Lexucan

A word of advice:

When you leave the car in a pubic area, I would recommend removing the suction cub mount from the window as well as removing the detector. You may have seen a recent Vancouver news report about people leaving PDA, Cellphone, Detector, etc. mounts visible in the car when they leave the car, even though they've taken the device itself out of the car or hiding it out of view. Apparently, when thieves see these suction cup mounts that are attached to the front windshield, many of them will break into the car to look for the device that they suspect might be hidden under a seat or in the glove compartment. These devices are worth easy cash for thieves, and they know that many ppl will just tuck the device away in the car somewhere out of sight rather than packing it with them.
I know it's a PITA to have to restick the suction cup mount to the window each time you return to the car, but leaving it in the car raises a red flag for would-be thieves, and which would you rather do, remount your mount every time, or cough up the deductable on your insurance to replace the broken window?

ng123ray

how much woudl the whoel setup cost? and how do you do it yourself?.. i dont want another speeding ticket.. only had my license a little over a year and already 2 speedign tickets...

wanderer99

Lexucan, until last week I've lived in the downtown core of Vancouver (Coal Harbor) for the last 3 years. For a while the homeless people were smashing car windows all the time to steal anything visible. I've always been really careful to have nothing visible in my car, so when someone comes by they keep looking for the next vehicle.

Walking to work (also downtown) used to be fun as I'd see everything from Laptops to DVD\CDs to money sitting in peoples cars. It was like a buffet of things to steal. People sometimes are crazy. Lately in Van it's been a lot better though with issues like this. Two years ago it was almost out of control.

I always remove the suction cup and the V1 from sight and put it into the console or glovebox when I park the car. Always. If you walk by my car (not that I even park it on the street) you'll see nothing but a nice clean interior.

cyke - great pics. Thanks so much for those. I used to have that exact wiring setup with a 96 SVT Cobra I used to own.

Lexucan

Yep me too...always clean as a whistle. I don't want to take any chances. Even a couple of coins sitting on the centre console or in the ashtray can be enough of a temptation for some scumbag to put a rock through the window. That's just asking for trouble.....no thank you!

PDG810810

Well I just spent a couple of hrs. figuring out how to hardware my V1 with completely hidden wires. It turned out to be easier that I imagined. Forget the overhead console as a power tap point. Too difficult to remove. Here are the steps I used.
1. Push the rear view mirror all the down carefully to expose the back plastic wire feed channels. Slide the top one down, then pry it carefully off. Again, pry the second lower moulding off as well.
2. You should see a white molex plug that feeds 4 wires to the rear view mirror assembly, this supplies power for the compass display and the auto dimmimg feature.
3. Unplug this connector by pushing the locking tabs in. You will see that the two outside wires are black and white/black stripe. The Black one is positive and the white/black stripe is negative. This is your power tap point.
4. What I did at this point is to remove a small white wire pin connector bridge clip that exposes the individual crimp pins . I slid a 26 gauge wire into each power wire I used into the top hole of the female pin (remove the insulation first to minimize diameter) then replaced the bridge clip to hold the wires in place. Push the connector back into the male end. Then solder or splice the connector for the radar detector on the loose wires (about 12" to 16" should be plenty of length).
5. Push the excess wire up underneath the ceiling headliner to hide the wires. Route the detector plug either left or right of the mirror for the detector. Replace both plastic wire channel cap and move the mirro back in place. Done! Nice and neat.
6. Power source is only on when the car is on. My detector pulls about 200 to 400ma worth of current and this additional load has not seemed to affect any of the mirrior functions.

cyke

Can you post pics of your hardwire install? I'm very interested to do this as well.

wanderer99

Some pics of your V1 mounted would be great PDG810810.

PDG810810

I guess I'll have to blow the dust off that digital camera...

twister

Please, do

I ended up getting a wireless 1788, but will return it back. Battery doesn't last for too long, and has to be recharged constantly. So, its back to keeping the "wire" plugged in (radar has a built-in charger). The big problem is that it was not hooked up to the main power, so when I shut off the car, radar stays on until I manually turn it off or 1 hour timer does that...

Also, I was not successful finding a good spot on the top for a suction cups due to that area around the rear view mirror that has "tint dots". Of course, in the middle of the windshield or closer to the dashboard it looks cheesy. So, I would like to see how and where did you mount yours. Its not necessary that I will get V1, but a similar mounting/wiring will apply to all of them... Thanks!!!

PDG810810

Ok, so I am having trouble with inserting pics. I hope this works.
This pic should be of the tap point.

PDG810810

The previous pic was the final installation. I decided to mount on the right, it gives me more clearance. This is the actual tap point.

twister

So I see you did use suction caps. Do you think our warranty could be voided by power-tapping from rear-view mirror? Someone told me they had an issues with their warranty (a different car) when something got shorted out cause of power tapping. So, their dealership suggested running a power wire to a fuse box for a complete isolation in case of a short. Any opinion on that?

wanderer99

Thanks PDG810810. After seeing this, I'm thinking this is simple enough so that I can possibly mount my V1 as well. I always wanted to do it, but don't want to do any strange wiring to the car to get there. How did you hide the wiring from the tap point to the V1? Did you push it up and under the headliner?

dshahs420

Take a look at the first pic, it shows how the wire goes from the rear view mirror to the radar detector.

PDG810810

Suction cups always worked well for me, I've had the Valentine unit (old & new) for over 10 years and only had to replace the cups once. If you use the visor clip then pushing the passenger side visor down is a problem and my wife uses it constantly.
As far as the warrantly goes, this install is so clean if something went wrong I could undo the wiring and the Tech would never see any mods or evidence therof.
Any shorting would cause the fuse to blow and I know where that is.
The mirror assembly is easily replaced. No worries!