{"id":2346,"date":"2017-02-02T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/?p=2346"},"modified":"2017-02-02T06:00:57","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T11:00:57","slug":"my-car-outlets-and-usb-ports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/02\/my-car-outlets-and-usb-ports\/","title":{"rendered":"My Car: Outlets and USB Ports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I like working on my car. Sometimes it&#8217;s necessary repairs, other times it&#8217;s modifications or upgrades just because I want to.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2351\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_01.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_01.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My car, a 1997 Honda Civic, comes with only one accessory outlet. For an upcoming trip I&#8217;m going to need more than that, so I decided to add a second outlet and a USB charger hard mounted into the dash. This is the trim piece under the radio and HVAC controls; you can see where the stock outlet goes.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2352\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_02.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_02\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I got two new surface-mount outlets, as well as two lighted switches. The outlet that replaces the stock on will be turned on with the key like before, but I needed a way to turn the new outlet and the USB charger on and off. I got lighted switches so I can tell if they&#8217;re on or not to make sure I don&#8217;t accidentally leave them on. The two rectangular holes you see at the top of the picture were the first holes I cut for the switches before finding out that the switches would run into part of the dash structure, so I had to move them down.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2353\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_03.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_03\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monoprice.com\/product?c_id=116&amp;cp_id=10826&amp;cs_id=1082603&amp;p_id=13415&amp;seq=1&amp;format=2\" target=\"_blank\">four port USB charger<\/a> from Monoprice. I superglued angle brackets onto the sides so I can screw it onto the trim piece, and I got a non-mountable outlet for it to be plugged into behind the panel.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2367\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_04.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_04.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I spent some of my extra time at work wiring it all up.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2368\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_05.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_05\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The switches came without any instructions so I had to figure out the correct wiring so the lights would turn on when the switch was turned on. I wrote the correct wiring down on the back of the trim piece for future reference.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2369\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_06.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_06\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The new outlets needed a ground point, and there just happened to be a good place to on the dash structure right behind where the outlets go. I could tell that it would be a good ground because there was already a ground wire from something else attached to it.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2370\" src=\"https:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/2017_02_02_07.jpg\" alt=\"2017_02_02_07\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And there it is, all wired and installed. On an upcoming road trip I&#8217;m planning to use most of this, with an FM transmitter plugged into one outlet, a laptop charger into the other, and possibly two GoPros being charged by two of the USB ports.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on <a href=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/mechanicalmalarkey\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mech_malarkey\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/mechanicalmalarkey\">Instagram<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Mechanical Malarkey <a href=\"http:\/\/mechanicalmalarkey.com\/stickers\/\" target=\"_blank\">stickers available for $5<\/a> anywhere in the US!<\/p>\n<p>-Dan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like working on my car. Sometimes it&#8217;s necessary repairs, other times it&#8217;s modifications or upgrades just because I want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1],"tags":[33,43],"class_list":["post-2346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-car","category-uncategorized","tag-electrical","tag-interior-trim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mechanicalmalarkey.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}