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Van accessories

I'm fixin' to throw down a slew of pics.
First I want to apologize for the non car related hotdog thing. It had to be said though ;)

Anyway, on to business.
"The Van" was formerly owned by St. Louis Christian College. Now she's formally known as "Our Lady Of Perpetual Motion", and hereafter may be referred to as Our Lady. Our Lady is, well, an affront to the eyes to put it mildly. It runs, it wont die, and it can tow almost anything. She was inexpensive to purchase, and also is so to maintain. She has travelled through many states again and again. She also seems to attract some sort of algae to the exterior panels.

Anyway, for some time Our Lady has had this bare 12V wire drifting aimlessly around metal parts. It is used to power CD players, MP3 players, and other such things one cannot live without.
0001wires.jpg
Notice the plugged hole for the optional cigarette lighter slightly above the bare dangler. Our Lady never had a lighter, thus the dangler.

This dangler has always bothered me, so I decided to do something about it. I thought putting it where the lighter would go might be a good idea.

0002_OH_NO.jpg
OH NO! There is no where to mount it... just a big hole! Let's do something about that.
0003pipefitting.jpg
I stumbled around the garage and managed to come up with a pipe fitting of some sort. It just happened to not only have the correct inner thread pitch for the lighter, but also the outer threads fit the hole in the dash. What luck!
Now, i realize this is going to have the lighter stick out a tad, but that's OK with me.
0004outie.jpg
The wires are now routed behind the dash, and everything seems to be going well... until....
0005ohno2.jpg
The hole is too small ;(
It's just plastic, lets fix it with a dremel type attachment ;)
0006outie2.jpg
Ta-daa! Sure sticks out though. Oh well. Our Lady sticks out wherever she goes. In nice neighborhoods the neighbors peer out of their windows to see who could drive such a thing.

Anyway, does it work?
No.
It doesn't work.
Why doesn't it work?
ARRRG!
No power.
Why no power?
I dont know and I dont care. The fuses are all good. The seach begins for an alternative power source. I picked the wipers' circuit because it should be strong enough to handle whatever gets plugged in there... like
ELECTRIC FUZZY DICE :D
0007success.jpg
Success. No more hot dangling wires. Maybe someday I'll hook it up to an accessory or 'always hot' wire so it can power things with the ignition key in positions other than 'run'.