Hi All! New member here btw so take it easy on me

I recently got a 2019 TLX A spec and i love it so far! I just recently purchased a radar detector and am looking to run the wire nice and neat. My plan is to run the wire from the center console, along the center dash, underneath the steering wheel column, along the side of the dash and set up shop in the bottom left of the windshield ( i know this isn't most ideal location performance wise but thats where i want it to be out the center of the dash).

My concern is running the wire along the side of the dash, i have two specific concerns:

1. Will there be enough room for the door to close properly without damaging the wire
2. Will there be enough space to add some sort of 3m cable clips to keep it nice and tidy? If so, any recommendations that have worked?

Thanks so much!

 

Have you considered putting it in a higher position (i.e. to the left of the rear view mirror)? That way, it's high and central (for optimal performance) and you can just tuck it into the headliner for a bit and then down the a-pillar and into the driver's kick panel fuse box.


If you do decide to go down your path, you can still just pop off the a-pillar and fish the wire through that way,, i've done that for almost all cars and there should be ample room to do so.

 

Thank you for your suggestion! I am leasing it so not trying to go too crazy here like tapping into fuse boxes or anything like that. Just going to run it from the center console jack power.

 

you're not actually "tapping" anything...
add-a-fuse.

perhaps the most work will be deciding on a grounding point.

which means you still have to go through the headliner anyway.

 

 

I have an A-Spec as well. Bought the direct wire cord and "add a fuse". I believe there is an open slot in the fuse box already that powers on with the key. The side cover on the windshield unscrews easily and it can be tucked into the headliner with no effort. Think i put a small not in the cord a couple times about 16 inches apart before sliding it under the headliner to keep it from slipping out. This is the best and easiest way to do it. The wire run is about he same as the hard wire cord has extra length. Honestly this took me about 5 minutes and all I needed was a screwdriver and a socket to back a nut off behind the brake pedal to put the ground wire. Now its tucked right up to the left of the rear view mirror. What you are doing seems to be the same amount of work and saves little effort.

Heck, I don't even think the "fuse box" even has a cover on it to remove.

 

As for your other question the wire will slide behind the side dash cover (it has enough flex to slide it behind easily) where the door closes. No tools needed. The wire is not visible at all.

 

Thanks for all the help and guidance, truly appreciate it! Would love to see some pics of your setups if you got them.

 

This is mine with an R7. Also wired in a dash cam hence two add a fuses. Both power on with the car.

 

Where have you connected the ground wire?

 

Just connect it to a ground bolt that's down there.

 

Looks awesome!

 

very common wire run. nothing innovative.

 

Yeah, like I said it was 5 minutes.

 

Here is where I grounded both wires for the cam and detector. You'll see those bolts if you look up in the drivers footwell at the firewall. I didn't cut off the excess as I pulled this out of my last car and will re-use it again on the next car so I just tucked the excess away. If you want to eliminate that start your run at the detector and go backwards to the fuse box and then cut off what you don't need. There is some gap at the headliner so that's why i tied a knot here and there before tucking it in. Otherwise the cord would drop down periodically. I guess you could use clips but the knots serve the same purpose and are not attached to anything so I prefer that way to keep the wire from coming out.

 

Looks good. I got the R7 also but didn't hard wire it.

 

OK i get that. Just showing appreciation and gratitude. No need to downgrade it lol.

 

I'm curious, my radar detectors which are maybe 4 years old or so go batshit with K and Ka band due to all the snsors on cars these days. Anybody else notice that? Do the newer detectors have filters to prevent that? How would that distinguish between spurious and "legit" signals?

 

Detectors need to be set up as running them with out of the box settings will result in falses non-stop mostly from other cars BSM systems on K band. Depending on your area there may not even be K band so if that's the case you can turn it off. Most detectors allow you to segment Ka band which those alerts are pretty much 100% actionable with almost never a false alert. The detector like the R7 set up properly rarely falses (with a good setup) as it has numerous filters, settings and lockouts that allow you to make it very quiet yet provide tremendous range. Other brands also have some of the same features to varying degrees Radenso comes to mind as having very good filtering but again you need to set it up (one time). Check the RD forums as they have tons of info on setup for about every model RD detector and those forums are 100 times more active than this one so if you have one there is probably good info there on how to set it up to keep you from going crazy or you can just open a thread with what state you are in and someone there will most likely know the best settings for that area and what band radar is in use. I know Ca only uses Ka band statewide but others may use a combination of K,Ka and even X band.