What type of wiring for electrial job on bikes?

[Misc]

Evening,

As above, i have loads of wiring left over from installing speakers/amps in a car but wondering if it's fine to use with electrical jobs like alarms/headlights/horn etc etc.

If not, what should i be after? I'm using a inline fuse with 8AWG wire as standard so would want to extend this with equal thickness.

[Bru]

This may be of some use:

https://www.vehicle-wiring-products.eu/VWP-onlinestore/cable/standardcable.php

[Misc]

[oldbiker]

In general you should allow 1 square mm of conductor area for each amp of current that the wire will be carrying.

from Ohms law current(Amps) = Voltage/resistance(Ohms)

power = voltage x current

or current(Amps) = Power (watts rms)/Voltage

...................................................................
example a 50 watt lamp supplied by a 12v supply.

Current = 50/12 =about 4.2 amps use wire that has a cross sectional area of more than 4 square mm.

.......................................................................
When I use wire for a bike I always buy multi strand wire the finer the strands the more flexible the wire is. The greater the number of strands the better.

For most general wiring I use 32 strand 0.2 tin coated wire. That will handle about 6 amps or 72 watts.

the tin coating helps to prevent corrosion of the copper and costs very little extra.

The link provided by Bru, is for a very good dealer, but you could also try Maplin, RS components, Farnell, or CPS, all on the net
____________________
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[Ichy]

[G]

First time I got on the road on the zx9 I effectively made the entire road lighting and horn system from speaker wire!
I've also often been known to use random 240v power leads from dead appliances - the zx9 I seem to remember actually had a kettle lead with plug and socket for the rear lights at one point.
Similarly for wire from dead computer power supplies - and the zx9 still has it's indicators plugged in with the standard four connection connectors they use!

[Dazbo666]

[Misc]

Brilliant guys. Thank you all. Makes much more sense now.

There isn't anything wrong with using thicker wire then you need tho, i.e a 1 inch thick wire for a single indicator?

tzr.steve: When you said about a " 50/12 =about 4.2 amps, use wire that has a cross sectional area of more than 4 square mm. " I'm a bit confused because on the VWP website a 4.5mm2 wire would be 35amps.

[nick606]

[oldbiker]

[nick606]

[oldbiker]

[quote="nick606"]