Let's Hardwire my Escort 8500

[AndyM]

Originally Posted by stefan

Question for you.. Is a fuse necessary? I see you mentioned that you wrapped your fuse, though I don’t have mine on my direct wire cable..

I would call Escort and ask them. All the hardwire kits I have gotten from them in the past had an in-line fuse.

[stevenc]

For those of you hardwiring, while a fuse if probably a good idea, its probably not neccesary. Simply take a normal telephone cable, and power the red wire and ground the green wire and your 8500 will be good to go.

[jkp1187]

Originally Posted by C_Topher

BB or CC will do it for $50.

Unless you're a complete butterfingers, I'd suggest trying it yourself first. I made the mistake of paying Best Buy to install something simple once, and they ended up breaking the tabs on the plate around my console shifter and just gluing it back into place. The best part was that I didn't find out about it until a year later, after I'd moved to another state when the plate just popped up in the summer heat.

[jeremyc74]

Originally Posted by stevenc22

For those of you hardwiring, while a fuse if probably a good idea, its probably not neccesary. Simply take a normal telephone cable, and power the red wire and ground the green wire and your 8500 will be good to go.

Be carefull with that. Some of the telephone cables mix up the wire colors, so the pins you need aren't always the red and green. It's a good idea to double check the pinout online before hooking up the power.

As for the fuse, I'm running without one. The wires in the phone cable are so small they'd probably act as a fusable link if something in the detector shorted out, and the fuse that's supplying the dome light I'm wired into would pop if not. The inline fuse isn't a bad idea, but the risks are pretty low even without it.

[stefan]

Just did this! Getting those clips out was tedious.. and I ended up scratching that soft reflective material underneath the light cover. A piece of advice.. tape that up first! The cover for that light fell off almost instantly for me, mine never seemed to be very solid.

Otherwise it went smooth. Thanks AndyM, for the write up!

[davemohan]

Originally Posted by jeremyc74

Be carefull with that. Some of the telephone cables mix up the wire colors, so the pins you need aren't always the red and green. It's a good idea to double check the pinout online before hooking up the power.

AMEN! And then some. I just got done doing this install twice. Turned out Red and Green WERE the right colors, but reversed.

I looked inside the plug, saw red and green in the middle and thought I was ready to go. After doing the entire install, the detector did not come on. Checked all connections, looked good. (Fortunately I tested it out before reinstalling the panel.)

Finally looked at the plugs for the cigarette lighter cord and the phone cord side by side and realized that all four wires were reversed. (Works fine for a phone, as long as pin A is wired to pin A on the other end.) So, I removed the wiring, cut off the connectors I had just put on, and reversed it to Green power and Red ground.

Moral of the story: check the wiring VERY carefully before using ANY pre-configured wires! Colors are not consistent, and the manufacturers get tricky about it.

[XLR8IN]

I'll throw in my $.02 about getting the panel off of the headliner.. If you unscrew the screw underneath the clip that holds the visor (it's a torx head) on both the driver and passenger side, the headliner will come down very easy. I tried to do it the way of just pulling it down and pushing the clips but had no luck, the headliner was starting to make bad noises.. by undoing those screws its very easy, took 30 seconds.

[ucbsupafly]

Originally Posted by XLR8IN

I'll throw in my $.02 about getting the panel off of the headliner.. If you unscrew the screw underneath the clip that holds the visor (it's a torx head) on both the driver and passenger side, the headliner will come down very easy. I tried to do it the way of just pulling it down and pushing the clips but had no luck, the headliner was starting to make bad noises.. by undoing those screws its very easy, took 30 seconds.

Good tip! I will give it a try tonight.

[stevenc]

Originally Posted by davemohan

AMEN! And then some. I just got done doing this install twice. Turned out Red and Green WERE the right colors, but reversed.

I looked inside the plug, saw red and green in the middle and thought I was ready to go. After doing the entire install, the detector did not come on. Checked all connections, looked good. (Fortunately I tested it out before reinstalling the panel.)

Finally looked at the plugs for the cigarette lighter cord and the phone cord side by side and realized that all four wires were reversed. (Works fine for a phone, as long as pin A is wired to pin A on the other end.) So, I removed the wiring, cut off the connectors I had just put on, and reversed it to Green power and Red ground.

Moral of the story: check the wiring VERY carefully before using ANY pre-configured wires! Colors are not consistent, and the manufacturers get tricky about it.

I actually have a 12v battery from a garage remote control which i use to test the wires with before installing.

[ucbsupafly]

Originally Posted by XLR8IN

I'll throw in my $.02 about getting the panel off of the headliner.. If you unscrew the screw underneath the clip that holds the visor (it's a torx head) on both the driver and passenger side, the headliner will come down very easy. I tried to do it the way of just pulling it down and pushing the clips but had no luck, the headliner was starting to make bad noises.. by undoing those screws its very easy, took 30 seconds.

This is by far the best advice on how to take off the light panel. It takes two minutes to take off the sunvisor holders and another minute after that to pop off the light panel by hand. Why didn't someone think of this earlier??!!

:thumbup:

[One&Only]

Originally Posted by Phiberglass

Nice DIY.

Works bette high, but the only RD with rear coverage for laser is the V1, but it still picks it up regardless.

Hey did I miss something? I'm sure my passport has 3 laser shifters....2 in the front and one in the back.
Gotta pull 'em off the MINI in a few days & really appreciate this DIY.

[aminidab]

Originally Posted by ucbsupafly

This is by far the best advice on how to take off the light panel. It takes two minutes to take off the sunvisor holders and another minute after that to pop off the light panel by hand. Why didn't someone think of this earlier??!!

:thumbup:

I agree with this, it took me maybe 2 minutes to get the light panel out this way and less than 30 mins total to do the install.

Just get a small flat screwdriver, use it to pop open the cover on the inner visor clip, then undo the torx screw. The clip will come off, then do this on the other side and you have plenty of room to get between the headliner and undo the light panel clips.

[ItalianButter]

I used these (the ones in the middle) and had no issue at all:

[ad78]

here is the conservative way
http://www.1addicts.com/forums/showt...highlight=8500

[///M1]

Is this the part needed for hardwiring the Escort 8500 X50 (the $10 variant, the $25 has the mute button)?

https://www.escortradar.com/store/straight-cords/

I also have seen these alternatives on Ebay that go to the fuse box, any idea what makes for a better/cleaner install?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Escort-Passport-...3A1%7C294%3A50

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ESCOR...fAudioQ5fVideo

[stevenc]

///M1 i suggest wiring it directly from the sun roof control box like Andy suggested using a REGULAR telephone cable....

Take a telephone cable, cut on end off. Then take a small 12v battery used in garage remote controls and put power to the 4 exposed wires until you figure out which wires power your radar detector. Then just tap those 2 wires into your sun roof per Andy's instructions. Its super clean once installed.

The ebay kit looks fine too, and will work with Andy's method.

[stevenc]

Thought i would take come pictures to help explain wiring with a normal telephone cable.

Take a normal telephone cable and cut off and strip one end. (2 or 4 wire cable is fine)



Now look very carefully at the other end.

The middle 2 pins are the positive and negative terminals.



In this picture, the negative terminal is RED on the left and the positive terminal is GREEN on the right. (Your colors may vary so just figure out which is the left and right pin to determine which wires are positive and negative)

Now put the negative wire to the ground and the postive wire to the dome light like Andy showed in post 1.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by mikeo

Nice write up, Andy, thanks. Got to hardwire my V1 this weekend.

how did it go?
got a v1 on the way and hard wiring this week probably

[Add1ct]

Did this yesterday, very easy, good DIY, thanks!

[Feyd]

Okay, so I did this to my 8500 today and man what a PITA those clips were. Do yourself a favor and invest in some torx drivers and remove the sun visors + the visor clips. I removed the entire driver's side and just the clip from the passenger's side... from that point forward it only took about 10 minutes to button everything up.

I used a standard 4 conductor phone wire, though I really felt the wire could have been a higher gauge, it does seem to work just fine...

[Toby]

need some help, just did the DIY and everything worked great (the torx screw trick made the clips really easy). My problem is I tapped in to the #3 pin green and white wire..and no power.

any ideas? i'm sure i'm on #3 b/c of the numbers on the back of the harness. thanks!

[Feyd]

Those wires are a ridiculously thin gauge.. I'm assuming you are using the t-style crimp connector that clamps over the green wire?

Just make sure you use the smallest one of those connectors that you can find so that you ensure that when you clamp it down it actually cuts all the way through the insulation. Maybe clamp it down and kind of rotate it around a bit to make sure you cut all the way through?