Amateur Electronics Question: I'm rewiring the signal and marker lights on my ARB bum

[ThatRed4thGen]

I've been using this site for my conversions: Attention Required! | Cloudflare

Right now I'm tapping the marker light from the headlight for the raptor lights and ARB marker light. The original light the wire powered was a 5W (0.416 amps). The power that is now being used is roughly:
5W + 24W + 5W (2.83 amps).

I was worried that might be a little too much power going through that one wire, so I replaced one 5W bulb with a 1W LED. I'm considering replacing another 5W light with a 2W one. Then the total draw will be 1W + 2W +24W (2.25 amps)

Is this worth doing or am I wasting my time? The wire powering the light is around an 18 AWG.

 

[aemravan]

Probably would have been beneficial to have this in your original thread about the t-tap question.. but anyhow. Amp rating on a wire is length dependent. The wire that you're taping into for power, what fuse does it correlate to in the fuse box? 5 amp? 10 amp? Regardless, without doing any calculation, a quick and dirty method is to power on all your lights and ensure that your fuse holds. If you're popping the fuse, you're definitely over the limit. If the fuse holds, there's no reason why you couldn't assume that the current you're drawing is still safe for the wire.

An 18awg wire is rated anywhere from 5-15 amps depending on how long it is from what I understand. At 7-8 ft of length a 12v source through the wire should yield a bit over 5 amp capacity, so either way, I would say if you're under 5 amps calculated you should be OK.

 

[ThatRed4thGen]

Probably would have been beneficial to have this in your original thread about the t-tap question.. but anyhow. Amp rating on a wire is length dependent. The wire that you're taping into for power, what fuse does it correlate to in the fuse box? 5 amp? 10 amp? Regardless, without doing any calculation, a quick and dirty method is to power on all your lights and ensure that your fuse holds. If you're popping the fuse, you're definitely over the limit. If the fuse holds, there's no reason why you couldn't assume that the current you're drawing is still safe for the wire.



An 18awg wire is rated anywhere from 5-15 amps depending on how long it is from what I understand. At 7-8 ft of length a 12v source through the wire should yield a bit over 5 amp capacity, so either way, I would say if you're under 5 amps calculated you should be OK.

I tried to post there but the tap talk app wasn't letting me copy and paste and I didn't want to retype all of this haha

 

[MikeinNH67]

Why not use a relay that's triggered by your light source? You can put your own fuse on the power leg of the relay so that they are somewhat separate and then your new lights won't affect the stock ones.