Poor electrical connections are probably the most common dilemmas with cars. Whether it is your engine playing up or it is the radio in your car that is not working, it could be due to bad electrical connections. You dont have to take your vehicle into a mechanic’s store in order to determine the problem if you know what is wrong and can possibly do it yourself, especially if it is nothing but a connection difficulty. Sometimes it is something simple you could have done yourself, but you took it to the mechanic down the road and it cost you a fair amount of money.
Instead of using the term “electricity” when it comes to a vehicle, some words that are better to describe it are resistance, voltage and amperage. With voltage, just think of it as a little shove. Provide an electrical circuit with voltage and all it will do is shove the certain electrons down to the wires. For example, if your car has a battery that consists of 12 volts connecting it to an electrical system, this can be done by turning the key in the ignition. What will happen now is the voltage will stand still, and absolutely nothing further will happen. The more voltage there is, the more push is offered, and if that voltage is enough, like lightning or even spark plugs, it will even be able to jump up into the air.
An easy way to explain resistance is to say that it opposes flow. Just like driving over a pothole or into a ditch would slow down the speed of your car, electrical resistance will slow down the flow of certain amps. There are many areas of a vehicle that need resistance in order to work. The motor from the windscreen wipers need resistance so that the maximum speed at which it wipes is limited. Inside a light bulb in your car there is a high resistance thread that is able to heat up when there are amps flowing straight through it. Some car parts that have resistance in them are relays, bulbs, motors and solenoids. These are good sources of resistance, but you do get bad ones too.
Amperage, or just amps, is nothing but the flow of electrons. It is the amperage that does all of the hard work when it comes to an electrical circuit. With a vehicle, the starter motor can use anything up to 400 amps, and sometimes even more can be used when trying to start a car with a cold engine. Another one of the car parts that uses amperage is the heater fan; it can use approximately 15 amps where the defogger for the rear window will use about 20 amps. The amps will flow with no problem while there is voltage in the circuit, but if you add the resistance in all the wrong places the amperage will no longer flow as it is supposed to and will probably stop flowing all together.
Resistance may be present anywhere in an electrical circuit. It can be with the ground connection, the battery, the switches or even the power wire. In many cases the body of the vehicle as well as its frame offers the path for the correct amount of ground connection. The places in which there are most likely to be connections will be where there is also high resistance.
Ground connections play a big role in electrical connections and it is thanks to them that all electrical aspects in your vehicle can work. Some car parts use electricity while others dont. It might also depend on your car in order to determine the type of connections that are present. Car accessories also sometimes use electrical connections; it all depends on what accessories you are interested in. Make sure your car will be able to handle these accessories before you go out and buy them. Car accessories are available in many different forms. It is up to you to decide what you like. There is something out there to suit every person and every vehicle.
Your electrical connections determine what will work in your car and what wont. So make sure you are aware of these specifications before you go and make purchases that you might regret.