I am putting together a CAN Bus in one of my vehicles. My question is wire choice. I have a LOT of CAT 6 Ethernet and am wondering if I can use that instead of wire made specifically for a CAN Bus. I have found another answer that addresses using CAT 6, addressing the 100 ohm vs 120 ohm difference but his bus was going to be around 10 feet and the answer basically stated that it would because it is only about 10 feet and he would be using 100 ohm termination. His application is different so I don’t if it would work for my application.

Specifically, I will have about six devices on a 50 foot or so CAN bus, this will snake around a motor home. The message traffic will not be heavy, I’ll be sure to keep whatever cabling away from “high” voltage (10 cm), which would be 120 VAC.

I’m not a hardware guy, so “spoon feeding” is welcome. My guess is that I would string the Ethernet cable, use the green/yellow pair (I believe there is one), connect using a “daisy-chain” method to avoid “taps” (something about voltages and stuff – I’m a software guy), and probably have to manually terminate each end instead of using the optional onboard terminators because those are 120 ohm and I need to use 100 ohm terminators because of the CAT 6 cable being 100 ohm (the reason is lost on me).

Will this work? Is there anything else I’d need to do? I could get “genuine” CAN Bus cable (120 ohm, etc.), but I’d have to mail order that (instead of using ethically hoarded cable) and push back a repair appointment. Plus, once the CAT 6 is run, I’d also have a trio of TP for some other application, such as direct control of devices (low voltage).