Light-Duty Toggle Switch - On-Off - 6 Volt - 35 Amp - 12 Volt - 20 Amp - Brass

Video Transcript for Pollak Light-Duty On-Off Toggle Switch Review

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today we're gonna be checking out and showing you how we hooked up the Pollak light-duty toggle switch. So toggle switch, really simple electrical component, you know, this one's gonna be a single pole, single throw, so you have two terminals on the back and it's just a simple on-off switch, so it'll interrupt the circuit to, you know, turn your accessory off or power it on, essentially. This good general purpose switch, you know, you can use it for lights, maybe small pumps, whatever the case may be. It's gonna work with 6 and 12 volt systems. If you have a 6-volt system, it's gonna be rated for 35 amps.

If you have a 12-volt system, which most people probably will, this is gonna be rated at 20 amps. Actually, I'm using this switch here today on my boat to turn on some lights that I mounted up on the front of it. That way I could see on the river at nighttime, make it a little easier to get on the trailer and whatnot. And it was really easy for me because I had existing wiring already set up. It was originally for a horn and a momentary switch.

The horn quit working and it's a really expensive part. I can make do without it, you know, so that's why I ended up changing out this momentary so I could have the lights on and be able to turn 'em off and not have to worry about keeping this button pushed down all the time whenever I'm trying to see. We do get a lot of people wondering if these little rubber boots will work with this switch. These'll go over it, you know, full coverage, or this one kind of just covers up the base of it, but unfortunately these boots will not work with this switch, all right, so I have the same one here. The threaded portion of the switch is just too small, so that just fits right over it.

You actually won't be able to thread the boots onto it. So if you're dead set on using one of the boots or, you know, you're not too crazy about a lot of the body, the switch being brass, there is another alternative. And it's this one, this one's also made by Pollak, very similar in what it can handle and things like that, really compact. And this one, the threads are the correct size that will allow you to use those rubber boots. So just wanted to mention that in case that was your hopes.

This is gonna be a relatively compact switch, you know, not very big at all. Should be able to work in just about any situation, even if you do have a somewhat tight spot you're trying to mount this up, so good stuff there. But other than that, you know, at the end of the day, good general purpose switch like we talked about. In terms of getting this hooked up, really simple. Just have to hook up, you know, wire to each end of this to interrupt your circuit and mount this up through a switch panel or wherever you plan on putting it. So not a lot to it, but if you're interested, hang around, we'll go ahead and set the one up on the boat now. To get the switch installed, you know everyone's setup is gonna be a little bit different but for the most part it's gonna be straightforward. You know, you'll have two wires that you need to hook up in a spot to mount up the switch. In our case, since we're just replacing an existing switch, everything's really easy. Don't really have to route or run any wires or drill any holes or anything since we already have it, you know, like I said, existing in our switch panel. But with that said, we're gonna be working right here in this area. First thing that we're gonna do is kind of prep our switch. So you'll have this nut we can take off and then the on-off placard. And whenever you set this up you might notice there's a groove and the threads there and that's for the on-off placard to kind of sit on. So off will be down, if that's how you want it, make sure that's how you end up mounting that up. And from there we're gonna have two posts. We'll just take those screws and get them backed out. And the wiring that you're gonna hook to this will need ring terminals like this. My set, I've had 'em on there, but you can always get 'em here at etrailer if you need 'em. And these are just gonna line up and we'll get the screws started. When you go to hook this up, if you don't know what wire does what on yours, you know, so let's say, if you get it hooked up and whenever it's in the off position, if your accessory turns on and if you flip it up in the on position, your accessory turns off, all you'll have to do is, you know, change these wires around to set it up right. So same thing with this terminal. And get it tightened down, we'll be good to go as far as hooking up the wires are concerned. From here we'll just mount this up to our panel. We'll feed it through the opening and put on your on-off plate there and simply just tighten the nut down. Once this is done, good idea to test the switch. So I'll turn on my master power here and if I flip this to all position, the lights that this is powering should illuminate. Go ahead and flip this to the on position and my lights come on just like you'd expect them to. And that'll finish up our look at of the Pollak light-duty toggle switch.