The Installation Diaries

Ever wonder what goes on back in the installation bay when they add electronic gear to your car? Trust us, you probably don't want to know. Like auto repair, there's a wide variation in skill and quality of workmanship. For instance, we had a sound system installed in an expensive Italian exoticar and after taking delivery, found that the battery went dead if the car wasn't driven daily. After hours of troubleshooting, we diagnosed the problem. Rather than tapping into a switched 12-volt power supply active only when the engine was running, the moron who installed it had tapped into a power circuit that was continuously hot.

And there's the true story of the guy at a Cadillac dealer installing a $2,000 remote radar detector in a tricked-out $75,000 H2 Hummer. All that was required was a 3/16-inch hole in the dash for an LED. In the process he managed to drill into the speedometer cluster. Oops. Naturally, replacement clusters for this low-volume vehicle were on backorder. No problem; the cluster for an Escalade was installed--the Caddy SUV shares the Tahoe platform with the H2 and its interior is much the same--and, since the Escalade cluster is somewhat more upscale than the Hummer's, the customer was told it was an $1,800 upgrade. Without blinking an eye the guy wrote a check for $3,800 for a detector that cost the dealer $650, plus two hours of labor--and maybe another six C-notes to replace the instrument cluster his installer broke.

This story isn't atypical. The keyword in the business is production. Production equals profit. That's why many a technician cuts corners to install a remote detector. Will he remove trim panels, carefully route wires along factory wiring harnesses and secure them with wire ties and protective plastic wiring loom? Some will; most simply pry up the panels, tuck the wires up behind and route them under the carpet, headliner or scuff plate up to the detector interface. The radar antenna may receive a bracket; it's just as likely to be wire-tied to the grille or stuck on with double-sided tape. Five thousand miles later the customer is likely to be back, complaining that the detector doesn't work.

For this reason the sharper detector manufacturers have begun to make their high-end remotes idiot-proof to install. Aside from enhancing product reliability and increasing customer satisfaction they've also learned that a faster installation means higher dealer profit. So when we installed the BEL, Escort and K40 test units we paid particular attention to the design of their components, the manner in which they're attached to the vehicle and how they're wired together. We also scrutinized the quality of their brackets, wiring, connectors and hardware, noting the manufacturers' recommendations for attaching and routing the wires.

Last, we installed the BEL RX75 Plus (whose hardware and installation are similar the Escort SR7's). First we spread out the components and verified nothing was missing.

Remote detectors require disassembly of front grille area for installation. Mounting the antennae is the most labor intensive part of the job.

Next we installed the radar antenna by drilling into the radiator support and attaching it with the supplied sheet metal screws.

The twin front laser blockers were next. We're unenthusiastic about their self-tapping bracket screws. These are fine for plastic but with a power screwdriver, they can strip out when used on sheetmetal. Instead we used longer, black-anodized flat-head self-tapping metal screws from K40 kit. The same type of hardware is used on Detroit assembly lines.

Each 16-foot-long laser-blocker wire is permanently attached and exits at the back of the case through a solid, waterproof grommet that also functions as a strain relief. The wire has an elaborate, tapered firewall grommet and is capped with a telephone-style RJ-7 connector. The radar antenna wire is similarly weatherproofed but its six-foot primary lead ends in a waterproof DIN connector. It mates to the other half of the DIN connector attached to a 12-foot-long cable with a similar grommet, ending with an RJ-7 connector.

K40 takes a different approach and makes it possible to detach the antenna from the wire itself. The rear of the radar antenna has a short plastic female connector. That mates to the antenna wire using a right-angle male connector with a twist-on locking collar. But neither of the collars on our system would remain secured and we'd guess both would vibrate loose within a week.

When all three antennae were secured, we removed the driver-side headlamp and turn signal assembly, bundled the wires in plastic split-wire loom and routed them from the grille area, behind the headlight and along the factory harness against the left fender. Reaching the firewall, we had to decide: drill three 7/16-inch holes and use the BEL grommets or make use of an existing hole already drilled for the custom alarm/remote starting system. The latter won out. The grommets discarded, all three wires were threaded through that hole.

BEL rear laser blocker is a receiver/jammer, fastens to license plate bolts.

The rear laser receiver/blocker was mounted with the OEM license plate screws, its wire routed through an existing grommet into the trunk area. We pulled off the trim panel and wire-tied it to the stock harness along the left quarter panel to the sheet metal behind the seat. There we drilled a hole and continued alongside the stock harness, under the door scuff plate, kick panel and to the under-dash area.

The control/display unit was mounted flat to the bottom of the instrument cluster with thin, double-sided black tape.

The remote muting switch was affixed to the dash just to the right of the cluster, using its self-adhesive backing. The remote speaker was placed at the bottom of the instrument panel and the interface module was mounted under the right-side dash. Once the module was connected to switched 12-volt power, hooking up the component wires took less than a minute.

BEL remote muting switch shuts off audio alerts; tap it twice and it shuts off the laser blockers.

The interface module is beautifully designed, a big time saver and there's no way the wires will ever come loose. In contrast, the K40 components we installed, including the two DefuserPlus laser transceivers, had 26 bare wires to be connected, most of them with crimp-on butt connectors. Shortening any of the wires, many of them ultra-thin 22-gauge diameter, meant peeling off the insulation with a razor blade or one's teeth, a laborious process that often resulted in a broken wire. And the fine wires were difficult to crimp reliably. Our system worked on the bench but once installed, one of the pods was dead. It took a multimeter and half an hour to isolate the problem, a bad crimp.

Now we looked at the mound of excess wire lying on the floorboards. Nice that they made the wires long enough to fit an H1 Hummer, not so nice for a Toyota. Now we had a six-inch bundle of wire that had to be stuffed behind the dash. In the event, that proved to be a temporary fix. BEL has since provided a dealer installation kit containing the RJ-7 connectors, along with a crimping tool and a supply of other components. Having the connectors also permits simply cutting the wires before slipping them through the firewall, meaning a single small hole can be drilled instead of three larger ones.

The RX75 Plus installation required about four hours. We've since learned that the front laser blockers can be attached sans brackets, using double-sided tape, so long as they're aimed straight down the road and within about 15 degrees of level. Combine that time saving with the wire-trimming trick and crimp-on RJ-7s and we'd guess an hour could be shaved off the installation time. Much of this matters little to the customer. But it does to an installer.