Car Audio Central - Ultimate Car Audio Forum and Community

you want the fuses for power lines.
not only to protect the gear, but in case of a dead short, it prevents the power cable from melting and causing a fire in the cabin or engine compartment, which can then catch any oil leaks on fire and before ya know it you can have your entire car engulfed in flames.. it's not pretty to see a whole car go up. I've seen it happen when an oil pan or cylinder head gasket is leaking oil, and something sparks it and catches the oil on fire.. BAM! whole front end goes up.

short story of it is, fuse all of the power lines close to the battery connection to protect the car.
use a fused distribution block where you split to smaller wire to protect the amplifiers.
the main fuse will be rated at the current capacity of the wire as per gauge and distance run.
the smaller line fuses are rated for the current draw of each respective amplifier.

A fuse is a MUST!

~Welcome~

Put a fuse on it!!!!

definitely need a fuse at the batt. unless you want to risk it blowing up.....bad stuff happens

If the wire is less than 18 inches and is fairly large (at least 4 gauge), you should be fine. You always want a fuse though. It prevents the wire from having too much power go through it, with too much power making it overheat and cause a fire.


...and welcome to the forum

I got a quick question. Is it safe to have a power cable without a fuse? I am thinking about putting a system in my car, turns out the dude the owned it before me had a system, he of cousre took it out before he sold it to me, but he left all the connections. I got a power cable going from inside the hood to the trunk( not hooked to the battery) got RCA cables from the stereo to the trunk, and he left the gound wire for the amp to, and the remote wire. Anyways it looks like it's all ready to just hook up an amp, but the power cable does not have a fuse. I won't want my elecrical system frying or somthing couse I was sopposed to have it fused. Thanks for the help!