I have a small Cobra radar detector, currnetly it is just plugged into lighter outlet. Is there a way to hard wire it to a power source(I.E. splice into head unit power or something) and what should i use to tap for power? any comments will help, TIA
Laterz

you can hardwire it. some places sell hardwire kits (wire with interchangeable bits in the end to plug into your radar) i got mine from radioshack for like 5-7 bucks. you can tap into any power source.

Evan B
97 GS
Stamford CT
EvMan2345@aol.com

(Its actually stock sarrono red, but my digicam sucks, so it looks like a different color)

Coo beans...preciate the heads up:thumbsup

just to help you out on what wire to splice into, the cig lighter woluld be ideal and easy, considering thats where the detector gets its power from now.

you could also mangle up the cig. lighter adapter on the radar detector to hardwire it if you didnt want to buy a hardwiring kit, but thats up to you.

Thats what i was wondering about as well... are the positive and ground wires distinguishable?

yes the power is on the top of the plug, and the ground is on the felt side, i am talkin about the cig. power outlets

Was wondering more about the wires inside the radar adapter but thanks for the $.02:thumbsup

i just got a female cig lighter deal, i believe it was an extension...just cut it short, hooked it up and didnt cut any of the wires on the radar detector. it sure beats keeping your cig lighter occupied...plus you can run the cord along the back of your dash unstead of all over the front. id reccomend that...its connected there in the pocket near my drivers side kick pannel.

If you still want to hard wire the plug from the radar detector, just unscrew or pop off the top of the plug (the part that goes in the lighter first), or break it open if it doesn't come apart. The wire going to the pin at the top of the plug is the one that goes to 12V acc, and the wire or wires going to the side "clips" is your ground.
The white wire (I'm pretty sure it's white) behind your cig. lighter is your 12V and the black wire is your ground.
Depending on how much current the radar detector draws, I wouldn't put anything in your cig. lighter socket that would draw more that 5-10 amps, so you don't go blowing fuses all the time. Just my $0.02

thankz...was just wanting to do it to hide the wire...hate that thing just strewn across the dash

yeah by doing this your dash looks much hotter......no gay ass wires all over the place......my bro did this in his truck....def. looks alot nicer....

I hardwired my radar detector and it's really simple. I just cut the wire where it met with the plug for the cigarette lighter. It had 2 wires inside...one was red(hot) and one was black(ground). I ran the wire through the hole where my tweeter is and tucked it under the dash. The lighter had a blue wire that I spliced and added the red wire. The black wire I just grounded to a screw. Took like 20 minutes and looks much more professional.

Im curious about this too. Ill be getting a transmission temperature guage and wanna mount it at the cig lighter. And so I need to hardwire my cig lighter. Is it as easy as running it to a power source and a ground source? If so i wanna do it.

Could I run it to a fuse? I plan on attaching a switch to it so i can cut it off an on and whatever just for novelty. So could I run the hot wire to a switch, from the switch to a fuse. Then run just run the ground to a screw on the body?

Sounds like itd work to me - ill check out that kit at radio shack though.

joseph