In this video, I remove the center dashboard bezel in my 2018 Ram 3500 Tradesman truck and run various dash accessory power wires behind it.
I have a GPS, Dashcam and RV rearview camera display and all have power wires with 12-volt plugs on them. To simplify and streamline things I place. the 3-way 12-volt power socket splitter in behind the dash. Then I spice its power line into the trucks 12-volt power socket feed.
Now the power wires can be hidden from view for the most part with just the end connectors visible.
Why Not Hardwired Them?
At this point, I didn’t want to break open the 12-volt plug that came with the Garmin. It has a multi-voltage line that supplies a traffic monitor antenna pickup. There is a little circuit board inside the case. Nice to keep them together with their fuses intact, just make it simple and clean.
I’ve been using the 3-way splitter on the dash for a year now with no issues. What I did for any loose-fitting plugs is shim them with folded paper when inserting to make the connection tight so they don’t back out. Worked like a charm. In this install, I also added some double sided 3M mounting tape to keep them from vibrating and an extra measure to hold them tight. We’ll see how it goes, I can always hardwire in the future.
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