Here goes had a little play today and fitted my sat nav in my car. I wounder what you think. I have done it with carpet left over as i did not want to spend money, I think it looks ok and if i stick with it will buy some leather to cover. The only problem i have is that when i turn the engine off the sat nav runs on the batterys ? any ideas.





Neil

 

how is the sat nav wired up?

going through the headunit? If yes then you should be able to wire up the remote start but it all depends on the sat nav device and some may just run passively from the battery meaning you need to either get a switch/relay installed that will be triggered via the remote lead or just remember to switch off the sat nav.

 

At the moment it is pluged in to the cig lighter behind, I was thinking of wiring it to a switch where the coin holders are, You can turn it off if you take out the cup holders but a bit of a pain.
Neil

 

Most ciggy lighters are only active when the car is in ignition 1 or 2 stage so you could easily splice it into the power going into the ciggy lighter.

I am pretty sure the juice going into that is the required amount (between +10v to +12v) so should do the job. You will need to add a fuse to the splice for safety but its pretty simple.

Just need a 2 way block (any ICE shop or electrical/diy place can do those) and then simply split the power between the lighter and the sat nav (fused). That way when you turn the ignition you will feed power into cig lighter thereby turning on the sat nav.

Alternatively (and what I did in my previous car) you can simply locate the the +12v feed that goes into your stereo/headunit. If you pull it out there should be a cable block or as in my case, 1 or 2 seperate power wires with one being fused already.

You need to get a volt meter for this ideally (Maplins etc) and then test the feed going into these wires at different ignition positions. One position will give +5v while the other will give +12v.

Not sure how your sat nav is wired (from your reply I gather it just takes a direct +12v feed from the cig lighter). Once you have found the +12v position and the wire in question (on mine it was the secondary yellow power lead) splice this wire as above i.e. get a electrical power block and split the wire into two so that one end goes into the headunit connector block and the other runs behind the centre console to your sat nav (fix a fuse on this wire as well).

You will probably need to slice up your existing cig lighter power wire and then connect this to the power cable that you have spliced into the existing headunit power wire. The negative/black wire can be connected to the negative wire used by your headunit or to an earth point on your car body.

That should do the trick then, your sat nav will come one at the same time as when your head unit is fed power and also switch off when the ignition is turned off.

To save you hassle, you could go to any good ICE shop and ask them to do it, any half decent audio shop should be able to splice in your sat nav to make it switch off/on with your car ignition.

Hope that helps.

 

I'm actualy suprised somebody hasn't designed a replacement "pod" bit like the centre console gauge pods for like semi permanent fixture of portable sat nav gear!

Hmm... might go patent that one

 

Thanks for all the help, the problem is that when you cut the power off from the cig lighter the sat nav remains on and running of its own battery??? Can you take out the battery ????

 

how do you normaly turn off the sat nav when its running on its own batts? and why cant you do that now its fitted?

 

The on /off button is on the top which is behind the cover. You can do it if you take the cup holder out.

 

That lok to bad, but I can never understand why people want sat nav in a car unless you only drive in citys I cant see the point.

 

try removing the batteries and seeing if it works just off the cig lighter. Then when the car is off (and so the sat nav will be as well), switch it back on and see if the sat nav is okay i.e. if its lost any of its settings etc.