I've purchased the hardwiring kits for the passport 8500 and TOMTOM One and plan on installing them this weekend. I've looked over tons of the previous "how to" posts (thanks to all of you who posted) and feel like I have learned a lot from them. I'm by no means an electronics junkie, but I've been around electronics enough to feel comfortable in taking on this task. I'm going to follow the basic guidlines from http://www.s2000.org/mods/radar for the detector. I like to keep the One in the lower left hand corner of my windshield so I'll just run the wire down once I have the A-pillar trim off. I was planning on pluging the 8500 into the ignition accessory slot and the One into the the constant accessory slot.

So before I get into this, does anyone have any tips?

Thanks in advance.

 

Use fuses... that's my pointer

 

That is a good tip.

No, I don't have anything worthwhile to offer. It won't get much more basic than what you're about to do.

I'm assuming these hard-wiring kits are not like some standard car kits with cigarette lighter plugs on the end of them. If, by chance, they DO have cigarette lighter plugs, you might be wiser to pick up either a) a splitter block with multiple power/cigarette lighter oulets or b) 2 single cigarette lighter outlets so you can hardwire them into the car's fuse panel and plug into them.

Generally I'd recommend that you do not cut lighter plugs off of car kits because from time to time they actually do contain certain electronic circuitry necessary to moderate the power as needed for the device (transformer-esque).

Plus, you'll retain the ability to plug them in in another vehicle, should you ever desire.

 

No pointers really, both items will be a piece of cake to hardwire. I wired my 8500 x50 in about 10 minutes.

 

Thanks for the pointers and comments. Both kits I have are in fact for hardwire applications (although I need to purchase the male accessory connectors) and I believe both have inline fuses. I'll double check on the fuses and make arrangements accordingly if they do not.