Today I was in the midst of installing my trunk light cold cathodes, and making a DIY for it.

I spliced the red wire of the cold cathode into the thicker yellow and blue wire (positive?) and I spliced the black wire from the inverter to the grey/blue wire (negative?)

I assumed this was right as I just assumed the thicker wire was positive.

Well, plug the battery back in, and open up my trunk to test out the light - they didn't turn on.

Then a second after opening my trunk, I hear this mini explosion like "poufff" sounding like it came from the inverter, and I see a little bit of smoke (don't know where it's from, the inverter or trunk light wires). It smelled bad too.

I figured I would test out the inverter plugged directly to the batteries and alas - nothing turned on.

Fried my inverter?

What was the cause though??? I'm pretty sure I spliced everything right!
The only thing I could think of that fried my inverter was that I had the polarities mixed up...

 

once my car comes back from the body shop(next friday) i can tell you for sure.

 

good job lol

 

Thanks buddy!

By then, I'll have my new inverters ordered since I blew my one inverter.

For now, my cold cathode tubes are mounted and just chilling there waiting to be powered up! hahah

 

Just grab a cheap multimeter from Radio Shack etc and test the wires .. will tell you which is +. And they are always handy ...

 

I do have a multi-meter and tested it already.

My wiring was CORRECT, but somehow my inverter blew up?

The red lead to the blue/yellow wire and the black lead to the gray/blue wire read positive.
THe other way around read negative.

This means the blue/yellow wire is the positive doesn't it?
I hooked the red on the inverter wire to the blue/yellow wire and it fried my inverter.

Could just be a bad inverter, but I'm ordering more.