Screwing neons into headliner??

[truckinat15]

Screwing neons into headliner??(melted neon wire)

I just got a couple of 15" neons for really cheap and I would like to mount them on the ceiling above each door. The problem is my parents do not like me take a lot of things apart in the X and i I if do I have to have good instructions so I dont mess anything up. I tried to put the scrws in today figuring there might be something up there i can screw into but theres nothing. I read in another post that in order to do this you either have to take the whole headliner off and build mounts for the neons or drill holes through and pray you wont go through the roof. Truth is I dont really wanna do something that if I messed up would cost a lot to fix, ie the headliner. I really wanna put the lights up but I need to know an easier way to do it. Thanks a lot.

 

[red96camaro]

go to home depot and get some kind of heavy duty mounting substance

 

[truckinat15]

ok i figured out a solution. instead of mounting the neons actually into the headliner I screwed them into the plastic molding above the door. I put one blue on each side in the front and im gonna put two more blue ones in the back so the whole inside lights up blue. I also got a 9 inch black light and I want to put it above my head unit but I dont know how to mount it. If you have any ideas please tell me thanks. Tomarrow when I finish installing all the neons I will take a pic and post it. Also how did you guys hide your wires when you ran them to a switch from the inside. Thanks alot.

 

[Bmxboy]

Originally posted by truckinat15
ok i figured out a solution. instead of mounting the neons actually into the headliner I screwed them into the plastic molding above the door. I put one blue on each side in the front and im gonna put two more blue ones in the back so the whole inside lights up blue. I also got a 9 inch black light and I want to put it above my head unit but I dont know how to mount it. If you have any ideas please tell me thanks. Tomarrow when I finish installing all the neons I will take a pic and post it. Also how did you guys hide your wires when you ran them to a switch from the inside. Thanks alot.

First of all, yah, i found out that it is ALOT easier to just pre-drill some holes into the plastic, and mount your neons that way, hence forth the picture..

Dead Link Removed

As for hiding wires...you can easily conseal them when running them along the headliner, behind the plastic...then, when they run up front, you can take off you side panel (the one that curves going down the windshield) and hide the wires there, then it continues down, take off the left side panel (or right) and then run them under the dash to your swtich....

Carleton

 

[truckinat15]

Ok earlier today i got all the two neons in the back hooked up and found a way to mount the front neon. I went to radio shak and got a switch that is lighted. It has three prongs on the bottom one is ground,one says ACC, and the other says power. I hooked up the ground wire to ground and the power wire to power and when i moved the switch back and forth it didnt turn on or off it just stayed on but the light from the switch turned on when i had it in the on position. Im a beginner to wiring but I have picked up a lot just from doing the neons and this doesnt look ike too dificult a job. Please help quick cuz I have the dash off so I can put the switch in and hook it all up and I dont want to have to put the dash back on unless its done. THanks A lot

 

[truckinat15]

Ok before the problem wasnt so big no its pretty large. I decided to try a different variation of the wires and I put the copper colored (i guess positive) wire from the neon to the ACC prong and I put the ground to the ground prong. I plugged in the cig. lighter thing and flipped the switch and to my surprise it was working. Then I notice it was getting really hot. then all the sudden it was smoking. then all the sudden all the wires were melting. I have no clue where to go from here except replace the wire but if I try it again the same thing will happen. I heard you guys talk about inline fuses do I need one of these even though its just running through the cig. lighter. Thanks again.

 

[truckinat15]

Could someone please help. Do I need to run the wires to the battery? If so how do I do that? If not do I need and inline fuse just from using the cig. lighter as the power source or is 4 neons too much power for just the cig. lighter?

 

[truckinat15]

I went to radio shak and asked the guy if he could help. He said the reason that my stuff was burning up was because the neons were putting out too much power for the switch (witch was 20 amp) so I went to pepboys and got a 50 amp switch and hooked it up same damn thing happened. Heres how I have it set up. I have two neons running above the door on each side. I spliced those neons together and then had two wires running down into one cig. lighter adapter thing. From the wire that I have running into the cig lighter I spliced into it and ran it to the switch. Without the switch it works fine I tried i this monrning but with the switch it messes up bad. With the 50 amp switch it messed up the inside or the adapter thing so bad it was black and brown. What amp switches are you guys running. Is this really my problem? I made a little diagram to show how I have it wired.http://community.webshots.com/scripts/editPhotos.fcgi?action=showMyPhoto&albumID=28125544&photoID=36141538&security=eFynNh Thanks again

 

[beavis195]

You are going to start the X on fire! Do you know how many amps you are pulling through the tiny cigarette lighter wire? There are two ways to do this. One, you can buy an expensive box from streetwires or someone that controls all of the neons. Or the cheaper is to just use a relay rated for a ton of amps, or you can just do two 30 amp relays and have 2 switches. It's the exact same as wiring foglights, except you are connecting neons instead of the lights.

 

[jonny 5]

I'm guessing but you should have a ground wire of the same or larger size than the rest of the wires. Also make sure you have a good grounding point with a good connection.