Dash Connections

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

As we know there can be many many electrical connections to the dashboard that makes removal and replacement a pain.

Putting it all on a plug and socket would help but it tends to be difficult to find a suitable plug with enough connections at a sensible price

So how about this idea from your local Maplin: an ATX power connection extender for a PC motherboard:

The beauty is it has 24 connections and comes ready terminated with opposite sex connectors at each end

So cut it in half you have a ready plug and socket - and all for £3.99!

OK so there going to be quite a bit of soldering (I highly recommend heat shrink sleeving and use of a hot air gun for such things btw)  but pretty neat I reckon. Even the wires themselves are nice and substantial

Just solder on to your trailing leads from such things as warning lights and rev counters etc on the car side and on the back of the dash on the other side and you can plug and play!

[Dave Adams]

now that is a storming bit of Dutton bodgery.......

i could have used that rather than the 6 or 7 multi plugs i did use.....

[Roy Kemp]

Doesn't state what the CSA of the wire is - any idea?

[Dave Adams]

it will be quite small given the intended use for it...since every consumer on my car has its own relay and i use miniature spst toggle switches.....it would be ok on my car.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

I dont know about wire guages etc but I just measured the conductor of one of the wires (they all look the same) to be ~1.25mm diameter. Looks pretty heavy duty to me although I'd hesitate to run headlights through that (I'm not intending to as those aren't dash connections in my setup). This connector setup is intended for DC power, albeit for a PC. If you remember your school physics at all than you will know that Power = Amps * Volts and it's the current that is the important thing for wiring. Just take your device power and divide by 12 and that's your current..

Many of my 'devices' are LEDs that take miniscule number of watts (or amps). I think the 'strongest' item that I am considering for use in this setup is the heater fan (originally from a vauxhall corsa). Not sure what the upper current limit on 1.25mm dia wire would be but they do look well in excess of most dash connectors. The pins themselves may be more of a limit but it's close to impossible to measure them other than that they fit on the wire and are solid of course. There is no current specification specification I can see on this plug set per se.

I'm in the middle of redoing my dash accordingly as it was out anyway for other mods for a new stereo setup with bluetooth etc (Pioneer MVH380BT with no CD, making it alot smaller). This is the Stylus, not the Dutton BTW, although that doesn't matter for the wiring issue, except that the curved windsreen of the Stylus does make access more difficult.

[Adrian Southgate]

The pins in a 24 way PC connector are good for 5A, pretty much the same as the 3.9mm japanese bullets.

Have an ebay link

Its an ATX power cable ...And the male one LINK

Both come with pins to suit. They also come in UV reactive colours and white. 

[Steve Kerswell]

we used to do MOD type plugs, they came with separates, used to hate assembling the things. I'll speak with my friendly sparky, see if he got a number. Think they used to come from RS components.

[James Doulton]

That is a good idea. I know that the environment in a kit car is going to be damper than in a PC case but the Ford connections to the Escort dash were a lot more crude and they are still going strong after 40 years.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Been working on this today. 16 pins used so far but I might be able to get one back by sharing another earth. That could be handy as by my present reckoning I'll be needing all of them once spots, fogs, shift light and heater fan are included.

I didn't see where you found 5A from but if so then that's 60w, or one headlight. Mind you you could always double the number of pins if you wanted - not that that matters I my case

[Adrian Southgate]

Just working from the gauge of the metal connector pins and comparing it to the 3.9mm japanese bullets. Of course we could always test one out to see how warm it gets with more current running through it.

They were never designed to take much current hence the auxiliary power socket on most modern ATX motherboards although I think that has something to do with heat dissipation across circuit board tracks rather than wire or pin diameter.

Common earths, fitted to one ring terminal would be more efficient wouldn't it? I know it detracts from the 'one plug' concept but mores the risk of shorts away from the polyurethane plug.

[Steve and Matt Pegrum]

Probably should have mentioned that spots are on a relay and that the fog is just a single rear one. 

Yes and luckily as this dash is removable it uses nice big mounting screws to the chassis anyway, making for a good high power earth via a ring terminal, so that doesn't interfere with the one plug idea at all really.

I'll have to make a full list when I'm done (maybe next weekend)

[Adrian Southgate]

Well it's motivated me to order a couple to make rewiring the green one easier.

I have used a chassis mount D plug and socket on the instrument cluster - we'll see how that goes 

[Dave Adams]

Not fitted rear fogs to my car.....I hate them and given a choice I would ban their use tomorrow  :-)