Hard wired my radar detector in today. Never had my interior apart either, so it was a learning experience.





Used heat shrink--no messy electric tape. Soldered all connections.


brought the wire from the head liner over to the A-Pillar.


Soldered it to the positive lead to the cigarette lighter so the power is switched with the key.


All done!

Nice man. You have a fine tip on the iron? I will be doing the same thing you did, only I will be relocating the display to the gauge cluster in the near future. This will require some tight work on the PCB and a couple spiffy connectors. Nice work man. :thumbsup

do you have a writeup on relocating your display, or do you know of one, I have been wanting to do this for awhile. If not, could you give me a brief explanation?
thanks,
Luke

You will have to take the case off your detector. Once you've done that, you'll have to discern where the display connects to the circuit board. You will have to replave that connection with an extension cord if you will.

For example, if there are 7 leads coming off the display to the board, you will need to get a wire with at least 7 conductors (wires) in it. They will have to be very small gauge to make sure they don't overlap and short out. Then you will have to solder the wires to your display, run them back around like Dave did in the pics above, and solder them to the board inside the detector case. Not very difficult, but it's just going to be some very fine pitch soldering imo. At the same time, I think I will hardwire it like Dave to the power supply for a completely clean install.
:thumsbup