardwire in a Escort 8500. I was thinking of taping the cigarette or power point hot line. Has anyone done this or is there an easier way? TIA

[AznVR4]

The only T Tapping I done to my car was using the Scotchlok T Taps when I installed my Gentex Auto dimmer Mirror on my Camry, its pretty simple to use. Apply the wire you want to Tap into with the female connector and the Male connector onto the Power Source and plug them in together. I think when I did it I just tapped into a power Hot line, but I’m not so sure as I found the instillation guide that the dealers use to install the same mirror.

[marc780]

Bullpup, to get power for your device, its a lot easier to just tap into the fuse box. We do it all the time where i work, to hook up strobe lights and stuff. All you need is a little brass connector and it gets shoved just under the fuse connector and piggybacks off the power of whatever this fuse works. Naturally you want to use something that uses the same number of amps as the accesory you want to add. If you had to use another amperage, you could just pick one with a larger amperage rating but then you would need to add an in line fuse of smaller amps, foryour new accesory.

If you wanted the whatever to have power all the time, or only have power with the key on, you just tap into something that is wired like how you want it to act. Like if you wanted it to only have power with the key on, you might tap into the fuse for the wipers. You get the idea.

[noodlerooney]

When tapping into the fusebox via a fuse, make sure you tap into the leg of the fuse that is opposite of the powered side. I have never heard this mentioned before but after thinking about it, if you were to tap into the fuse leg that was the power side, the fuse would do nothing for you since you are essentially tapped into the power supply. To get the protection of the fuse, you must tap into the fuse leg opposite the powered side, so when the fuse blows, power is cut off to the device. What do you think?

[lenjack]

Absolutely...this is usually ignored.