Dave@ddmworks
Supporting Vendor
After driving around with my radar detector plugged into the center console and the cord hanging down, I decided to take the time to hard wire it in last weekend. Figuring that there must be 12 volts at the rear view mirror, it seemed like it would be an easy quick job, unfortunately it turned into a much longer job then expected.
We popped the covers off of the back of the rear view mirror, they come off very easy, the rear cover that meets the windshield is made of 2 pieces that simply seperate by pulling the apart at the vertical seam. Once you do that there is a plug for the rear view mirror and also the Onstar reciever. The plug on the rear view mirror has 5 wires in it, and no matter what combination that we tried all that we could come up with is a little over 10volts DC. This will not power most 12 volt devices for obvious reasons. So after checking voltages several times at the mirror, and doing a search on the forum to see what everyone else has done, we took apart the dome lights and panel right there to see if we could find switched 12 volts in that are, once again we were let down and eventually decided that we would need to run switched 12 volts from somewhere in the dash.
There are several switched 12 volt sources under the dash, but the source we ended up using was the easiest to get to without having to take apart a lot of the dash or twist ourselves to try to get up under the dash. We found that the climate controls in the car has a switched 12 volt going to them. This is how we hooked into it.
To start we needed to get access to the back of the climate controls, to do this means popping up the ring around the shifter (We did this on a manual car and are not familiar with the automatic cars, but the process should be similar). Here is a link to the shifter bushing install that will show you how to get the plastic around the shifter off:
https://ddmworks.3dcartstores.com/assets/images/instructions/sonic/DDM-12-1_Shifter_bushings.PDF
Once the plastic is out of the way, there is a lot of room in front of the shifter and the back of the climate controls can easily be reached. There are 2 plugs that are in the back of the climate controls, 1 is in the middle and has 6 larger gauge wires coming out with a light gray plastic and the other one is more towards the passenger side with about 10 wires coming out and a brown plastic.
To release the connectors from the back of the climate control you just push the release in the center of the plug and disconnect it.
This is the connector that you will want to make the connections to:
We had some 2 conductor wire here that was wrapped together that worked perfect for the job, and made the connections using vampire connections. You could solder the connections for a better connection, but these will do the job just fine. There is a purple wire in the connector, that is the switched 12 volt supply and what you will hook your positive wire to. There is also a black wire and that is ground and what you should hook your negative lead to. This is what it should look like when complete:
Once we made the connections to the power we needed to get the wires up to the radar detector by the rear view mirror. With the center console still taken apart we could easily feed the wire back behind the console and the steering wheel area. Then we removed the access cover to the fuse box (it just pulls off). This allowed us to feed the wire out the side of the dash, where it meets the door jam:
Once the wire was into the door jam, we found it pretty easy to run it up the jam by pushing it behind the rubber molding:
When we had the wire all the way at the top of the A pillar, we just pulled back on the inside plastic trim a little and with a small screwdriver pushed the wire back behind the plastic:
From there the wire was tucked in under the front edge of the headliner and ran over the rear view mirror area and connected to our radar detector, after making all of the connections, we turned the key and the detector sprang to life :banana:
So it is not the easiest way to get a switched 12 volt line up there to run a radar detector or whatever device you would want to run, but now that we have done it once, it shouldn't take more then 20-30 minutes to do it again.
Hope that helps,
Dave
*** UPDATE *** 11/14/12
A couple other people have done a similar install and used a "Add a fuse" like this:
These can be purchased locally at most autoparts stores, or you can get them online also, like here - ATM Mini Add A Circuit Fuse Holder Tap - The Repair Connector Store
1KulSol used the fuse labeled "Spare" in the fuse box under the dash for the switched power.
We popped the covers off of the back of the rear view mirror, they come off very easy, the rear cover that meets the windshield is made of 2 pieces that simply seperate by pulling the apart at the vertical seam. Once you do that there is a plug for the rear view mirror and also the Onstar reciever. The plug on the rear view mirror has 5 wires in it, and no matter what combination that we tried all that we could come up with is a little over 10volts DC. This will not power most 12 volt devices for obvious reasons. So after checking voltages several times at the mirror, and doing a search on the forum to see what everyone else has done, we took apart the dome lights and panel right there to see if we could find switched 12 volts in that are, once again we were let down and eventually decided that we would need to run switched 12 volts from somewhere in the dash.
There are several switched 12 volt sources under the dash, but the source we ended up using was the easiest to get to without having to take apart a lot of the dash or twist ourselves to try to get up under the dash. We found that the climate controls in the car has a switched 12 volt going to them. This is how we hooked into it.
To start we needed to get access to the back of the climate controls, to do this means popping up the ring around the shifter (We did this on a manual car and are not familiar with the automatic cars, but the process should be similar). Here is a link to the shifter bushing install that will show you how to get the plastic around the shifter off:
https://ddmworks.3dcartstores.com/assets/images/instructions/sonic/DDM-12-1_Shifter_bushings.PDF
Once the plastic is out of the way, there is a lot of room in front of the shifter and the back of the climate controls can easily be reached. There are 2 plugs that are in the back of the climate controls, 1 is in the middle and has 6 larger gauge wires coming out with a light gray plastic and the other one is more towards the passenger side with about 10 wires coming out and a brown plastic.
To release the connectors from the back of the climate control you just push the release in the center of the plug and disconnect it.
This is the connector that you will want to make the connections to:
We had some 2 conductor wire here that was wrapped together that worked perfect for the job, and made the connections using vampire connections. You could solder the connections for a better connection, but these will do the job just fine. There is a purple wire in the connector, that is the switched 12 volt supply and what you will hook your positive wire to. There is also a black wire and that is ground and what you should hook your negative lead to. This is what it should look like when complete:
Once we made the connections to the power we needed to get the wires up to the radar detector by the rear view mirror. With the center console still taken apart we could easily feed the wire back behind the console and the steering wheel area. Then we removed the access cover to the fuse box (it just pulls off). This allowed us to feed the wire out the side of the dash, where it meets the door jam:
Once the wire was into the door jam, we found it pretty easy to run it up the jam by pushing it behind the rubber molding:
When we had the wire all the way at the top of the A pillar, we just pulled back on the inside plastic trim a little and with a small screwdriver pushed the wire back behind the plastic:
From there the wire was tucked in under the front edge of the headliner and ran over the rear view mirror area and connected to our radar detector, after making all of the connections, we turned the key and the detector sprang to life :banana:
So it is not the easiest way to get a switched 12 volt line up there to run a radar detector or whatever device you would want to run, but now that we have done it once, it shouldn't take more then 20-30 minutes to do it again.
Hope that helps,
Dave
*** UPDATE *** 11/14/12
A couple other people have done a similar install and used a "Add a fuse" like this:
These can be purchased locally at most autoparts stores, or you can get them online also, like here - ATM Mini Add A Circuit Fuse Holder Tap - The Repair Connector Store
1KulSol used the fuse labeled "Spare" in the fuse box under the dash for the switched power.
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