I did a search on here with no result, I think this is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me in my xB. By the way I have been so busy that I forgot about ScionLife and haven't posted in some time... sorry.

This is the strangest thing, and feel free to try this...

The setup:

The issue:
When I changed either mirror to the left or right (but not up in down as far as I've experimented), my Passport gives me a LASER detection warning, even in my driveway, or out and about. It works every time! I noticed this when I had the ignition in II and was just sitting talking on the phone and fiddled with the switch... BEEPBEEPBEEEP! I was like whoa! So I tried it and it worked, again and again.

The question:
Does anyone have any idea what could cause this? According to Wikipedia, Laser is detected by sensing infrared light emitted by the police LIDAR gun, so how does this make it go off? Weird!

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"Radar detector." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Dec 2006, 04:12 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 10 Dec 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Radar_detector&oldid=93083644>.

 

You aught to park another car by the Xb. Put the passport in the other car and see if it happens..... That would be intresting....

I am not that helpful....I just wonder if its something emmited from the car, or if its some type of electrical problem in the car, like a voltage drop or something.

 

Hey good idea Spider, I'll try that with my friend's Jetta, I was thinking it could be voltage related to but I think that'd be kind of a crappy design for a high end detector.

 

i have a Bel radar detector and it doesnt do that . That is weird tho have u tried movin it around the windshield while pressing the mirrior buttons to see if the location of the radar det. does anything

 

Motors in the mirrors might be generating electrical noise when they are running. The noise might be getting pssed through the power wires to the detector which then goes haywire.

But that is a far fetched idea. If that was the case, then the detector is not well designed.

I use the original Passport detector (made in the 80s) and it works just fine. No funky triggering. But it doesn't even detect laser... :D Not that that shoudl make a difference.

Like you said, Laser detector detects IR energy and the power mirrors can't possibly be generating IR energy.

That is a head-scratcher...

 

Was the car turned on or was it off at the time?

 

It happens in either case if I understand you correctly. Obviously you know that neither the mirror D-Pad or the cigg lighter are powered when the car is completely shutdown... but they both do work when the ignition is in the accessory mode, which is the one before run, and the detector responds in this case. It also works going down the beltway at 80 mph, which i tried to see if the electronics would behave differently at high speed. No change...

 

Yeah, sorry that's what I meant. After I typed it I realized I should have said ACC as opposed to OFF, but I was too lazy to fix it. :p

I was thinking that perhaps if it happened when the car was only in ACC mode, since it's running straight off of battery, that the mirrors made the voltage dip in the detector or something... But I guess not.