How to wire a 10 swtich box

[SlammedDime]

Quote: Originally Posted by IceBreakerG

Now we need a how-to on how to wire the valves to a 10-switch switch box lol.

Parts you will need:
10 switch box
50 feet of 18AWG speaker wire (I like the kind with a silver colored wire, and a copper colored wire)
20 feet of 18AWG wire
8 valves
16 18AWG female quick disconnect electrical connectors
16 18AWG male quick disconnect electrical connectors
1 18AWG butt connector
One of them lil crimp tools
Multimeter or testlight
Drill with 3/8" bit
Wireloom, either 1/4" or 3/8", depending on where your valves will be

To answer a few questions....
Why Speaker Wire?
Speaker wire comes as a 'paired' wire, which means it has two conductors side by side. This makes it easy because you have two valves per corner. You only need one wire to go from the switchbox to each valve.

What functions does a 10 switch box have?
It can control each corner individually, it can control the front as a pair, the rear as a pair, and each side as pairs. It also has a pancake function (all fill or all dump at once) and a seesaw function (front up-back down, and vise versa)

My valves don't have wires coming off of them, just connectors that pull off and there are prongs inside. How do I wire them?
I will have a section below that will outline that. It is quite easy as a matter of fact.

I've never used a crimp tool, help...
Its not really that hard to use. Get some extra wire, and some extra connectors, and play with the crimper to practice stripping the wire, and then crimping it onto the connector. The sure fire way of testing your crimp is to simply pull on it. Hold the connector in one hand, and the wire in the other, and give a small tug. If it comes undone, you crimped it bad, and need to work on it a lil more.

How to wire the switchbox:
I chose to have all of my leads for my switchbox come up right under the carpet next to the door molding, then go under the carpet to the center of the floor, where they would then be plugged into the switchbox.

1) Start by taking your switchbox lead, and 8 of your male quick disconnect connectors, the butt connector and the crimper. Cut some of the jacketing off of the 9 conductor cable from the switchbox. This will allow for easier spreading apart of the wires, which will make it easier to crimp the connectors on.

2) On every 10 switchbox I've seen, the red wire is the power wire. Strip about a 3/8" of insulation from the red wire, and crimp one end of the butt connector onto it.

3) Take the remaining 8 leads of the switchbox and strip 3/8" of wire from the insulation of each wire. Take 8 of your male quick disconnect fittings and crimp them onto the 8 leads.

Now I like to do things in steps (as you can see) so that I don't confuse myself. I run one line of speaker wire at a time, and connect them up one at a time, so I don't have to go back and figure out my mistakes later down the road.

4) First we are going to run the power wire for the switchbox. Make sure your negative battery terminal is disconnected before we start., and wait till we are done with all of the wiring before hooking it back up. I pulled apart the underside of my dash, and the piece right under the steering column, so I could have some access to the fuse box that was right there. Take your 18 AWG wire that you have (the 10 ft peice) and run it up under the dash, to the fuse panel, and pull a few inches of the wire out to the left of the fuse panel. Take your wire stripper/crimper, and strip about 3/8" off the end of the wire. Now find a fuse that always has power and pull it out. If you take a look inside the spot where the fuse was, you'll see two sets of metal 'clamps'. Those are what the fuse plugs into. Take your test light or multimeter and ground one side, and take the other and touch it to the top set of 'clamps'. If the light or meter doesn't move, then test the bottom set of 'clamps'. Which everone DOES NOT cause the light to come on or meter to move, is the one we want to use. Why? Because this way power will flow through the fuse first, then to the switchbox (so the switchbox is fused, cuz we dont wanna melt anything) Take the wire you stripped, and stick it in the 'clamps' that did not cause the light to come on or meter to move, and then take the fuse and stick it back in, making the wire stay plugged in there. It may take a small push to get the fuse in, but it will go in. If not, then readjust the wire in the clamps so it will.

5) Now run the wire down under the carpet, behind the seats, and over to the middle of floor, and have the wires come up right where there is a hole in the carpet for the seat mount. Clip any excess wire off, and trim 3/8" of insulation off, and stick the wire inside the butt connector from the switchbox, and crimp it. Sweet, now we got power to the switchbox.

6) Take your drill and drill bit and drill two holes under the carpet (this means you'll have to lift it up to get underthere, don't drill through the carpet) Now we can start running the wire to the valves. You'll need your handy dandy wiring diagram for the switchbox at this point as well, so pull that out. If you don't have one, then go to www.bagginit.com/tech.html and print one out.

7) Take your speaker wire, and run a line from under the body, through one of the holes you drilled, then run it under the carpet, and over to the same spot the power wire went to. Pull it out of the hole, and spread the two wires apart about 2 inches. Now I like to choose a 'theme' and stick with it, so I chose to have all of the silver colored wires on the speaker wire be my 'fill' wires, and the copper colored ones are my 'dump' wires. We're gonna start with the drivers side front set of valves. Looking at the wiring diagram, the Black wire is the fill wire, and the White wire is the dump wire. You can test this by temporarily hooking up the negative battery terminal again, and taking the test light or multimeter and grounding one side, and hooking the other up to the black and white terminals (not at the same time of course) and hitting the switch to make sure those are the correct wires.

8) Strip about 3/8" off each of the wires, the silver and copper colored ones, and take two of your female quick disconnect connectors and crimp them on, and connect the silver colored wire to the black lead, and the copper colored one to the white lead.

9) Run the speaker wire to the set of valves. This is where it might start to get complicated, but trust me, its worth it. If you have leads coming off of your valves, like SMC valves for example, read on. If you don't, then skip to 9a below. Take the two black leads from the set of valves and ground them.... easy enough. Now for the red leads. You will need two female quick disconnects, and two male quick disconnects. Pull apart the speaker wire leads by about 2", and trim 3/8" of the leads of all four wires (speaker wire and red leads on valves). On the speaker wire, crimp a female quick disconnect onto the silver colored line, and crimp a male quick disconnect onto the copper colored line. On the fill valve red lead, crimp a male quick disconnect on there, and on the dump valve, crimp a female quick disconnect. The reason for this is simple. If you ever forget which lead was fill and which was dump (silver/copper colored wire), the valve will only plug into one of the leads.... the fill valve male quick disconnect cannot be connected to the copper colored wire male quick disconnect. Now connect the fill valve to the silver colored lead, and the dump valve to the copper colored lead.

9a) You have it slightly harder, but not much. Your valves come with a DIN connector. To take it apart, you will need a small philips head screw driver, and a small flat head screw driver. undo the screw from the top of the DIN connector. It doesn't come all the way out, to don't try and pull it all the way out. Now that the screw is free, pull off the DIN connector. You should see 3 prongs that plug into the connector. Don't worry about them just yet. You don't have to do any soldering or anything to them.

Now look at the bottom of the DIN connector. If you look around the edges of it, you should notice a small slot on one or two sides. Stick the small flat head screw driver in there, and slowly pry that piece out. You should now have three pieces sitting there.... the valve, the DIN connector housing, and the actual DIN connector. Take a look at the DIN connector.

You will notice three lil connectors with screws in them, as well as three prongs on your valves. You only want to use the two prongs that are parallel to each other, not the bottom prong... just leave it alone. Take some of the extra 18AWG wire you had from running power to the switch box, and make some 12" leads out of them. You will need two 12" leads for each valve you have. Trim about 3/8" off the insulation, and slightly undo the screws on the DIN connector that correspond to the parallel prongs on the valve. Stick the 12" leads in, and tighten the screws. Take the leads, and run then through the DIN housing, and push the DIN connector back into the housing. Put the connector back on the valve, and screw it back in, and now we are set. Either of the leads coming from the valve can be ground or positive, it doesn't matter. Go back up to instruction 9, and continue on from where you left off.

10) Repeat instructions 8 and 9 for each set of valves you have. Once you are done, reconnect the negative battery terminal, and hit some switches and make sure each of the individual corner switches do what they are supposed to do. If not, then check the wires by the carpet floor in the cab and make sure you connected the speaker wire to the correct switchbox wires. This is why all the switchbox leads have male quick disconnects, and the speaker wire has all female quick disconnects, so that if you do mess up, its easy to just unplug the messed up ones, and plug them back in properly.

11) Take your wireloom and hide all of your wires that are running to the valves in it


Note: Other people may have different ways of doing this. I have found this way effective for me and I have had no problems.