CLpwner

Hey, haven't posted in a while but I've run into a problem.

I have the cobra voice alert, and bought a wiring kit to hardwire it to the fuse box. So I ran the cord from the detector to down through the left pillar, to the fuse box and hooked the wire up to the radio fuse.

When I turned the car on, the detector started smoking and I was like wtf?

So the questions are:

1. What fuse should I use?
2. Since there was a ground wire with the kit, should I ground it?
3. With whatever fuse is suggested, how should I hook it up to that fuse (what I did before was just strip the cord and wrap it around the fuse for a solid connection)
4. Oh, don't worry about the fried detector, cobra is sending me a new one... free

MoSp33d

i have one as well and its connected to the lighter outlet. my guess is its probably ur battery. is there alot of things in ur car that might use majority of ur battery? thats probably whats cuasing it. OR a bad radar.

dylan684

edit...just noticed the part about buying a hardwire kit lol..what do you mean by "since it came with a ground should i ground it?" are you saying you ran the power wire to the fuse box but didnt do anything with the ground wire? i think your detector started smoking because there was no in-line fuse or the fuse in the box that you spliced into was too big and the wire heated up too hot (where it should have blown a fuse) and traveled into the radar detector housing

Tehvine

First off, if the detector started smoking, you have reversed your power and ground wires. Secondly you MUST ground it or it should not even work to begin with, let alone smoke. Have a multimeter? Set it for the beeping continuity setting (if you touch both probes together it should beep). Then touch one probe to the outside of the end of the plug that goes into the radar detector and touch the other probe to one of the wires on the other end of that hardwire kit. Whichever wire beeps, that is your ground. Ground said wire to chassis. As for power, hopefully the kit came with an inline fuse someplace, that would make things much safer. In the 97 2.2, you have several empty "blades" above your fuses. Using a multimeter on the voltage setting, determine which of these is switched ignition power and you can grab your power from there.

If none of this made sense, reply back and i will head out to my car and take pictures.

GhettoNinja06

iTrader: (1)

Geez, sounds complicated.....Just plug it in your cig lighter no?

dylan684

its really not all that complicated, he just described it really thoroughly...i bet it takes less time to actually do it then type up how to lol

Tehvine

Crudely illustrated image of the polarities of your average cigarette lighter adapter + barrel plug. On the barrel plug end, the positive side is inside of the barrel.



Pic of a cig socket, basically what is in the car. Can use this picture to determine what you need to hardwire to if you want to tap power from behind the cig plug in your car. (yes that is my bigass monitor you see in the background, need 40" of screen to properly view Azine )



Lastly, those are the blade terminals I was talking about. I thought I had mine wired to that, but that was my accord now that I think about it. So you will need to bust out a meter for that. There is a constant power feed there, parking lights, and switched power. Maybe something else useful - I don't remember.

CLpwner

Ok so maybe I left out a few details.

With the wire kit I bought, I can tell which is the ground and which is the normal wire.
I had it properly grounded and I had it in the fuse (top right in your picture with a 10 on it, red)

Then I switched the car to accessory or III I don't remember and it then started smoking.

Tehvine

Does the radar detector work through the regular cig adapter? or has it worked through there? Still sounds like something is backwards. I just about set a brand new honda pilot on fire once when I mistakenly wired the satellite radio power backwards back when sirius decided to change the markings on their 12v wires haha

CLpwner

Yea, the radar detector works through the cig lighter.

The kit I bought is something similar to this with the three different types of plugs for different detectors
http://us.four.ebid.net/perl/auction...n&from=froogle

The directions said something about negative and positive connections that i think could also be the case... I'll try and take a picture tomorrow of the whole set up because I feel like its too hard to explain

G22_Powered_YA1

yeah, definately ground that sucker, id say pop an inline fuse on there of the amperage that cobra recomends, im sorry but most good kits for the good units come with an inline fuse so that nobody can F it up

if both these things fail, id do something more drastic. . . wire in a relay to the battery to be triggered by the radio or iggnition, or whatever you feel like turning it on with, basically the objective here is to bypass the fusebox step all together, never trusted that method at all

CLpwner

So what the hell does any of this mean?
Note that it says maximum current usage 2 amps: what is the radio amperage?







What the hell is this?






the one on the left is the ground, the other is the main cord.

Tehvine

Yep you probably put the adapter on backwards. Just like it shows on the cardboard back, you need to plug the end-piece on so it is oriented just like it shows. The + needs to be on the same side as the marking on the socket at the end of the cord where it plugs in. That way it will be hooked up for positive tip polarity. As for the "what the hell is this?" ; that is your fuseholder. If you push in on both ends and twist, it will open and reveal a glass fuse.

Tehvine

Sorry, my above post may be a bit confusing... Plug your adapter in just like it is illustrated on the right there with the + and the Marking on the wire matching up.

CLpwner

alright... what if that fuse is blown in the cord... can I just take that part off and wire it without the fuse?

dylan684

if its blown take the fuse to an auto parts store and buy a new one to replace it....lol

Tehvine

^^^ What he said. Safer to spend the time to get a new fuse than free ball it without a fuse. FiresAreBadMmmKay

dylan684

Heres another option..go to auto zone and buy one of these:


its a multi 12v outlet, very inexpensive...what you would do is cut the wire closest to the adapter (piece that would normally plug into your cig lighter)..what you are left with is two wires, strip them, one is positive and one is ground...run the positive wire to one of the empty terminals in your fuse panel for the power source, and run the remaining wire (ground wire) to a ground; ie any screw or bolt under or behind the dash that is screwed into metal; you would want the end of the ground wire to essentially be touching the area between the bolt head and the metal it bolts into. now you are left with 3 outlets that can take any of your 12v accessories equipped with a cig lighter adapter (ie radar detector, phone charger, satellite radio)...ideally you would place the multi outlet behind the radio inside the dash or in the glove box and hide your accessory wires in there so you dont have to look at them. Doing it this way will eliminate the need to alter the wiring on your expensive accessories, and you wont need to mess with any type of in line fuses because the adapters from your accessories come equipped with them!

G22_Powered_YA1

splitters generally only add up to a whole jumble of messy wires, hardwires are beter, they hide things and look a whole lot better, worth the extra time/money if you ask me

dylan684

lol thats why i said to hardwire the splitter and then hide the whole contraption behind the cd player inside the dash out of sight...did you read my post?

G22_Powered_YA1

not really, I see splitter, and I say, no. . . thing is even behind there, if youcan put it behind there, there wil still be a mess