Ultimate V1 (Valentine One) installation possibilities (S60/V70)

[Turbo Country]

I'm in the process of installing my trusty Valentine One RADAR locator in my newly-acquired S60R. I'm hoping to eventually emulate/replicate the near-ideal installation I had for 14+ years in my 850, or at least come close.

I'm looking for ideas, suggestions, and feedback. I found some old SS thread(s) via Search, but the pix are missing.

I was originally thinking that I'd just take a razor blade to the paint on the inside of the windshield near the rearview mirror and somehow velcro mount the unit wherever was(?) optimal, but the standard included suction cup mount (thanks, Warpedcow), up behind the tinted band, just to the left of the painted region, seems adequate (though the driver's sun visor can block laser visibility to the rear, and the V1 is not seeing one laser false alarm to the front that it always saw in the 850, in which the V1 sounded plenty of laser alerts to various benign red light sources; I'm now wondering if the S60 windshield's tinted band filters long-wavelength light more than the 850's).

I have the original/smaller V1 concealed display. I think I'm going to at least start by just sticking it (rubber cement? 'magic' tape folded sticky-side-out? something that won't permanently mar the plastic...) to the shelf in front of the instruments (possibly partially blocking the high-beam indicator) and route a dark gray or flat black wire ("phone cable") over the edge of the shelf and down the steering column.

Unfortunately, this will be rather obvious to anyone standing next to the driver's door and looking into the car. But I don't know of a better solution. Using the top of the cubbyhole to the left of the radio would be less obvious but is also not in the driver's direct line of sight while driving, and even though I'm still not sure what that cubbyhole will wind up being used for, I'm not eager to sacrifice any of its storage space.

Probably it would be better to hang the concealed display from the overhang at the top of the instruments (blocking the turn signal indicators), though that would require more time and knowledge of how to remove the plastic surrounding the cluster in order to route the "phone cable".

The lower right corner of the instruments has potential, but cable routing would still be a bit of an issue, plus being able to reset the clock (time zones) while driving is already tricky enough without that being there:

I'm also still dreaming of the possibility(?) of flush-mounting it something like this (my V1 concealed display is narrower than that one) around the edge of the instruments, though that would involve permanent modification to (ie, a 2 square inch hole in) part of the dashboard:

Now for the best but trickiest part, the remote mute button: in the 850 I removed its simpler wipers stalk and pried the flat back off its length and saw that I could just drill a hole in the end and install a small momentary pushbutton switch and route 2 wires through the stalk and down the steering column. Does anyone know if that is possible on the S60? It looks like it might be: there are 2 small phillips screws on the back of the wipers stalk; I've unscrewed them but the plastic back of the still-installed stalk did not un-latch for me... Alternately, does anyone know if the V70 wipers stalk, with its additional push switch(es?) at the end, could be used on an S60 (if so, does it come with 2 or 3 additional wires that could simply be appropriated for use with the V1?)?

The finishing touch is an OEM-looking kill switch for the V1 power, one that can be accessed without any unusual motion on the part of the driver being noticeable by someone in a car that is directly behind. The logical place for this is one of the unused switch locations in the row of switches below the HVAC controls. I know I've seen pix somewhere on SS that showed nice little black rocker switches that fit perfectly and looked right at home there, but I can't recall where they were or who posted them...


Modified by Turbo Country at 12:19 PM 12-1-2009

[850arrrsaylikepirate]

I too am wondering about doing a V1 install. Don't have the remote display but can easily get one.

I think using the suction cups up near the mirror is good and then running the power cable either to the sun roof for power or down to the fuse box.

Have you come up with any other ideas?

I have seen the remote display setup near where the A pillar meets the windshield, which seems like a good spot, except for reaching the mute knob.

[Chris@Swedespeed]

I had a custom recessed housing made up for my XC90 Sport :

Here is a thread discussing in the R forum:
http://forums.swedespeed.com/zerothread?id=78189

This company has some mounts for the mirror:
http://www.mgtmotorsports.com/...htUsQ

[850arrrsaylikepirate]

Thanks Chris!

So can one purchase the custom display?

[theshadow27]

Granted this was 04 and I could probably do better now (and geez the spelling is horrendous... silly highschool freshman), but this was a buddies R:
http://www.theeshadow.net/carmod/volvos60r001.html

[Chris@Swedespeed]

I was chatting with the guy about doing some for SS members but at the time, I don't think we had enough interest to make it cost effective. I can try to find his email address and you can try contacting him.

I still have that housing so if anyone wants more picts I can shoot some.

[850arrrsaylikepirate]

Thanks Chris, but I may be going in a different direction, not sure though. I don't want to waste your time.

[Turbo Country]

Quote, originally posted by Chris@Swedespeed »

I was chatting with the guy about doing some for SS members but at the time, I don't think we had enough interest to make it cost effective. I can try to find his email address and you can try contacting him. I still have that housing so if anyone wants more picts I can shoot some.

I'm not sure what it is I'm looking at (mainly its depth), but I'm highly intrigued and would like all the info I could get, please/thankyou, including the best way to get the wire from there to down the steering column...

[Turbo Country]

Thanks to Chris for the inspiration!

Here is the latest on progress towards the Ultimate Valentine One (V1) installation. I finally found an easy way to run the wire to the edge of the instruments display: Just inboard of the trip reset button, it is not too difficult to snake (hardly more than push) a wire between the clear plastic covering the gauges and the dark gray shelf surrounding them:

the yellow lines show where the pull-wire went in and had come out

Actually, the pull wire came out to the left of the steering column; I could see it from the driver's seat; then I got under the dashboard (with 2-torx panel removed) and grabbed it...

I then used the pull wire to pull the "phone" cable (4-conductor RJ-11) from the edge of the instruments down and to the back side of the dashboard. There is a narrow space/clearance/gap between the clear plastic cover over the instruments and the dust-catching dark gray plastic that surrounds the instruments. This gap is just wide enough to pass the phone cable through, but (probably) too narrow to get an actual RJ-11 connector through, so you'll either need to be able to crimp one (maintaining original orientation/polarity) back onto the end of the cable once you've run it from the edge of the instruments to the back of the dashboard, or else direct-wire, without a connector, the 4-conductor cable that goes to the concealed display. What matters is that the connector to be used for the concealed display is wired backwards from the connector that's going to the V1:

1 -> 4
2 -> 3
3 -> 2
4 -> 1

The flat phone cable can be pushed behind the dark gray plastic (between it and the clear plastic cover) all the way around the edge of the instrument cluster until it reaches the chosen mounting location for the concealed display:

As you can see, I did not mount the unit perfectly centered. This was done intentionally, for balance, as the arrows are the biggest lights. I hope this will look OK in the daylight. But at night, with no bogeys being reported mile after mile, it's slightly annoying to drive around with that L off-center like that. I used double-sided adhesive thin foam tape to stick it up there. (When I remounted it, better centered, I used a little less tape, back further from the front of the display, with its edge darkened with a black magic marker.)

I am using the access panel at the end of the dashboard to access/conceal my wiring/connections (though the switched power is coming from fuse 28 in the fuse box under the dashboard).

I'm still thinking about how I'm going to get the remote mute switch to the end of the wipers stalk (it's going to be harder to ignore all the V1's flashing and beeping [which has just become less necessary] now that the flashing is within my line of sight)...

Despite this improvement in my Valentine 1 installation, I'm still very interested in the thinner/flat(?) remote display that Chris had made up...


Modified by Turbo Country at 3:57 PM 12-1-2009

[850arrrsaylikepirate]

Quote, originally posted by Turbo Country »

What matters is that the connector to be used for the concealed display is wired backwards from the connector that's going to the V1: 1 -> 4 2 -> 3 3 -> 2 4 -> 1

Looks good

That type of cable termination is called "cross over", which is your standard phone type connection.

[Turbo Country]

Quote, originally posted by 850arrrsaylikepirate »

Looks good

Thanks! (I'm glad you got to see it... It's even better centered.) It took an hour or so of seat time before I got used to the focal depth difference, but now I've kind of tuned it out, out of focus (but impossible to ignore if/when it shows alerts) instead of drawing my focus too near.

Quote, originally posted by 850arrrsaylikepirate »

That type of cable termination is called "cross over", which is your standard phone type connection.

Attention Valentine One direct wirers: what 850arrrsaylikepirate says is true [especially electrically speaking], but do not let that confuse you. If you've ever done a V1 remote display direct wire install before (it's normally [seen as] 2 separate/distinct cables), you know what I mean. That info was provided FYI for those who 1)clipped/recrimped the connector and wanted to verify the polarity (WRT the cable going to the V1) of their work 'cold', and 2)those who don't happen to have a V1 direct wire accessory kit handy.

[850arrrsaylikepirate]

I found this on Ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Custom-THI...00aae

[theshadow27]

Quote, originally posted by 850arrrsaylikepirate »

I found this on Ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Custom-THI...00aae

$95 for a hacked up V1 remote display? If you want to remove the case it's 2 screws. If you want to 90 degree mount the connector it's 30 seconds of plastic clipping... Lame

[Turbo Country]

Cool find , thanks for sharing. I'm bookmarking that, but I wish there was a phone# so I could talk (esp. about the remote mute button; the one I've rigged up for this cruise is effective though crude...) to the source. I'll probably do little more -- except maybe post a pic of my crude momentary switch and/or work on the unobtrusive kill switch -- until I hear more from Chris, though.

[Turbo Country]

Good pirate arrrrr came up with some interesting threads related to concealing the V1 remote display in the rearview mirror, which seems to me like a lot of effort for not a lot of benefit, but still deserves a very honorable mention here before I post here what I've done to my installation...

http://forums.swedespeed.com/z...age=2
http://www.piddles.net/V1%20Install.htm
http://forums.swedespeed.com/zerothread?id=101101

[Turbo Country]

The lack of remote mute switch was really getting to me; I'd started to "tune out" the V1's audio rather than always reaching for the V1. So before heading out on my caR's first big cruise, I cobbled together a remote mute switch. The implementation of this remote mute button solution is definitely not professional-caliber, but it definitely does the job...

Recognizing that all I really needed was a way to momentarily touch 2 wires together at the end of the wipers stalk, I built my own compact wires-holder (aka "switch") for that purpose:

...and connected it to my V1 installation and glued it to the end of the wipers stalk:

The wires-holder (switch) is built of a thin aluminum plate, a piece of clear/translucent polypropylene (which is why the black paint didn't stay put), and a few dabs of glue from a hot glue gun. The polypropylene is bowed out. Pushing it in causes the uninsulated end of one wire to be pushed against the plate, to which the other wire is crimped. The wire I used is thin, with dark brown enamel insulation (like for winding a killer slot car motor). The mess on the back of the wipers stalk is rubber cement, which I hope will rub off cleanly (that's also all that's holding my switch to the end of the stalk).

Having the V1, its visual output device, and its input device located separately, where each can do the most good, is a very good thing. Now all the installation really lacks is a low-mounted [kill] switch for the V1's power...


Modified by Turbo Country at 4:55 PM 2-17-2010

[Chris@Swedespeed]

Here are some more ideas:

http://forums.fourtitude.com/zerothread?id=2512788

[robspec]

nice work guys