oznium cold cathodes

[cwm33]

I'm considering getting a cold cathode kit from oznium to put under my dashboard (basically where your feet are when you're sittin in the car), and I need to know if the cold cathodes will have enough wire length to the transformer to make it all the way from the driver's side to the passenger side without having to lengthen the wire going to the transformer, because I heard doing that will weaken the amount of light produced by the cold cathodes....so will a single kit reach?

[99blackalero]

thats what they're meant for...if you want, send silentalero a PM on this, hes used them i believe...i have street glow in my car and there was no problem with wire length

[cwm33]

how long are the wires on your streetglow lights? if you can remember that is ;)

[99blackalero]

long enough to reach the other side....you should be fine, dont worry too much about it....like i said , thats what these kits are made for, and considering in most cars the distance from driver to passenger isnt that great, you should have nothing to worry about

[Silentalero]

yes they will reach

[smokinAMD]

Alright, this is a stupid question, but my only experience with cold cathodes have been in computers where all you had to do to power it was plug the inverter into a spare power supply dongle. I'm guessing in the car application you have to splice wires?

[keytonic]

^^^ Yep ya have to splice em. The ones ya get from oznium have the computer adapter thingy, ya just cut it off and splice em. I put 2 under the dash and spliced em to the ciggerette lighter and put 2 in the trunk and spliced em to the trunk light so they come on when ya pop the trunk

[cwm33]

holy crap those are bright! :o

if you have those on while driving at night, are you still able to see well enough not to run into stuff? and are those the purple ones you have in there? they look purple to me

[Naich]

Cold cathodes are something like 5x brighter than neons.... but the light is more "white" than the light the neons give off. I have a switch panel from Marc, so since it is already powered, I just spliced off my neons to the transformer. I'm going to get cathodes soon though. I have purple and blue in my PC.

[Silentalero]

yea they are brighter but alot more fragile.

mine are blue but the color it gives off is a tealish color mixed with my blue carpet gives that

[cwm33]

oooh so if someone boots my cold cathodes, are they going to break on me? well...it would be on THEM actually...but still...how much do they take to break? cause I looked at a place in town, and to get a SMALLER neon tube, its 3x the price, and well...nuts to that.

oh..and have any of you gotten that switch that can come with the cold cathode package? is it any good? or should I just go get a switch from radio shack?

I'm getting a car alarm put in right away, and I'll be getting my old starter remove, which has an on/off switch mounted underneath my dash already, so I'm thinking about just using that one for the c. caths...or is the one available from oznium much better?

thanks :)

[Silentalero]

and on/off switch is the same thing, just interrupts the flow or current, so there is no better or worse.

but yes any tap to these lights n crack

[Naich]

they're not too fragile is you keep them in their clear plastic sheath

[smokinAMD]

Originally posted by keytonic@Mar 6 2004, 05:56 PM
^^^ Yep ya have to splice em. The ones ya get from oznium have the computer adapter thingy, ya just cut it off and splice em. I put 2 under the dash and spliced em to the ciggerette lighter and put 2 in the trunk and spliced em to the trunk light so they come on when ya pop the trunk
Dhur, I should have realized that would work. Forgot cig lighters were 12 volts.