How To: Hiding a V1 display in the mirror

[KfabR8]

One of the things I snagged out of my wrecked car was the rear view mirror. I've been wanting to see what's involved in getting a Valentine V1's display hidden in the mirror. I've seen a couple of pix of installs, but never how to or what was involved.

Tonight's project was figure out how to make it work.

And, I believe that I have.

I figure that the mirror's a viable piece that's available for experimentation so why not give it a shot?

The V1's remote display unit plugs into the power supply of the V1's main unit and takes over the visual aspect of the detector. It also has a mute button on it. This makes for the perfect setup in installation. A US$40 piece from Valentine is definitely worth the experiment.

I started out by separating the mirror bezel from the body. There are 8 (I believe) tabs that snap into the bezel. For this experiment I didn't worry too much about aesthetics and keeping things from getting marred. I'll have a new mirror soon (attached to an 09 V8 MT6) so I'll just move things over.

The key to getting the bezel off is to start on the top, right in the middle and work a soft tool (like the units from MACarbon and/or Snap-On) under the edge of the back body and then push down as you work towards the sides. This pops out each of the snaps from the bezel w/o damage.

The bezel comes off and the mirror and electronics come out of the main body. There's a 6 pin plug that you have to pull off the back of the main circuit board.



The glass is held on with two spade plugs. They just pull off. You can see the window for the compass on the back side of the mirror in the pic:



The compass module plugs into the main circuit board. There are seven pins total. A small screwdriver and a little careful prying and the compass module comes off.



The picture's very out of focus, but these three pins are the key. The middle one is the ground, the upper one is +12V the lower one is +5v. There's my power supply, right off the board.



I pulled the display board (pretty much the entire innards) out of the little V1 remote display and test fit it into the spot that the compass used to reside. A little trimming of the plastic edges of the display and a little file work for clearance by the plug and the unit fits perfectly in place of the compass.



I super glued the display in place. The lower edge of the display fits right up against the edge of the circuit board and keeps everything nice and square to the mirror. The V1 circuit board snaps into the back of the display with two small tabs. It pops in/out very easily.



The mirror has a black backing material on it. There's a nice hole where the compass display reads through. I figured that I'd be able to peel the film off where needed with a careful use of an X-Acto knife (#11 blade). I made a little mock up of where the visual part of the display needed to be and then very carefully cut the film away. It peels up easily, but leaves the dreaded sticky goo. I used some rubbing alcohol and a Q-Tip to remove the goo and then some glass cleaner to make sure everything was nice and clean.



I test fit the mirror and the circuit board into the bezel and then powered up the V1 setup. I like the results!



Here's the board and the display in place in the back. The window that I cut into the mirror film only allows the LEDs to be seen (you can just make out the writing on the display if you look carefully at the mirror). The hole you see in the display is where the mute button was. I ran a pair of wires (the red and yellow pair seen farther below) off the circuit board and will run them on down to my little dash board piece that I made. There will be a small button that acts as the mute on it.



I wired up the display, installed the main power supply with double sided sticky tape and then ran the main power supply's wires to the GND and +12 spots that the compass module plugged into. This works great - power right off the board, is activated when the car is turned on. Perfect way to run the V1. There is just enough room for the electronics in the back of the mirror housing.



Put everything back together and I now have the OEM plug, a pair of leads that will get a small plug attached to them and the telephone style cord that operates the V1. I'll be able to hide all the wires and run the two sets of V1 wires under the head liner down to where I want to hide the V1 and it's switches.



I like my results. The mirror darkened as soon as I pushed the button, which made me happy. My only real worry is that I wonder if the car will recognize that the compass is missing? As sophisticated as the electronics in the car are, it wouldn't surprise me. That said, I don't see any leads that seem to report back to anything. The six leads are power, ground and probably control leads for the outer mirrors darkening.

The next aspect of this install will be to pull the on/off/volume knob out of the V1 body and mount that in my little dash piece and then figure out where to put the V1 so that it's completely out of sight. There's a large chance that it will end up in the front of the car, up behind the front grill, with the Blinder M47 that I'll be getting here soon. I know that's going to mess w/the rear reading aspect of the V1, but I'm willing to deal with that.

More electronic toys to follow.

[OEMplus.com]

Wow, very cool Kfab! I am down like a clown for that mod! Excellent photos too!

[gazza1]

Great work...very impressive again Kfab

You certainly have been busy in your workshop lately looking at visual displays and playing with knobs.

[smoothy]

awesome detective work! Too bad I can't have one up here...

[RXBG]

badass. good job. when does the new ride get in and what are the specs????

[KfabR8]

If you think the mirror's trick, wait until you see the little control panel that I made that fits between the A/C controls and the Nav unit. That little shelf is useless so I decided to make it do something other than catch dust. It'll have a volume on/off control for the Blinder M47 and one for the V1 and the control button for the Spirit Booster mode selection is in it too. - I'll have pix and will do a write up once it's done.

New ride - It's sitting at OEM at the moment. See the for sale section - 09 Grey/black MT6.

It's pretty much identical to what I had, except it's a year newer, it's missing about 32K miles and it has the upgraded nav system and an Alcantera headliner - which I had intended on installing in my tree'd car before it's very sudden stop.

Turbo system is in process and on the way to OEM. Brakes are arriving now. I have the Dymags that I was trying to sell (not happy about them being 20", but oh well.) with me and will ship them to Rich on Wednesday from Phoenix.

My daughter and I will be out there either Thursday or Friday to check it all out and see if all the stuff I sent Rich has made it yet. The one thing that I couldn't get from my car, yet, is the ring around the nav head unit. I lent my radio pulls to someone here on the board (and of course, I can't recall who), so I can't remove the surrounding ring yet. Rich said he'd pass on a set for me to use. I'll send it out to him once I get home from my trip.

Hopefully I'll pick up the car the end of the month, head to Vegas and meet a friend and then head to Austin for a little weekend interlude w/another friend before heading back to Ohio.

[RXBG]

nice. glad you found a replacement so quickly. looking forward to the mod performance numbers being posted!

[KfabR8]

I need to start a thread on the new ride and it's Frankensteining. I need to be a pain in the arse and get Rich to photo-document each step of the change over.

Rich informed me that the car was at the dyno yesterday for a pre-mod base line. I too am looking forward to what comes. ~50% increase in hp - oh yea!

[Europrice]

Seriously wish this car was coming up to NorCal to see and experience after it's done with all of the modding. Almost seems like it would be time to use those free stays down in Vegas and hit up Virgin or Southwest down to Vegas just to get a ride in this beast. Great excuse to go to Vegas right?

[KfabR8]

I went to the trouble of putting the V1 remote display into the mirror so I could go about hiding my detector all together. Officer Friendly tends to always make some sort of comment about the unit on the dash (on the few occasions over the years that I've had to talk to him/her). It's also something that, if out of site, will be out of mind, so that's one less reason for someone to pop the glass and grab.

Valentine Research is about 20 minutes from my house. It's convenient to run over and get parts. While I was there, getting a knob for another aspect of this mod, I asked about the V1's ability to deal with heat. The woman behind the counter said heat's not an issue. The unit can handle quite high temps w/o any issues.

That was the perfect answer for the next aspect of my little build.

Sorry that I can't get pix uploaded into this post like I usually do. Once I get my FTP issues figured out, I'll come back and modify this particular post.

Anyhow, I'd planned on putting the V1 main unit up under the front end of the car somewhere. Probably in the same vicinity of the Blinder M47 transceivers. That meant making it weather proof.

I've taken it (V1) apart a couple of times and realized that making the V1 weather proof was going to be messy. There are too many little windows and openings and such and to take a tube of silicone to it would be bad and probably semi-destructive. Next option was to enclose the thing. Yea, that would be good...

So off to the supply house for a large block of nylon and then over to the milling machine to make a mess.

The results are great.

The main body has built in tabs that the V1 slides into. Just like the clips that come with it. It also has a nice Lexan window for the laser aspect to still work.

The cap snaps in place and the whole thing's held together with a few stainless screws. I built in mounting ears with multiple holes so I can adapt it to where ever it will end up (probably the left front side of the car, under the headlight, behind the lower grill or under the front bumper strip in the grill.

I wanted black nylon, but my supplier didn't have any at the time, so a 20 minute bath in boiling Ritt dye and my nice white parts came out black as night. The whole idea of black was to keep it looking as much like some part that came with the car as opposed to this white box sitting there screaming "LOOK AT ME!"

When it finally gets installed (when I'm out at OEM, picking up the new ride), I'll use a small bead of silicone around the mating surfaces and I believe my V1 will be safe and sound.

I do realize that putting the V1 up in the nose of the car will:
a) rid me of my rear facing laser warning. I can deal w/that. Not that it won't happen, but I have yet to be hit from behind w/laser.
2) make the rear facing radar a bit less sensitive, but that's okay too. I have the same sort of feelings about the laser aspect.

I have learned the V1's little nuances when it comes to behind/side reading with the one in my truck. When there's a lot of stuff behind the V1, it tends to tell you that head on readings are coming from behind with a bit more frequency. I think it's probably a scatter/bounce issue. Either way, I know it's an issue and can deal with that too.

The control panel for the V1, the Blinder M47 and the Spirit Booster is finished (pix soon). It fits between the A/C controls and the radio head unit and it will allow me to control the on/off and volume of both the V1 and the Blinder. The Blinder in my last R8 was a great tool, but the lack of ability to control it's volume and to be able to turn it on/off was a pain. I wasn't about to put that ugly button that came with it in my dash area, nor did I want the bright green/red LED sitting there screaming at me.

I'm waiting for my new Spirit Booster* to show up so I can get the button mounted in the panel. Once that's done, I'll share pix of it too.

I'm having fun making little one off things for my new ride and making them all nice and stealthy too.

* yea, yea, I know - Sprint Booster, not Spirit. But when you push that little button, it does boost your Spirit! Rah, Rah, sis boom bah!