My friend has a 1990 Cadillac Seville and wants me to put a neon license plate bracket on it.

I am having a little trouble deciding on what is safe and what will work.

The neon is a basic two wire connection. This car uses two different bulbs for low beam and high beam head lights. My current plan is to splice into the wiring for the low beam head light to power the neon.

First question...will I need to put in a relay before the splice?

Second question...the wire for the neon and the low beam lights looks like 18 gauge. I will need to add wire to make everything work since the wire provided with the neon is very short. Everything I have read says that 14 gauge should be used for headlights. Should I just go with 14 gauge, or should I go with 18? I know going to a larger size is safe (and going too small can be unsafe), but making weatherproof connections between the big wire and little wire could be difficult.

I have done some electrical work before, but I have never messed with something as important as headlight wiring and I do not want to mess it up.

 

Well are the marker lights seperate from the blinkers? If so you could use that set of wire instead of the headlights because when the low beams are turned off in favor of the high beams the neon won't work. If you use different sizes of wire you could use shrink tubing to make a good seal. I'm not sure that I answered all your questions but I hope this helps a little bit.

 

WHY GO TO THE HEADLIGHTS???? tap into the licence plate lights and all your connections can be made in the trunk out of the weather. turn the running lights on and use a testlight to find the power wire. tie the red from the neon licence plate to the power and the black from the plate can be grounded to anything.

 

I thought about that, but the headlight wiring is much much easier to reach. My friend says that he doesn't care if the neon cuts off when he turns his high beams on. I will look at the parking lights again tomorrow to see if they will work.

As for the shrink tubing...it will work, but I will have to use multiple sizes of it to get a good seal.

One more question...can I splice the ground for the neon into the ground for the low beam, or is that a bad idea?

 

The plate is going on the front. It would be sooooo much easier to put it on the back, but it physically will not fit back there.

 

id personaly use the corner lights hot wire and then jsut use a seperate ground to some random bolt....

 

You're getting way too complicated here. You ground them right to the frame and you run the wiring to any 12v ignition source it doesn't have to be headlights. If you run another circuit to the low beam or high beam circuit you run a chance of blowing the fuse. If you go from a marker light, it's going to flash when you use your blinkers only and less resistance in the circuit will make the blinkers flash faster. You should have fuses under the hood for some accessories like power windows though I don't know exactly what you have under there. Hell I say run it into the horn circuit so it only lights up when you hit the horn because the neon license plate frames are illegal in a bunch of places.

 

The headlights and parking lights (not signals) are the closest 12 V sources. I don't want to run a whole bunch of wiring under the hood for the damn thing...I just want to splice into the nearest 12 V source.

And this car has limo tint...so legality isn't all that much of a concern.

 

IMHO I would not splice into the headlamps. Not knowing the current requirments for the neons you'll stand a good chance of blowing the headlamp fuse. I would recommend splicing into the existing Lic plate wiring and run a wire from there to a remote relay (triggers relay when lights are turned on). Then from the relay run a power feed back down to the neon + lead. Run the other to any convenient ground point on the body, not the headlamp circuit as strange things can happen if you do.

 

That is what I needed to know. Thanks.

This bracket will go on the front, so the license plate lights will not really work. I will look at alternatives tomorrow though. Looks like the low beams are out.

 

What the heck, I'm with Repobud...your making everything complicated. Do you take a long way home because you know it gets you home even though the shorter way is always faster? My, god man! I would tap into the parking lights or even make a hidden switch. Headlamps are of to much power, and are more vital than a little parking light. You can even run it on the lighting hot wire that goes from the engine to the rear lights