I'm cross-posting this so R60 owners can find this more quickly. Hopefully somebody finds it useful down the road...

Okay, after a rough weekend of clogging up the board with these posts, I've decided to write up this quick tutorial on the R60 according to my Countryman S R60 ALL4.

In this next picture, you'll see the voltages on the white connector. Both the yellow cable and the purple next to it carry around 11-11.5v. The current and voltage supplied is not sufficient to power a V1 or X50. Bottom line, don't even mess with it - I wasted an entire weekend debugging this.



Here are the do's and dont's of grounding. Remember, do not tap that yellow wire or the purple wire. The ground shown is a proper body ground, and is a full chassis-continuity ground. It takes about 5 turns of a ratchet to loosen it enough to put a spade plug or bare wire under the nut.



Here is where I pulled power from after wasting so much time on those damned 11.5v wires... I ran an 18ga wire down the headliner, A-pillar, and down through the plastic kick panel to the passenger lower fuse panel. No wire is showing anywhere, and there is no hint of wire rattle, etc. I chose to use #34, which is the seat heater fuse. I used a piggyback fuse adapter with a 7.5A fuse for the seat heaters, and a 1A fuse for my V1. With this fuse, the detector only turns on in "ON" position. It turns back off as soon as vehicle is switched off / key out. No delay.



And finally, here's how it looks. Sorry for the crummy iPhone 4 pic - it was late and in the cold garage... I used the visor adapter after bending the hell out of it (bent the front lip flat, and squished the "arch" of the clip.



That's about it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but I'm hoping to save some of you Countryman owners some time. I wish I had my weekend back.

On the bright side, I have a working, good-looking V1 mounted up now.

 

Great post. Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

I have tried to install a Boyo VTR-101 DVR and was unable to find an adequate B+ (12vdc) source even though the unit draws only 200mA.

I thought the Purple wire with the black stripe on the white connector would suffice but it did not. You have it labeled "do not use." I agree.

However, I was considering using a 12V relay and tapping into the heavy red wire (just to the passenger side of the opening in the headliner) as my B+ source and tapping into the purple/black wire to use is as the control voltage to trip the relay.

The nice thing about this, if it works, is that the power stays on for a few minutes after the car is shut down. This would be great to have the DVR running for a few minutes after shutting the vehicle off.

I have a couple of questions;

1). Did you attempt to install a relay as I described above ?

2). In case the relay circuit doesn't work, how difficult was it to snake the wire through the headliner and down the passenger A-pillar ?

I had considered running a wire through the A-pillar but was concerned about the airbag.

Thanks again.

--Hobie

 

Ooh, good question! Awesome application, as well - I've always wanted one of those driving cams.

I couldn't pull a measly 50mA from either the purple or yellow wires. They do, however, put out an 11.5v signal, so your relay idea would work well. Since it would have been the same amount of wiring for me, I just ran mine back down to the footwell.

The snaking of the wire was very easy. I went way overboard and used 16-ga wire. That's silly large for a radar detector, but I wanted to plan for the future (hell, maybe even for a camera). I'd estimate that it took 10 minutes to run the wire.

I had thought about the airbag, but the wire will not stop an explosion like those put out. After all, it rips the pillar cover clear off when deploying. I didn't feel anything unusual when running the wire (no resistance from any airbag wiring). Most R56 users ran the wire down that way, as well.

Here's the last point: running that wire down to the kick panel will allow you to tap a fuse that stays on for the 5-10 minute gap after the car shuts off. Those aforementioned wires up in the roof turn off immediately after shut-off. If you tap the radio fuse, or a multitude of other keep-alive fuses, you'll be all set to go.

Let me know if I can help in any other way!

-Sean

 

Thanks for the reply. Not sure yet which way I'm going to go electrically. I'll post the results when I do.

Best,

--Hobie

 

That's an amazing device and a great idea! Good luck with your install.

 

Thanks. I've got one in my other ride and the video is HD quality. They just came out with a new unit IIRC it's the VTR-104 which has 3 cameras and an SD Card slot for a 32GB card. Awesome.

 

I second that on a great post. Very timely too in that we just took delivery of our 2012 Countryman, and aim to install a Valentine 1 in the next few days. Could you elaborate on how you snaked a wire down the A-pillar post? Also, why not use the Valentine phone cord down the A-pillar and keep the other wiring (hot and ground) below the dash?
Thanks again!
Northendtandem

 

Thank you for the compliment! Excellent question - I'm actually in the process of re-doing it after learning a bit more about the wiring up there.

The snaking of the wire is extremely easy, especially with the phone cord - you simply (yet gently) push the cord flat up past the headliner facing the windshield, then snake around the first bend into the A-pillar. There is a ton of room in there, so just gently run it down along the outer edge all the way down to the point at the windshield.

At that point, you can snake it back toward the passenger door and down the side panel, or (for the more adventurous types) go straight down through the dash behind the vent cover - keep in mind that this requires far more work, though.

I will be editing this guide to reflect the new changes in a few days.

The benefit of having the hard-wire in the roof section is the ability to run a line down the left A-Pillar for a mute wire or remote display. Right now, I'm wiring a mute button that way to make it more of a stealth install.

 

Ok, just got back from my driveway after a successful V1 install with the concealed display. Cleanest V1 install I've ever had, and mucho thanks again to THETA for the initial post. Here are a few notes on my install.

1) First - my install was relatively basic with just the V1 mounted on the right of the mirror just like everyone else's, and the Concealed Display mounted on the steering column. This meant the wiring consisted of snaking 1 provided telephone wire from V1 to the power splitter, and another telephone wire from the concealed display to the power splitter. Connecting power splitter to a ground and power completes the wiring.
2) Mounting the V1 is pretty straightforward as has been mentioned after flattening the V1 visor piece of metal. I did find that I had to push the headliner down a bit in order to get the visor piece to slide past a ridge behind the windshield.
3) Snaking the telephone wire is also straightforward as mentioned - in fact mine is totally hidden and only took about 7 minutes!
4) Snaking the other wire from the concealed display was also very easy.
5) A note on the add-a-fuse: I think THETA meant fuse 34, not 44. Also, fuse 34 is a mini blade and thus requires a mini add-a-fuse. I found one at the Autozone.
6 Ground: I used the left most glove compartment torque screw which was perfect for the V1 ground clip.
Yippeee, I can now really use the Sport Button.

 

Crap, you're right! I did mean 34 - good catch! 44 is a larger maxi fuse.

I'll change that ASAP.

 

Did you guys try to use any of the wires from the black plug under the overhead console? You mentioned the white plug wasn't enough voltage, but what about the second plug up there?

 

All of those wires are not enough voltage.

 

I am trying to do the hardwire in my new countryman but the wire doesn't seem to snake very easily for me. Did you use anything to snake the wire down to the fuse box or can you give me any tips on that part of the process?

 

I just pushed the wire in from the edge. I used a trim tool to just push the wire in, didn't snake or remove any trim pieces to get the wire under the dash.

 

So I've wired this up exactly as you've described it in the first post and for some reason I can't get any power to my Escort 8500 detector. I've been messing with this for hours and can't get it to turn on. I've moved the ground around and it's now back on the bolt in the first post, and I've also extended a wire (red on the telephone cord) all the way to the add-a-fuse I've installed in #34. All of it appears to be the exact same but won't turn on with the car. Did you guys have to do any troubleshooting to narrow down any issues? It should be extremely straight forward - 2 wires - but can't get the stupid thing to work.

If you guys could help me out, my fiance is taking this vehicle across a few states tomorrow so this needs to be buttoned up tonight. Any suggestions of where else I should be looking?

 

THANK YOU TO ALL IN THIS POST! I have an R58 Coupe but my fuse panel is nearly the same and A pillars should also be similar. This is the most useful thread i've seen yet on hardwiring into the fusebox for my R58 (all other posts seem to be pretty old on the webs or for R56s)

 

Thank you this was really useful. I've tapped into the same fuse for my SJ4000.

Used a ring connector for the ground twisted once around the exposed screw securing the fusebox to the body. I was unable to lift up the interior trim around the door panel (have done this previously on an R56 without issue but must just be the way it's bolted in).

I would be interested to know if there's a different fuse that would provide an auto power on when the car is unlocked/power off maybe 5 minutes after the key is turned off. At the minute, if there was a crash, my dash cam would cut out the minute the ignition is turned off. Someone's mentioned the radio fuse but I'm slightly concerned this might drain the car.

I also need to find a lower sized fuse for the 12v > 5v adaptor I've used (only had a 10A spare). I've ordered both a 3A and a 4A - the 12v > 5v adaptor is rated at 3A but I'm not sure if it will blow a 3A fuse.



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screenshot

 

Has my post been deleted?

 

How would we know? No one is following this thread any longer but you.

 

I posted a message earlier that day to say thanks to the original poster, included a couple of images of an SJ4000 fitted, and asked a question with regards to changing to a different fuse that might stay on for a couple of minutes after the engine is switched off.

However, it's no longer appearing on the thread, and my post count is one higher than my posting history.

But thanks anyway,

 

At the risk of finding my posts are auto deleted/moderated due to using IMG tags, this is attempt two. As the OP originally mentioned, this thread crops up on the first page of Google so even though it's not an active thread, hopefully someone may see it that can help.

Hardwired my SJ4000 into the new car, unfortunately seems a bit more visible in the day time than it did in the old car.





Had a right chew on trying to find a left angle USB cable (longest I could find was 1.8m) but it just about reaches towards the fusebox, where it meets a 12v to 5v step down, wired into an 'add a circuit'.

Hopefully the vinyl tape over the logos will make it a bit less visible at night but otherwise that can come off.

From reading the original messages, has anyone that's done this sort of thing since had any luck finding a fuse that will remain on? As I'm using a GoPro clone rather than a dedicated dash cam, it switches off straight after the USB power is cut, as there's no extended timer.

Is there a different fuse (someone further up mentioned a radio one) that would give the camera power for an extra 5 minutes or so, but not anything that would drain the battery quickly or leave me at risk of the camera being left on?