Hate to bring dead threads back to life, but thats what searching's for right?

Anyways, I'm looking at getting a V1 a little after Christmas and I was curious about the few of you have mounted it by the sunroof wiring (if you're still on here) and in particular, which wire did you use? COuld any hot wire work? I'm assuming you just strip a small bit off the hot wire and splice it into the V1 wire? Any help would be appreciated since modding your own car feels lots better than having it done for you. Thanks

James

 

Take it to an audio shop... I would say dont screw with the sunroof wiring. The V1 comes with all the equipment nessesary to hardwire (the cigarette lighter plug and cord is a TEMPORARY solution and was never meant to be permanent) The tech used the very long cord and module, used a vampire tap and tapped it off my accesory wire. He ran it from the ignition switch all the way up the pillar, through the headliner and had it come down near the rear view mirror. It pleased me and I accept only the cleanest installs.

 

I'm hoping that the best wires to tap into are the red and white-with-black-stripe wires you see in the center of the photo here, which shows what's behind the center light assembly . But I don't have one of those hot-wire tools to verify- can anyone confirm those are the right wires to use (meaning the red is hot when ignition is on, and white-with-black-stripe is ground)?

I'm prepared to fuse the wires I run, unless someone knows those source wires are already adequately fused.

 

i think the white is the + wire (i wired in the bulb in my tails and white with black stripe was + and green with yellow stripe was -

what i'd do if i didnt have a tester - take a light bulb, tape a -neg wire to it's side, find a ground source [bolt, nut, bare metal, etc, not one of the wires in that plug], take another wire hold it against the + contact of the bulb and poke in the plug with the other end of this wire untill you see the light you wont short nothing

 

Well, I stopped by AutoZone and bought one of those $2 tools you see below, but I have yet to find a wire in that area that becomes hot with the ignition, except for the rear view mirror wires. Anyone know if the rear view mirror wires have enough juice to also power a radar detector?
I'd much rather use a wire in the overhead light/moonroof area.

 

The original thread here is pretty old, but for the record - Anything that transmits using its own transmitting antenna, in critical frequency bands, is illegal unless licensed by the FCC. So yes, the jammers that transmit are illegal, and the ones that redirect the incoming signal are not transmitters, so would not need to be licensed. The transmitting jammers work by transmitting a bogus radar signal back to the cop that is stronger than his own reflections, and emulate the return signal that would come back from a car that was traveling at the dialed-in, lower speed.

 

I tried almost every exposed wire in the overhead light/moonroof area using that pictured tool, so I gave up and used the rear view mirror wires. It is pretty easy, once I resorted to melting the insulation with a cigarette lighter rather than messing with t-taps in that very tight area. Here are some (blurry) pics I took:

In this first one, you can see the small panel that I popped off, exposing 2 screws that, once removed, expose the two wires (red/white and white- red/white is the positive one) I tapped into:

 

With a sharp blade, I cut away part of the black tube that encases the 2 wires you see. A carefully-maneuvered cig lighter melted the insulation- much easier than using a blade to scrape away the insulation.

 

This next step is pretty obvious, and a good thing, too, since that is one blurry pic to follow. I just took a two-strand power wire and wrapped them around the newly exposed power wires.

 

Can't use shrink tubing here, since we never cut the mirror wires, but after wrapping each wire with electrical tape, I wrapped the whole thing tightly with twist-tie wire:

 

That new power wire is now routed backwards into the overhead light/moonroof area, where I then attached the ends to a cigarette lighter plug, cut from this y-adapter I found at the 99 cents-only store:

 

I then plug the standard cigarette lighter power cord that comes with most radar detectors into the new socket, tuck it all back into the overhead light/moonroof area (there's quite a bit of room towards the passenger visor, the area shown on the right in the photo below), and then route the coiled power plug forwards, back toward the original panel I removed to expose the rear-view mirror wires.

This allows me to preserve the original coiled cigarette lighter power cord (and utilize the fuse built into the plug) without any cutting. Using this wiring method, your radar detector will turn on the instant your key is inserted into the ignition (before you even turn it). That's when those rear-view mirror wires become hot.

 

Here are those 3 screws that hold that overhead light/moonroof control panel in place:

 

The coiled power cord is routed out the same small notch that the rear-view mirror power wires go through, then out towards the right where my radar detector is mounted: