It appears there have been a few changes since Frank Hunt wrote his V1 install instructions.

First the door giving access to the BCM in the passenger footwell doesn't have any 'latches' at the top. The whole panel is carpet covered and is attached with velcro tabs at the upper right and upper left corners. Once the floor mat is removed, just pull out on the top of the panel to remove. There are still two plastic hooks at the bottom corners that mate with notches on the floor.

The other thing that was a little wierd was that I never did get the accessory harness unplugged and removed. After digging around in the upper right corner of the compartment, I was able to find the little taped bundle with the yellow, orange and black wires, but the connector to which these were attached seemed to be attached to the side of the compartment with a little plastic tab. Rather than take a chance of breaking something, I didn't try to force it ... so I had to do my wiring while standing on my head..

The picture of the harness that I saw in Frank's How-to showed wires about 6-8 inches long coming from this harness. In my case, there were no more than 3 inches of wire to work with, which made it a real PITA to get to. Bear in mind that I'm 6'3" and (as an old fart) wear bifocals. Ever try looking UP at something out of the BOTTOM of your glasses? What a nuisance. I wasn't able to get close enough to see without my glasses, and had to turn my head around like a lizard to be able to see what I was doing under there. Coupled with the fact that my idea of exercise is bending over, it was a less than comfortable experience.

Also different from the FrankHunt instructions was the fact that there was no convenient grounding screw at the base of the BCM, or anywhere that I could find. Therefore I just used both the black and yellow wires from the harness to wire the V1 ... Of course, the black wire from the V1 connector wasn't long enough, so I had to extend it with a splice.

Routing the telco wire from the V1 to the compartment wasn't too bad. The telco cable slips under the windshield top molding without loosening anything. I never did get the entire A pillar molding off, But I got the top loose .. enough to route the wire under it.

All in all it took the better part of a morning to do .. but it's so nice to have the V1 integrated into the car. :)

 

Jerry,

Isn't gettin old fun, been there on installing a cell phone pita...........

:cool:

 

Yeah, I had problems with the harness too. Now I have a g/f who has a Vette also and is younger and more nimble than me. :D

 

My harness was about 2 feet long and the hardest part was pulling the pillar molding off, and that went ok, but my 00' convertible had a very short harness.

 

1) Hmm... Mine has latches ('01).

2) Me neither! I was going to die prying it off with a screwdriver! What I DID do was get it to spin 180-degrees so that the "slack" in the wiring was now facing toward me (and no longer in, back behind everything). This was a ROYAL PITA!

3) I don't think I found that screw, either. Can't remember, though.

4) I got mine off -- but thought I was going to break it getting it on and off. That wasn't fun either!

5) Amen! Can't beat it, now that it's done. :)

(I feel your pain, though!)

-Kirk

 

:yesnod: :cheers: :cry

 

:confused: Can an Escort/Passport 8500 be hardwired also?? How is it done?? :confused:

:cheers: :cheers:

 

Sure it could. All the 'hardwiring' does is conceal the power cord and connect it to a switched power source in the car. I haven't seen the Escort, but I'm sure that it just wants a 12v source of power, and that you're probably using it with a cigarette lighter adapter.

There have been many posts about hardwiring on the forum .. usually for the V1, but the same principles apply. Do a search. You can find a switched 12v power source in the passenger footwell compartment (where the BCM is located). All you're interested in is the black (ground) and yellow (switched 12v). Run a wire from there to the detector. The hardwiring instructions you'll find via a search will show how to route a concealed wire from the area of the rear-view mirror down to the passenger footwell. Once the detector is connected to switched power and the wire is hidden, you're there.