Hardwiring the Cheetah GPS Mirror

**Venusian_Artist** · 06-05-2008, 12:45 PM

Anyone ever try this? What connectors, taps, splicing, in-line fuses did you use?

It seems like you could snip off the adapter part of the power cord (Don's suggestion) and splice away. But has anyone here connected it to an add-a-fuse and left it up in their vehicle full-time?

I like the mirror, but hate having to run the cord under my floor mat and into the cigarette lighter.

**Kayrac** · 06-05-2008, 02:17 PM

i've got my sat radio, gps, and radar detector all hardwired, the RD had it's own hardwire cord, the sat radio and gps don't make them, only cig lighter adaptors, radioshack sells a small 7dollar adaptor that turns those cig lighter adaptors into a 12v pos, and a ground, i use two of them, and 1 add-a-circuit, all hardwired into my rear wiper, which is a 20amp fuse normally, and my add-a-circuit for all those has a 1amp fuse powering those 3 and the original 20amp still for the rear wiper

occasionally when i first turn the car on if i enable the rear wiper for 'interval' wiping, it'll freeze once or twice, i just assume it's from the rd/gps/radio sucking a buncha power, after your driving for 1min or so, it fixes itself and has 0 issues

so you could easily do what you want, just goto radio shack and pick up what i said, can't find it online, but when you see the packaging you'll know it, just say you need a 'cigarette lighter to 12v power and ground', best 7bucks a pop i ever spent

**maty j** · 06-05-2008, 02:59 PM

yes i have mine hardwired VA and into the supply that works the cigarette lighter so i can still use that for gps or whatever. make sure you put an inline fuse holder in though, just use the fuse from the cigarette female cheetah power cord. i picked my fuse holder up for a quid.

for the power i got the multimeter out and found with of the 3 cords were the live and ground that i needed and just cut into them and terminal blocked them up after - obviosly with the fuse holder on the live and white on the ground. you'll need to terminal block the red cheetah wire to the other end of the fuse wire aswell. i think you can buy a hardwire cord from cheetah but id rather keep the cash in my pocket and use what i allready have.

when you wire it in to here its a switched supply aswell so i leave my mirror on all the time and just shut it off using the ignition and it starts up automatically then when the car does.
HTH.
MJ.

**Venusian_Artist** · 06-05-2008, 05:54 PM

Originally Posted by Kayrac

i've got my sat radio, gps, and radar detector all hardwired, the RD had it's own hardwire cord, the sat radio and gps don't make them, only cig lighter adaptors, radioshack sells a small 7dollar adaptor that turns those cig lighter adaptors into a 12v pos, and a ground, i use two of them, and 1 add-a-circuit, all hardwired into my rear wiper, which is a 20amp fuse normally, and my add-a-circuit for all those has a 1amp fuse powering those 3 and the original 20amp still for the rear wiper

occasionally when i first turn the car on if i enable the rear wiper for 'interval' wiping, it'll freeze once or twice, i just assume it's from the rd/gps/radio sucking a buncha power, after your driving for 1min or so, it fixes itself and has 0 issues

so you could easily do what you want, just goto radio shack and pick up what i said, can't find it online, but when you see the packaging you'll know it, just say you need a 'cigarette lighter to 12v power and ground', best 7bucks a pop i ever spent

Thanks. Picked up a couple of them on my break from work.

Newbie wiring question: do I need to use an add-a-fuse for every new hardwire, or can I plug two into one? In other words, can my GPS Mirror and Valentine 1 share the same add-a-fuse?

My spidey sense is telling me that two into the cigarette lighter fuse would prevent the cigarette lighter from working, but maybe not.

**TSi+WRX** · 06-06-2008, 06:06 AM

The Cheetah hardwire kit is what you're looking for.

Splicing the 12V plug's wire would probably work just as well, but I wanted to keep one 12V plug accessible, so that if I were to go on a trip, I could fit this to, say, a rental car.

For my wife's car, I actually ran the cord all the way around, as-demonstrated in the Cheetah instructional video.

For my car, I did "the quick and dirty," and snipped that hardwire's cords only inches from the its plug into the mirror, and spliced directly into the power supply for my autodimming/compass rearview mirror, which I no longer had a need for.