Hardwire my Valentine One radar detector to the front fuse box.

1) This procedure can be applied to any radar detector or device that uses the 12V power from your car. You might not realize this, but there is a fuse box up front as well as the one in the back. If you open the driver’s door and look at the side of the dash, you’ll see a recessed area that looks like the edge of a little door. It is. Just pop it off to reveal the box. But, to be safe, disconnect your battery first. I didn’t, and I plugged and unplugged fuses at will. BUT, if you want to be safe, just disconnect your battery first.

2) Get an “Add-A-Circut” from an auto parts store. This is a little device that plugs into a fuse slot in place of the fuse, and has two slots for the original fuse and a new one. It also has a positive red wire coming from it. The door for the box has a chart that shows what each fuse is for. Mine had an empty slot labeled “Cell Phone”, so I used it. I did discover that I still had to have 2 fuses in the AAC, even though there was no original one. No problem, just get some 3-amp fuses and fill the two slots. Or, make sure to get the right fuses for whatever device you’re hooking up. The cell phone circut is always on, even with the car off, so I have to remember to shut off my detector. My friend used the fuse for the heated seats since they shut off with the car. Choose whichever one you like. So far, no tools needed.

3) At this point, all I had to do was couple the positive wire from my detector wire to the positive wire coming from the AAC. Then I attached the black ground wire from my detector to one of the three convienient bolts that are near the fuse box by loosening one, putting the stripped end of the black wire under it and then tightening down. You’ll need a socket wench for this. The AAC has a connector on the end of its red wire which will let you put the stripped end of the device’s red wire into it, and then crimp down with pliers.

4) Since this is for my detector, I wanted to run the wire up under the windshield pillar and under the roof liner to mount it next to my rear view mirror. All you have to do is grab the upper end of the plastic pillar and pull. It seems scary, but it is made to pop off since this is where the side air bag is. No tools needed. Don’t pull too hard since there is a plastic loop that holds it about 4 inches from the frame. This is so when the airbag deploys, the plastic pillar doesn’t fly across the car. You will have enough room to get in behind it and you won’t have to remove the lower part of the pillar where it goes behind the dash. I took my now connected power cable for the Valantine, snaked it around the lower part of the pillar so I didn’t have to remove it, and now ran it up along the wiring harness you will now notice in there. I did this so as to not interfere with the airbag. Use a couple of zip ties to attach your wire to the harness. I ran my wire all the way up to the roof liner, and then simply shoved the wire under the liner with my fingers so that it came out by my rear view mirror.

5) Snapping the pillar back into place is a bit tricky, but it would be very hard to actually brake something. There is a thin black rubber liner that covers the seam between the pillar and the door frame (very obvious to find) the pillar will easily snap back into place, but you have to get it under the liner. I used a credit card to pry the liner out over the pillar before totally snapping it down. It’s kind of like taking a bicycle tire off a rim, just run the card up the liner as you push on the pillar. It took me 3 tries to get it right, so I just kept popping the pillar off and giving it another go. Again, I saw no real opportunity to brake anything, but be careful anyway. You might have to give a good stiff whack the pillar up and down its length with your fist to get it fully snapped down.

This took me about 30 minutes total.