DIY: Blinder installation and radar detector hardwire
 

I had a new Blinder laser jammer installed yesterday, and also had my Valentine-1 hardwired at the same time. I decided to take some pics along the way to help out anyone thinking of doing either one or both of these things. Please note that I did not do this all by myself; one of my best friends is a professional mechanic and he came over to help me with this. Also, this is only intended to be an outline of the main steps, not a detailed log of every tiny thing that needs to be done. I highly recommend that you have a professional do this if you're not an experienced installer yourself. Altogether, this took us about 4 hours. But keep in mind that we were figuring things out as we went along, so that took up considerable time. Now that we've done it once, it wouldn't take as long to do another 370Z.

We started with the Blinder installation. The first thing we did was locate the wiring and get an idea of where we'd want to route the wires from the transceiver units into cabin. We figured that we'd want to come in on the passenger side, as that's where we did it on my 350, and the 12V plug is on that side as well. So step one is to take out the floormat and pull up the carpeting. You need to remove the sill cover on the side (by the kickplate).

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Note that under the carpet, there's a styrofoam block that the factory glued the carpet to. Just pull the carpet away from the block. Take the block out and set it aside (be careful not to break it). Under where the styrofoam was, there's a thin layer of insulation.

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If you pull it back at the right-side corner, a little hole in the firewall is revealed (right to the left of the wires).

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We then turned our attention to mounting the two front transceivers of the Blinder. Due to the dimensions of the mounting brackets, our options were quite limited. We opted to mount it on the lower rung of the grille. Note that we had to cut out the little vertical pieces (which don't actually support anything).

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Here are pics of one of the transceivers already in the mounting bracket. Notice that we had to cut the right side of the bracket mount in order to get the transceiver to sit as far to the right side of the grille as possible (this is the right side transceiver). Also notice that Blinder includes a little level thingy that you insert into the transceiver so that you get get it perfectly level.

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Here's a better view of where we installed the transceivers. And we just taped two stir sticks together to get a straight edge, then used it to make sure they were both parallel to each other.

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So now we had to route the wires into the cabin. We jacked the front end up and took off the front passenger-side wheel. Then we removed the fender liner. Notice the hole in the middle of the third and fourth pics below. That's the same hole we found on the inside of the cabin when we pulled the carpeting back.

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We simply zip-tied the transceiver wires to the existing wiring harness that is already running along the top of the fender.

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Each transceiver comes with its own grommet attached. We cut one of them right off, and cut a slit in the other, the idea being that we'd just put both wires into a single grommet, and therefore the same hole (which saved us from having to drill a second hole through the firewall).

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Insert both wires through the hole and pull through, then put the grommet on and push it into the hole.

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Next we secured the two wires (which we wrapped together with electrical tape) against the fender using Gorilla tape. Notice that we routed the wires over the 'rail' through a little divot in said rail. We also applied some sealer around the grommet/hole area. The second pic below shows the wire from the inside, after it has been pulled through.

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Now, I have to apologize, because at this point I didn't take very many more pics; my friend had his head under the dash working with all the wires and I couldn't get a clear shot anyway. The important thing is locating the switch wire, and to do that, all we did was remove the AC adapter and trace its wiring. The yellow wire shown below is the switch wire.

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What you do is tap into the switch wire, and hook up the interface box for the Blinder, as well as the plug unit for the Valentine-1. The transceivers plug into the Blinder's interface box, as does the little alert LED and speaker. All of that just gets tucked neatly away behind the side panel, then it's just a matter of putting all the pieces that were pulled out back in neatly. As for the radar detector, just tuck the wire in along the top into the headliner, and pull the cover back away from the A-pillar and route it down along inside the A-pillar. Be careful when you do this because the curtain airbag is in there. Make sure you don't obstruct it with the wire from the V-1. Then plug the wire into the power unit, which is tapped into the switch wire. Here are pics of the finished result.

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Hope you guys find this useful! Oh, and note that if you click on these pics, they expand.

Awesome! Thanks for the write up. :tiphat:

I'm surprised you put the blinder down low. I was thinking about putting them up higher. I don't know what the coverage is for each, but I can imagine it's only 2 meters at most.

There are three levels to the grille. The top level is a no-go due to the tow loop section. The little section that pushes out gets in the way, and besides, you probably wouldn't want to block that area off anyway, lest you actually have a need to insert the tow loop one day. We opted not to mount on the middle level because the mounting screws would actually push through the bottom and stick out, and it'd also make it harder to conceal the wires. That leaves the bottom level as the only other option. Actually, we did consider drilling into the the actual bumper to attach the bracket mounts. It sits in behind the bumper cover and up a little. That would have left the transceivers sitting behind the top level of the grille. But again, the tow loop section came into play -- we would have had to push the plastic piece out, which would have made it funny looking, and then the actual hole where you screw in the two loop would still be blocked. And we were also concerned that the transceivers would be recessed in too far. Judging by the diagram in the instructions, they aren't supposed to be recessed into the grille at all -- they want the transceivers lenses in line with the front of the grille. As for 2 meters of coverage, the Z is only 1.3 meters high from the ground to the top of the roof. Finally, you can test this thing by zapping it with a TV remote, and I can tell you that it works fine with the transceivers mounted down low, because I tested it.

^^^ Awesome. Good to know. I wanted to get the 4 receiver setup to secure the back of the car too, but I just couldn't figure out where to put them. I assume you thought about that too?

Thank you so much!

Are you saying that the V1 wire went under the headliner, or not?

Yeah, I thought about it, and same thing -- I couldn't figure out where to put them. I used to use the K40, and you could mount it right onto the license plate with the license screws, but you can't really do that with the Blinder. I mean, even if you went with just 1 transceiver, the thing is a lot deeper than the K40, so it'd jut out like 4 inches and look silly. I did discover something interesting though -- the width of the transceiver is the same width as the rear fog lamp area! It would fit perfectly in there! Thing is, we'd need to figure out a way to nicely cut off about 2 inches off of top of the cover. Plus, I'm sure the wiring harness and plug that sits behind the cover would be an issue as well. But it's a thought. Anyway, cops around here never hit cars with laser from behind (knock on wood), so I figured I don't really need coverage back there.

It did. To be more specific, there's a thin gap between where the top of the windshield meets the front edge of the headliner. You can push the wire into that gap without any tools or anything. Yet the gap is thin enough that the wire won't just fall back out. It was the same in the 350.

Nice write up, It looks GREAT!

your good!

Excellent!

great writeup. one question: why didnt u use the k40 again? my brother has it installed on his car and it seems to work great. I was thinking about getting one for mine as well. Is the K40 the best?

I did some research and the Blinder jams virtually every laser gun out there, whereas the K40 does not. Now, where I live, the K40 never failed me once. But I started thinking about it and figured you know what, let's plan for the future and get the one that jams the most laser gun models now. Because with my luck, the cops in my area will upgrade/switch their laser guns to a model that the K40 doesn't jam!

I also found out something interesting about K40. The model that they sell now is newer than the old version that I've been transferring from car to car for the past 10 years. The current, new model, has this 'feature' where once you come within 200 yards of the laser gun, it automatically shuts off! Their rationale is that you should have slowed down to the speed limit by then, and by automatically turning off, it'll allow the cop to get a reading on you, which in turn won't cause him to suspect that you have a jammer. Okay, I guess that makes sense if you're driving through a state where these things are illegal. But personally, that's a feature I can do without. The Blinder has no such feature. It does have a manual off switch if you feel the need to turn it off in order to avoid suspicion though.

thanks. i just did my research on both. i will be getting the blinder next week! thanks for the DIY