Hey folks, I started a similar thread for my Uniden R3 when I purchased a model 3 in 2018,.....just picked up the highland, awesome car. Has anyone hard wired their radar detector in the new model, and if so, how?
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12V wire tap for radar detectors in Model 3 Highland
- Thread starter surfrasch
- Start date
Soul Surfer
Cancervivor, tech geek & musician
Dumb question, but I'm assuming that you don’t have the 12V tap in the glove box, like I do in my 21 LR, to power my car vacuum and air pump?
no, only have the flash drive port, but that would be cool if it were there!.....I'm wondering if there's another port elsewhere that I'm not aware of?
In the past there were various wires run down the sides of the drivers side door hinge that were hot 12V, could use a t-clip to fasten onto. That's what I did on my last car. The new one doesn't have the 12V in the arm rest anymore, it's in the middle storage area under the phone chargers. It's a good spot for daily access, not sure how easy to access the wires behind it, nor whether there's a better spot to find access. That's really my question, on the previous model many were finding alternative access.
eladts
Member
The low voltage system on recent Tesla cars is 16V instead of 12V, so devices designed for 12V might not work correctly.
Nope, still searching, seems I haven't found the correct person yet. The 12V lighter plug is now directly under the phone chargers.....I had a Tesla service guy at my house last week for Homelink, discussed this with him. He said the phone charger rack is replaceable, ie it pops off some how. He didn't want to do it while there, and we looked more closely and it appears held down by some dash trim. I didn't want to force it out, so hoping someone will post a YouTube video on how to remove this. If we can remove it, then it the wires underneath should be totally exposed and I could tap directly into the wire for the lighter plug.
Also, the service tech told me the wire runs on both sides of the car down the door trim, haven't changed. That's where I found the 12V wire tap on my 2018 model 3.....but honestly it wasn't easy to find, and I'd rather not start pulling the trim off, pawing through wire runs, until I see that someone else did it and identified the correct wire.
Regarding 16V vs 12V.....the lighter is 12V....if I can find that feed, I'm good.
Last option....I'm going in for a service call Thursday, after i got my car I noticed a slight bulging of the rear top glass roof at the middle seam with the front glass.....hard to describe, but I want them to check it out such that I have a record of it. It's the only thing I've found that needs checking on this car, it's just beautiful. Gigantic improvement over my 2018 for sure. Anyhow, I'm hoping I'll have a tech there to my own for a few minutes and will ask him the same thing about removing the phone charger base, how to do it.
By the way, I've also posted on the RDForum web site.....that's excellent for radar detectors and reviews if you haven't seen it yet.
No, it is not. It is still ~16V. (And people have reported that it fries some radar detectors.)
Wow, thanks. I've been running my Uniden directly from the lighter until I can hard wire it, so far so good, but good to know.
A little less than plug and play but making lower dc voltage with a little voltage divider using our old buddy V=IR
ohmslawcalculator.com
.1 and a.3 would get a quick drop with out too much draw. but will generate a little heat. The car circuit needs to have capacity to support. Assume a it doesn't draw to much current.
Voltage Divider Calculator
Try our easy to use Voltage Divider Calculator. Enter any three known values and press Calculate to solve for the other.
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