hard wiring a radar detector?

Is it possible or has anyone tried to wire a radar detector directly into the phone-cable looking wire the runs to the rear view mirror to power the reading lamps?

You could just stick a detector in there and plug it into the cig lighter, but for the detector to see out the REAR windshield you'd have to mount it HIGH on the front windshield. I dont feel like staring at the power wire hanging from it all the way down to the cig lighter... it'd only make sense to tap into the juice for the reading lamps, right?

You should be able to tap power there. Just have to pull down the headliner to get to the wires. I don't think it is swtiched to the ignition though, so you'd have to remember to turn the detector off after you've shut the motor down.

I just used the hardwire kit for my V1 and tapped it off a line under the dash, then ran the cable up the left A-pillar and over to the location above the mirror. I wanted to tap off the mirror's power, but didn't feel like cutting into the thick sheath. I didn't even think about it being switched or not, that would have sucked if I had done the work to cut into it.

I did pretty much the same thing with my V1. I tapped the ignition. Detector turns on and off with the key.

someone wanna post pics & maybe a step by step :)

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Originally posted by paultvx
I did pretty much the same thing with my V1. I tapped the ignition. Detector turns on and off with the key.

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You mentioned in the "fuzzy hole" post that you put your V1 remote in the hole. I was wondering if you had to drill a hole to run the wire to the remote? I know that the fuzzy hole is removable...any need to drill it? I am considering this setup myself!

*** P.S.---you mentioned about your ticket...it was laser right? Did you get any indication from the laser detection?


Thanks in advance for any response.

Yes, you do have to drill a whole to get the plug and wire through. Drill on the top... so the hole isn't visible later on if you sell the truck or remove the display.

The ticket was laser. The detector went nuts for a split second. No warning whatsoever. Instant on. That's why cops like laser and that's why no radar detector can really protect you from laser... I'm even skeptical about those laser scramblers. www.lidatek.com looks to be the most convincing one.

I hardwired from the fuse box a switched lead up the A-piller. I then mounted an Escort to the left of the mirror and a small scanner that picks up police frequencies and is changable from state to state to the right. I get a lot of comments about having 2 radar detectors.

albert
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magic flight

Some ramblings on LIDAR countermeasures:

On the front of the VX there are three prime targets for LIDAR - license plate and the two headlights. The license plate is painted with special retroreflective paint that makes it ideal for LIDAR and the shape of the mirrors in the headlights produce similar results. I don't keep a plate on the front of my VX and I bought those carbon-fiber headlight covers which, having a kind of screen-door pattern, I believe should reduce reflections of external lights like LIDAR by a good bit because they block the light twice, once coming in and then back out on the reflection. Also, the darker your car, the less reflective it is to LIDAR, black being the least reflective and those metalics like kaiser silver being the most reflective.

If you can't get away with only a rear license plate, getting a polarized license plate cover ought to help significantly since laser light is coherent (i.e. all lined up in exactly parallel waves) it will either all bounce off the cover in random directions, or mostly pass through and then bounce off the license only to be significantly filtered by the polarization on the way back out. Polarized headlight covers might be useful too, but I'm sure they would have to be custom fabbed given how rare the VX is. I did see some "goo" for sale on the web that you are suppossed to spread over your headlights and maybe the front license plate too. It dries clear, and they don't explain how it works, but I'd hypothesize that it is clear to the visible spectrum but "black" to light of 904nm (which is what all American, and most other country's LIDARs runs at).

Besides lidatek, there is the blinder which seems to offer more coverage. But neither publish their specs, particularly the wattage, efficiency and viewing angle of their LEDs, so you can't do much of a comparison without trying them out. I did read a review of the blinder and a couple of other "dumber" ones (no computer to modulate the LEDs to match the LIDAR's carrier, I think) and the blinder was the only one to work at all and then only outside of like 500 feet.

Like Albert mentioned, a police scanner is helpful too, the Uniden BearTracker BCT7 is probably the best for this since it not only listens on long-range police frequencies, but it also knows, state-by-state what freqs are used between the low-power wearable units and the retransmitters in the cars. So it can tell you when there is someone, most likely a cop, broadcasting on those frequencies in the near vicinity (like a mile or two). You can usually get the BCT7 from the Uniden website as a refurb unit for, I think, $99.