Electrical connector suggestions for accessing 12 volts on your vehicle.

NOTE: The best way to make electrical connections is to solder them and then insulate them with something like heat shrink tubing or electrical tape.

But when that is not possible or desirable, here are some suggestions for electrical connectors that you may want to use.

 

Connector
Comments
Posi tap wire connector

1st choice

Wire splicing connectors are a good choice if you’re familiar with your car’s wiring and know which wire to tap into.

These are easy, secure, quick to hook up and let you tap into a wire without having to strip the wire bare. It has a pin inside that pierces the wire to the center.

Here’s a link to the manufacturer’s web site: http://www.posi-lock.com/posiplug.html

Crimp wire tap connector

2nd choice

These are easy, secure, quick to hook up and let you tap into a wire without having to strip the wire bare.

add a fuse circuit for blade fuses

3rd choice

If you’re not sure which wire to tap into under the dash, you can get 12 volts at the fuse box directly. For cars that use blade-type fuses or mini blade-type fuses, this is an excellent choice. This product allows you to use an existing fuse location in the fuse box to add a separate, fused external fused accessory. It makes for an easy, professional installation.

The companies Littelfuse and Bussman make this type of product but they’re pricey at around $6.00 to $9.00 each.

We’ve found that Auto Zone has a reasonable price for them.
Here’s their web page about the mini blade product: Auto Zone mini blade fuse tap

Here’s their web page about the regular size blade product: Auto Zone regular size blade fuse tap

posi-lock connector for bare wires

4th choice

Posi-lock type connectors are good when you have bare wires to connect together. They give you a solid connection and can be unscrewed and reused at any time.

To use this, though, you’d have to take the wire that you want to tap into and cut it in two and then strip the wire insulation off of both ends. We prefer not to cut a wire in two to tap into it.

crimp connector for bare wires

5th choice

This crimp connector is the same in principle as the posi-lock connector above. Here you use a hand crimping tool to squeeze the wires together in the connector.

This works fine but, again, as with the posi-lock above, we prefer not to cut a wire in two to tap into it.

piggyback blade fuse tap

DO NOT USE THESE !!

We have tried these blade fuse “taps” that push into the fuse box with the tap piggy-backed and wrapped around the end of the fuse. It works fine until the day you may want to remove the tap.

They really stretch out the receiving terminal in the fuse box and when you reinstall the fuse without the tap, the fuse fits very loosely in the fuse box and an actually fall out !

Crimp wire tap connector with quick disconnect This connector is the same in theory as the splice connector (2nd choice above) but here you can quickly disconnect from it to move the GPS unit to another car if you’d like.

We use these to move a demonstrator Real-Time GPS unit amongst several cars and they work well.

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