Radar Detector Hardwired

That's right it's finally done. I finished installing it a few days ago and love the way it came out.

Wiring it into the car was a bit trickier than I expected. I figured that I would make the connections on the driver's side, but when I removed the panel I was greeted with more wires than I cared to count. I also failed to see any wires headed in the direction of the cigarette lighter. I partially dismantled the center stack and console. I traced the wiring harness to the passenger side where I used some tap in connectors that I bought at RadioShack. They made installation a breeze. I checked that I was getting the correct voltage on those wires, I was. I connected everything snaked a lead up to the radar detector itself and there we have it ladies and gents.

The setup now looks a lot better without wires hanging all over the place.

Rear washer picture

I apologize for the delay in my posting of this picture but I've been busier than expected. This picture shows the new rear washer pump that I installed. You can also see the wiring harness that I had to fiddle with.

I can see!

The rear washer pump has finally been replaced. This was supposed to be a quick job but it was anything but.

At first I couldn't get the pump out, the bracket which held the pump didn't want to budge. After fiddling with it for a few minutes it came free. The next problem was removing the pump from the bracket.

Over the course of many years the pump and the bracket had become in essence one unit. It took me a good while to finally hammer the pump out of the bracket with the aid of some silicon lubricant. The next problem was the electrical connector.

The connector is designed to simply unclip and that should be all she wrote, but apparently after several years of being behind the bumper it had corroded. When I finally got the pump free of the connector I realized that the internals of the connector had failed and broken off. I took a trip to a local auto parts store and bought some new connectors. I then reconstructed the wiring harness which was a joy because I was cramped.

Will all of these wonderful problems solved I put the inline filters in for both of the rear and front washers. The front was fine, but since I was dirty and working on these I took care of it. The rear was clogged.

With the system back together I hit the switch to turn on the rear wiper. It took a few seconds for fluid to go through all of the lines, fill up the filter, and then finally come out, but in the end it all works again.

While I was working on my car I did notice several other issues. The washers for the headlights don't work and I had a significant amount of oil under my spark plug cover. It isn't worth trying to figure out what's wrong with the headlight washer. I am a little worried about the oil under the spark plug cover. I cleaned out what I could with out going crazy. I'll just have to monitor it to see if anything further collects or if it was just because someone spilled some oil at one point.

Tomorrow I plan on finishing my radar detector installation. I'll also post a few pictures of this project.