phungy

Valentine 1 is worth every penny.

sensay

when cops are parked to the side of the road they have their radars constantly on, they are not shooting every car that passes by. As soon as one car goes too fast they will be alerted. A good radar detector can detect such speed traps from so far away that cops wouldnt matter to you.

DanPorges

Not in MA, here they use Lidar and aim and shoot at cars that appear to be travelling above the average traffic speeds. They are allowed to tag a car from up to 3700 feet away, which is ridiculously inaccurate, but it is why detectors do work too. If you are back about a mile from where the cop is sitting and he fires the lidar at another car somewhere in front of you, the detector sees that beam and gives a warning. You then have plenty of time to blend in before the cop would aim at you.

phungy

^^ true. I was lasered a few weeks ago and I wasn't even paying attention to my speed because I was too busy talking to my girlfriend haha. Even though the V1 notified me, good thing I was only going 5 over.

sensay

jeez! to above 2 posts!
i been wanting to get a good radar detector, but im not sure on how well its going to work in my car... i have 5% tint all around...

Otocan

radar waves are not affected by tint very much, radar passes through objects such as metal, glass, fabric and even your own body fairly easily, it is just reduced and the reflections back are dramatically reduced.

Now laser is a completely different story.

laser is light, pure and simple, just on a certain wavelength. (700-900nm I believe, red beam) and tint absorbs/reflects light, so your 5% tint will absorb/reflect 95% of light hitting the window (theoretically) in addition to the stock window tint all around of about 75-80% so that would make a total VLT of about 3.75%. Meaning if I point a laser at your window, only 3.75% of that laser light is going to pass through (aka hit the detector)

But I sure hope you don't have 5% tint on your windshield....

So in short, YES a radar detector would work, but its laser ability would be severly hindered by your tint from the sides and the rear (radar/laser cannot get a speed reading from the side)

06SuperWhite_SoCal_tC

Umm, no, not here in Cali. They look for cars that appear to be traveling above the Speed Limit, then shoot. Besides that, on any of my local freeways they pace you/a plane paces you.

xdaflipguyx

guys... how much volts does the cobra fuse has??? i lost the fuse of mine so i dont remember the volts???

ThePerchik

I am no expert in this but fuses are in amps i believe. Just take at look at the manual of download one from their website.

http://www.cobra.com/pdf/RADAR/ESD9560_manual.pdf

Bottom of page 22.... 1 amp

looser

Can you go more in depth explaining your statement, "(The sunroof already has a fuse, so if the V1 wire shorts, it'll blow the fuse for the sunroof). " Is the wiring shown in this post done after the sunroof fuse? If so, is it possible to do it before the sunroof fuse?

Thanks for your help

rys

If you hook the V1 hardwire kit directly up to the sunroof (removing the fuse for the V1 kit), it would mean the V1 would be fused at the sunroof fuse (same fuse as the sunroof).

Any event that would have caused the V1 inline fuse to blow, will now cause the sunroof fuse to blow instead.

This is good because you don't want to have to take everything apart again to replace a blown fuse.

Make sense?

-Brian

Jowie

There is also the point of moving radar. I know the state troopers in WA state use it a lot. They will have the radar on the whole time they are pacing traffic. My V1 will alert me long before I even see the trooper, reminding me to be more attentive to the speed limit.

Another point, I got popped by lidar once on a night when it was pretty much only me on the freeway. I immediatly lowered my speed, and finnaly saw him pull onto the highway and flip on his lights. I pulled over, and unplugged my V1. He came up and asked me if I knew how fast I was going, which I responded that I didn't really know(the truth). He then asked me where I was going and for my license and registration. Told him I was on my way home, he handed me back my license and registration and said to slow down. Never even pulled up my record from what I could tell. He had to have seen my V1, yet he still let me go with just a verbal warning. Lucky I guess?

ThePerchik

Good Answer there but i think its better to leave the inline fuse. If the sunroof blows its fuse in the fuse box for some reason it will kil the radar and the sunroof. Replacing the fuse in the box will allow both to work. If the radar blows its inline fuse it will stop working but the sunroof will still work. BUT, to change the inline fuse you will have to get all that stuff from the top to get to the inline fuse. The reason that the inline fuse is a good idea is just a matter of amps. If the inline fuse and the sunroof fuse (AND I AM PRETTY SURE THIS IS THE CASE) do not have the same fuse rating then you rust blowing the radar to ____ if there is a surge because the sunroof fuse did not pop and there was nothing protecting the radar.

Moral of the story: Keep the inline fuse.

rys

Whoa, let's get something straight here. The fuses in the car are for the purpose of protecting the car, not for protecting the device from an over-voltage situation. If something happens to the device, the fuse is there to blow to prevent the wiring from heating up and causing a fire. That's it.

The radar detector should be designed to accept up to 15 or 16 volts. There should be an internal voltage regulator to handle this. So you should not have to worry about if the V1 fuse and the Sunroof fuse are the same amperage.

If anything the V1's fuse will be less because it does not require the same amount of power as the Sunroof.

The other point is that if you wish to wire the V1 in a way that will not blow the Sunroof's fuse in the event of a V1 malfunction, you will need to find an unfused ignition controlled point of power. This means pulling the driver's A pillar and running a line all the way down to the fuse box, then finding the non fused ignition power. (By non fused, I mean non fused interior side, there is another fuse for power in the engine bay.)

It's just easier to run it off of the Sunroof's power, and accept that if the V1 or Sunroof blows the fuse, you will have to replace the Sunroof fuse before either of them will work again.

I don't think anyone has had a problem with this since this was posted. I sure haven't, and I've done this to 4 vehicles so far. (Mitsubishi Eclipse, Mitsubishi Galant, Scion tC, and my Lexus IS350.)

-Brian

looser

Thanks for the info, there's a lot of good stuff in the above discussion. I think I will leave the inline fuse in there even though it will be a bigger hastle in the even that the V1 fues goes. I figure it's better safe than sorry even though I would expect that those that are more electricly inclined would disagree with my decision. I've never had the V1 fuse go and figure I'll take my chances that the inline fues won't go.

Peace

ThePerchik

Thats what I did.

CapeCodBlitzBlue

Great article. As I read it, I found Myself wondering if I could also do the same thing with a GPS system. And taking it one further, would there be any complications of wiring up a GPS and a Radar Detector at the same time from that point?

Phlame217

I tried this method ver-batum and it didnt work. I am in a '06 bsp tC just over a month old. Any tips?

lludacrisboy

worked great my loop didnt fit over the bolt to ground it so i just took some metal wire from some twist ties and twist tied ti to another metal hole. works great. thanks for the tech article

JLTD

Did you get that meter free with a bowl of soup?