Power panel

[adamargue]

I am build a large scale rig and I have been wanting a good way to hide wires and make working on the truck on the trail as easy as possible. I have had rigs in the past with lights and when out on the trail or in a comp and you have a issue that you want to fix quickly you forget about the wires running from the chassis to the body and you whip off the body and damage the wires and or the LED's.

One way I was thinking about resolving this was to make a metal panel that would mount probably on the rocker of both the outer body shell and the interior. The idea is all the wires from the control panel for the lights will mount to the back side of the panel on studs of some sort. The outer shell will have a panel that, when attached to the chassis, will make contact with the other metal plate and allow electricity to flow and run the lights.

This would eliminate the need to unplug anything when you need to take the body off. Any of you electronic gurus out there have any thing to say about this? Will it work? I believe I have seen it on a 1:1 for something.

[monkeyracing]

Y'know, those shiny rare earth (neodymium) magnets conduct electricity pretty well. You could make combination body mounts/electrical contacts.

[adamargue]

I thought about magnets but I didn't know how well the conducted electricity. That's a real good idea man thanks.

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[Calderwood]

If you don't mind the plugs being on a pig tail I would use an xh connector with the appropriate number of pins. If really want them to be panel mount you could use db9 connectors since they have a flange for mounting. How many wires need to run through the connector?

I'm sure if you look around on digi you can find a panel mount that's smaller than a db9.

digikey.com

[banners]

How about using springs as terminals, mount them around body posts to make contact to the shell mounted electrical tabs?

Never tried it but can't see why it wouldn't work?

[JeremyH]

Originally Posted by adamargue

I thought about magnets but I didn't know how well the conducted electricity. That's a real good idea man thanks.

Wherever there is a magnetic field, there is also an electric field.

They will do just fine for conducting electricity. Most are coated with nickel which is a good conductor.

[adamargue]

The body I am using is a 1/6 new bright hummer body. It has a full interior including inner wheel wells and engine bay. I'm going to mount in to the chassis with realistic mounts coming off the frame probably 8 of them.

Will each wire need to have its own piece of metal or magnet? Originally I was thing of having one piece of metal that ran the hole length of the rocker and the wires for the head lights, tail lights, aux lights on the bumper and roof rack, and also a ultra4 type light bank in the rear window would mount to it.