I’ve had my Escort passport x50 in my car now for about a year and a half, mounted high above the rear view mirror, but just finally got around to hardwiring it. Since I wanted to make this look very nice and unnoticeable in my car, I put a little extra work into it.

I went to best buy, and bought the hardwire kit for my radar detector. What you get is the main unit, that has a mute button, power indicator, and alert indicator, and the wiring that is needed to hook it all up (power, ground, and detector wire).

Hardwire kit:


I took the main unit apart, putting the sticker off to the side. Then I pulled the interior panel out of my car where I wanted to install the hardwire kit. I drilled 3 holes to match the 2 led’s and mute button into the interior panel. Then I had to sand down the face of the hardwire main unit so that everything would show nicely, and the mute button was usable. I then lined up the main unit behind the 3 holes I drilled, and epoxy’d it all around to hold it in place. Wired it up, and put everything back together. The last thing I did was put the sticker of the hardwire kit back over the 3 holes I drilled.

I have it wired to a source that only gets power when the car is on, but I also added a switch to it so I could turn it off if I wanted. You can see that in the following pictures as well.

This is the final product. I know a lot of people have done this, and I think it looks great. Sorry I didn’t take any “in progress” pics, but if you have any questions just ask, it really wasn’t too difficult.



And the x50 located above the rear view mirror, just below the tint strip

 

Why does it look like that PASSPORT Hardware kit is factory..and part of the center console?

 

Did you read any of what I posted on how I did this?

I took the panel out of the car, drilled the 3 holes for the 3 functions of the hardwire kit (mute button, power & alert indicators). Then I epoxy'd the kit on the backside of the panel, and placed the sticker on the frontside.

 

sweet

 

That's hot, man! Very nice work.

Do they make a smaller radar-only box? Would be nice if you could mount the actual sensor behind the rear-view so you couldn't see it at all. Having the radar up top and also a display somewhere else is just kind of a wasted effort, in my own opinion. If you could hide the radar itself, it would be brilliant.

But very good work on the install

 

Well there are special detectors like one that escort makes that has remote sensors, and a display screen you mount anywhere. The valentine one has an optional remote screen, but as with mine, you still have to have the radar detector somewhere. Now you could put the detector inside the the headliner, and it would still work, but you wouldn't be able to pick up laser, only radar.

 

Very clean install and it looks great! I mounted my x50 in the same place as you but I mounted the mute button so that it is on the steering column. It makes it a little more accessible than reaching up to manually mute the detector. I'm liking the factory appearance though!

 

Yea, where the mute button is here is very accessible.. I have an automatic, but still keep my hand by the shifter, so I just have to reach over a little bit to tap the button.