Adding circuits to a 64 skylark

Hi,

Over the winter, I hope to add some electrical components to my '64. Rather than try to tie into existing fuses, I am considering adding a 4 or 6 terminal distribution block with blade fuses under the dash. Being a good little paranoid, I am thinking of wiring the distribution block through a 30A relay protected by a circuit breaker and triggered by something like the 'radio' circuit so it's only live when the key is in RUN or ACC..

Am I totally over engineering this, or does that make sense???

Not the least bit afraid of doing wiring, just want to be sure that I can't start an electrical fire under the dash!

John

i would think that multiple circuit interrupters is overkill, but it's not really going to hurt anything.

the critical thing is for your interrupter to be rated to trip BELOW the current carrying capacity of the wire gauge you're installing. otherwise, you might burn the insulation off of the wire ( that's a fire ) and never have a fuse blow or the breaker trip.

see this page for reference:
https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

i wouldn't route anything lighter than 12ga. and while 12ga / 30Amp should be fine for something like a car stereo ( which is rarely going to be over 50% duty cycle ), if you're wiring phone battery chargers, etc, those are going to be 100% duty cycle while they're in use.

that's going to put a lot of heat into the wire/insulation and so you're going to want a breaker on that that's under 10 amps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bob k. mando

i would think that multiple circuit interrupters is overkill, but it's not really going to hurt anything.

the critical thing is for your interrupter to be rated to trip BELOW the current carrying capacity of the wire gauge you're installing. otherwise, you might burn the insulation off of the wire ( that's a fire ) and never have a fuse blow or the breaker trip.

see this page for reference:
https://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

i wouldn't route anything lighter than 12ga. and while 12ga / 30Amp should be fine for something like a car stereo ( which is rarely going to be over 50% duty cycle ), if you're wiring phone battery chargers, etc, those are going to be 100% duty cycle while they're in use.

that's going to put a lot of heat into the wire/insulation and so you're going to want a breaker on that that's under 10 amps.

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Was planning on using 6 GA wire from the battery to the 30A circuit breaker. The relay will be hooked up directly to the circuit breaker and the distribution block. The reason for the relay is so that it can by triggered the ACC output of the ignition switch without overloading any existing circuits.

Here is a link to the relay I was thinking of
https://www.amazon.com/PACK-AMP-Wate...ords=12V+relay

sounds like you've pretty much got this covered then. :thumbsup: