No need to spend a bunch to keep your project protected with state-of-the-art electronics and a clean wiring layout. This replaces four relay blocks, four fuses holders and all the associated wiring, crimp terminals, ugliness and mess. $150/unit + shipping/tax. I have no plans to make money with this and only want to cover the costs of manufacturing. -- Time for me to give back a little to the community. With a background in electrical engineering, and more specifically hardware design, I have wanted to help the community that has so often helped me. Whether that was in Australia, California or now the Pacific Northwest, hot rodders are always willing to pass on some hard-earned lessons, help with a project or join for a steak dinner on a quiet evening. Time and time again, I run across people who don’t know how to approach an electrical system to make their hot rods safe. Advice can often be contradictory, confusing and unwillingly abrasive. I have been there. There are many theories out there as to the best way to protect your hot rod from a burning-heap-causing short circuit. Too many have learned the hard way with wrong fusing strategies. Some want to just use larger gauge wire with no fusing at all. Much of this misses the mark on what we all want. If something fails — don’t burn my hot rod down. Simple. I have designed electric vehicle components for over a decade and regularly work with, what us engineers call, smart high-side switches. This is a fancy name for a fuse and relay circuit compacted into a microchip which are used in vehicles built today. Over the last few years the capability of these little switches have become suited for lighting systems, especially those of old hot rods. Okay, enough storytelling. My goal was to design a product to help all of us. A product that just solved the whole electrical-fusing-current thing without needing a bunch of poor-quality parts that don't fit well together and look very, very tacky. A product that required no maintenance, did not fail, easy to install and looked like it belonged on an old hot rod. So what is this product, you ask? Here is the Hot Rod edition, a four channel power switch for the most minimalist of hot rods. The ones we all love. Four circuits give hi-beam, lo-beam, brake and tail circuit protection with independent switching ability for each circuit. Pictures below are pre-production experimental units. And why would I want this? This part replaces four fuses, four relay blocks and all the associated wiring, crimp terminals, ugliness and mess. All the electronic smarts are hidden away on the bottom side with no risk of sparky zaps. Supports hi-beam (75W/lamp), lo-beam (65W/lamp), brake (40W/lamp) and tail (15W/lamp). These are maximum ratings. Each circuit is continually monitored to provide fast switch off (<1ms) if any overcurrent (something bad) happens. This is far superior than any traditional ‘fast-acting’ fuse out there - saving that cotton covered wire all the way to the lamp. Plus the part isn’t destructive, meaning the switch will maintain operation once the fault has been cleared and will not need to be replaced. No more blown fuses or stuck relays. Very low current (20mA) is passed through to turn-on the switched circuits. Those old switches see the small current, rather than the full switched current of the lamp. This increases the life of switch contacts and allows older switches to be used without the risk of major failure. Why not only run high current to the places that actually need it? That is what this allows. No crimping required. All terminations are done with high quality screw terminals with adequate current ratings and are 12AWG input/14AWG output capable. Heavy-duty cast aluminum housing (5"x3"x1") with grommets for clean cable routing. Extensively tested and validated. Very ready for the wide world out there. Manufactured State-side, 100%. With all parts sourced from USA suppliers. $150/unit + shipping/tax. I have no plans to make money with this and only want to cover the costs of manufacturing. DM me and I can answer any of your questions and put you in line for an order. Cheers, Tom
The Jalopy Journal
