[mcr2582]

Well I finally got my V1 installed in my MCS. I didn't start until 11pm because it gets to over 100 during the day and the 80 it was by 11pm was much more reasonable.

The dome light holder snaps out from the back with a screwdriver. That leaves a pretty big hole that I could reach my hand into and there is a pretty big space in there. I could reach the wires going to the mirror but wasn't sure they were heavy enough.

I pulled the trim off the A pillar on the driver side hoping to be able to fish the wire down that way. But I discovered that it doesn't come off all the way because the side airbag is in there and the trim has a strap underneath to keep it from hitting you if the airbag goes off. The wire harness for the mirror does go down that way but I was unable to get a wire snake in there. So I snapped that back on and left it alone as it didn't seem wise to dig around much in that area.

Using the half turn of the mirror that I read about on here, it does come right off nicely. In order to disconnect the wires, you have to pull the plastic trim from the sides. Some of the wires were heavier than others, but the colors were not very telling.

I carefully snapped the front trim ring off the mirror, the mirror comes out from there. (How does the mirror itself dim? It's apparently electronic.) Under that was a circuit board that was neatly labeled. I found that Pin 3 was 12V in, and Pin 10 was Ground. I tried connecting to those two but it didn't work. I ended up having to use Pin 1 which was labled something like 0/-5 I think. With this knowledge, I reassembled the mirror. I removed insulation from those two wires and carefully soldered wires onto it and insulated it carefully.

After a bit of testing, I reassembled everything, and fished the phone wire through the headliner near the window. I cut a small piece of 1/4 or 3/8" plywood a bit smaller than the unit, sanded the edges, then slid it between the headliner and the roof from the front edge. I used the plastic part from the visor clip hanger and screwed through that into the wood. I plugged in the phone cord and was finally done. One more test, and it was off to bed, now being 2:30am.

Well today I discovered a slight bug in my solution... I don't think it is bad necessarily, but it might become annoying. When I start the car, as expected, the unit comes on. But when I put the car in gear, it resets the power to the unit again. And when I put the car in park, it resets the power again. V1 remembers the settings, and it's been coming on every time I started my car for years in my old car, so I don't see that this will cause any harm. But if I get motivated (and it cools off) I might attempt to resolve it.

Any thoughts on what I could have done differently? Is there anywhere I can get wiring pinout information for the car? At some point in the future, I will be interested in the pin-outs for the steering wheel controls.

Michael

[mcr2582]

In case anyone cares, I have decided that I must have connected it to the wires for the auto-dim mirror. The reason I suspect this is that when I put the car in reverse, power is killed to the radar detector completely, while in park or drive there is power. It would make sense that you would not want your mirror dimmed while backing up so this is likely a safety feature. So it's still a bit annoying but at least I can explain it now and be fairly certain I haven't done anything bad to it.

Michael