Retrofit A Caddy IR System On My Car ?
Hi Bright One,
Unicorn is certified to drive with NV equipment. He reports that it requires training, is difficult to do well, and pretty much requires you to drive slowly 8-(
As far as the flashlights on the bumper goes, I'm already up to six headlights (the car came with two) and I feel that it's maxed out. If I put on more they'll be hanging off funny or start to interfere with airflow to the radiator. If I put in brighter bulbs I'll start melting the housings, I know 'cause I've tried. It was a pain to mod the car to hold the new fixtures well, so I don't want to replace them.
I had speculated that with IR sensitive goggles I could put on a bloody great IR spotlight on the front, any wattage I like, use that to drive with, and have a couple of winky-dink little fourty watt low beams on the front just so other people could see me coming. Well, it would work but I no longer think it's worth doing.
What Saaby pointed out, the Cadillac heads up night vision system , sounds like the most promising idea. The Caddy sensor is actually thermal IR and it uses a HUD on the dash to project a small black and white image on the bottom of windshield as you drive, you use it like a second rear view mirror, only it looks ahead, not behind.
To do this I would have to go down to a Caddy dealer and get them to sell me a replacement sensor and HUD unit. I have an intuitive feeling that if I told them it was so I could retrofit my scooty little japanese car to be like a Caddy, they would show me the door...
If I did get the parts I would have to figure them out. Wanna bet they don't come with instructions? The sensor has a warm up period, and it only comes on with the headlights. I would have to duplicate the plug into the wiring harness and the harness too. There's no telling what the signal line is without looking at one. I also don't know if the sensor is 12 volt or if it has its own power supply. Since the system has only been around three years I don't think I'll find any in the scrapyards.
I can get another line through the firewall on my car, but it's a pain, you have to lay upside down under the dash with sweat running in your eyes and hope that you measured the clearance from the brake line to where you're drilling juuuust right...
The Caddy people, if my souces are correct, will not even try to retrofit this item to a Caddy, not even a late model one that could have come with it, you get it factory installed or not at all. Does this mean it's hard to do right, even in the right car?
Assuming I got the sensor in and working, now there's the HUD to deal with. My windshield should not have the same shape as a Caddy windshield, and the dash-to-windshield distance should also be different. I'd probably have to pull the dash to mount it and that's an all weekend affair all by itself.
The NV option seems to add around $2,000 (US) to the price of the new car so I assume the parts are somewhere around that price to "replace" at the parts counter. I could afford it, but I've got to think it through some. I'd hate to blow 2K on useless hardware that I couldn't make work or destroyed the first time I ran 12 volts through it....
I've been Googling around and so far haven't found any references to anyone retrofitting a HUD unit into a different vehicle, so I don't even know if it can be done.
It's an interesting challenge, no?