Air Compressor Wiring Help

Hey All,

Firstly, I'm an electrical noob, so bear with me and please educate me lol. I'm trying to hardmount an air compressor but am struggling with figuring out the wiring. I've spent hours searching and looking through all the different OBA posts, but haven't really been able to find what I've been looking for.

Basically, I have a Viair 300p that I want to hard mount into my bedside cubby on a Expedition Essentials mount. This'll just be for airing up tires, so I want to keep it real simple...not looking to add a tank, and I'm fine with the switch being on the compressor. I just don't really know how to extend the wiring to reach my battery, and I can't find any good guides for how to modify the wiring on the 300p for this purpose.

My thought is to leave the stock switch and wiring going into the compressor alone, cut the wiring past the stock fuse, then put in some kind of connector, and connect that to a 8AWG wire going to the battery (possibly with another fuse on that wire?). I have no idea what gauge the stock wire is and I know that mixing wire gauges probably isn't a great idea, but will this work without causing some kind of horrible electrical fire?

Thanks!

 

I'd cut off the alligator clips and connect direcly to the battery, placing an in-line fuse as close to the battery as possible. I'm guessing they used 10 gauge wiring based on the maximum draw of 30 amps. To be safe, you can run 10 AWG or 8 AWG wire from the battery to the back of the bed cubby, use either a but splice or solder together. Be sure to use heat shrink. For a compressor, I would consider that non-critical and the voltage drop isn't that big of an issue.