Anonymous said:

OK just went out and tested it, the Illiumiation says 'OFF' and I tried the headlights and it didn't change the drivers view at all!

I know for sure the 2 cables are connected ok because I soldered them together!

I know this will take a while, but when it's dark out (or maybe you can get into a dark garage or something) do the same thing. Turn on the headlights and see if it changes the driver's view screen or the illumination signal.

Or try taking a big blanket and putting it on top of the dash board. 03Vic is probably right, there is a light sensor that realizes you are doing this during daylight and doesn't illuminate the interior lights.

So you can try to fake out this sensor or you can wait till tonight after dark and do the same thing. Once you see that turning on and off the headlights is changing the driver's view on the nav screen or the illumination level (high/low or maybe it's off/on, I can't remember) in the hardware connections screen. Then try switching the headlights right after starting the car.

Or there might even be a "problem" with some cars with these "intelligent" headlights where even if it was dark, it might take a few seconds to realize it and flashing your lights when powering up the car might be a logistical impossibility. You can unhook the illumination line from the car and just put a toggle switch on the illumination wire from the Z1 if you want to try it. Just make the line go to 12V and back to "floating" or no connect.

Thanks ducatiboy your a star.

Will wait till dark as I don't have a garage (its been turned into a bedroom :) so will see how I get on tonight but to be honest with you I used Sat Nav last night on the way out to eat and I had complaints about it being to bright in the car so I don't think its sensing the change either way!

outatime said:

Thanks ducatiboy your a star.

Will wait till dark as I don't have a garage (its been turned into a bedroom :) so will see how I get on tonight but to be honest with you I used Sat Nav last night on the way out to eat and I had complaints about it being to bright in the car so I don't think its sensing the change either way!

Well thank you. As for your illumination problem that's not a good thing. If you are using it at night and it stays bright. Either you didn't solder what you thought you did or the harness for the mustang of that year is not lableled correctly. If your harness isn't labeled correctly you have a couple options.

1. Easy way, just wire up a dip switch and leave it under the dash and connect the ill wire to the Z1 to 12V or nothing depending on how the switch is set. Then when you turn on your headlights you will have to flip a switch and dim the radio too.

2. go on some mustang forums or maybe the12volt.com or something and see if anyone has any knowledge about the illumination wire for your exact car. I would be careful about mentioning bypassing a Z1 cause other people on other forums can be a little sensative about this kind of thing. I would ask about the illumination wire on your new radio not dimming the radio and if there is something special about your car which needs to be hooked up differently. Worse case you can find a wire that feeds the headlights and tap off of that and go though my circuit... I might not run that directly into the Z1, cause I don't know what's in there, but you could just tap off a supply line going to the parking lights or something. As long as it goes 12V when the lights are on and ground when not (or floating cause my circuit has a pull down).

Or, finally, it is hooked up correctly and even when dimmed, it's not really that dim and with people used to seeing little radio buttons lit up and now you see an entire 7in screen lit up, it might have dimmed and you still thought it was too bright. The real test is to look at the connection screen and see if the illumination changes or look at the driver's view, the sky switches to a night sky. The backlight will dim a little bit too but it's not as noticable as the "sun setting and the stars coming out".

If you wired the dimmer to the Z1's illumination wire, thats your problem.

The Mustang has Illumination and Dimmer. The dimmer wire is a variable voltage wire controlled by the headlight switch to dim the dashboard lights.

You want the illumination/headlight wire going to the Z1, not the dimmer.

ducatiboy said:

edrock200 said:

Just an FYI for those who asked how long this trick works. Drove about 600 miles today to canada in one 5 hour leg and one 4 hour. The bypass worked the entire way, dvd video, navi, etc fully functional.

SWEET!

Yeah, it was, and the best part is the navigation didn't miss a beat, never one wrong turn and great guidance. I'm EXTREMELY pleased. The only thing I noticed that was slightly odd was it appears the Z1 uses exits as mile markers. I exited a highway onto a rest stop and when I got back on it realized I was back on track but didn't populate "mileage until next event" nor the next road until I passed the next exit on the highway (which wasn't part of the route.) It appears highway exits/entrances are key to it's distance calculations.

When I turn on the headlights in the daytime the interior lights do actually come on, but it doesnt power the dimmer wire on the radio.

03Vic-HPP said:

When I turn on the headlights in the daytime the interior lights do actually come on, but it doesnt power the dimmer wire on the radio.

Weird... maybe you have 2 wires like JasonH said:

JasonH said:

If you wired the dimmer to the Z1's illumination wire, thats your problem.

The Mustang has Illumination and Dimmer. The dimmer wire is a variable voltage wire controlled by the headlight switch to dim the dashboard lights.

You want the illumination/headlight wire going to the Z1, not the dimmer.

Either way, if your unit dims at night and not during the day no matter what you do and if you get my circuit it won't matter. What ever weirdness your car does to keep that illumination line low during the day, it won't matter. As long as it happens for you at night just stick my circuit in between it and the head unit.

Thanks guys for the help

Going to have a dig around tomorrow morning and see if I can't get this all sorted out, have posted a message on a mustang forum to try and find the correct wire to use but from what I can make out its a wire from the headlights switch that goes from 0V to 12v when the lights are on/off.

So the orange/white z1 harness wire is ok for 12v ? I don't want to fry anything!

Thanks again.

I just had the Z1 installed, but I have a 03' GMC Yukon with the 'Auto' headlights. The trick doesn't seem to work for me - do you think the auto headlight feature has something to do with it?

outatime said:

Going to have a dig around tomorrow morning and see if I can't get this all sorted out, have posted a message on a mustang forum to try and find the correct wire to use but from what I can make out its a wire from the headlights switch that goes from 0V to 12v when the lights are on/off.

It might still be the correct wire. When it's dark and you turn on the headlights does the Z1 dim? Does the driver's view change the sky? I don't know how the illumination wire works for every car. Or exactly which wire it is. Does the illumination trigger the Z1 at night time?

outatime said:

So the orange/white z1 harness wire is ok for 12v ? I don't want to fry anything!

It might be the correct wire. It might not be. If it's registering "low" or "off" on the illumination line, it should be fine. You have at most 14.5Volts in that car somewhere. And that line is a sense line. You could probably hook just about anything to it and not fry it. And if you haven't fried it by now, it's probably not going to hurt anything.

GMC-DC said:

I just had the Z1 installed, but I have a 03' GMC Yukon with the 'Auto' headlights. The trick doesn't seem to work for me - do you think the auto headlight feature has something to do with it?

This does seem to be a common question or worry when this trick doesn't work. And it's not the "trick" cause it works on the bench. It's either something weird with your car or a problem with your install.

The "auto" headlights as I see it doesn't mean that you don't have a head light switch and the lights only come on based on it sensing the light level around. From my understanding "Auto" lights for all cars mean you have a light switch, you can set the lights to OFF, PARKING, ON or AUTO.

Auto lights like this will only cause a problem if you are using a PAC TR7 to do the headlight flash pulse, cause the Z1 is looking to see your headlights off when it boots up, then about 3 seconds after power is applied to the 12V switched line, the headlights come on for a second and then off for a second or 2. Then they (the lights) can do anything they want to. Why this is so, is some people hooked up a TR7 to fake a flash on that line when it was powered up. If you have auto headlights and if they are on auto and if it's dark out, when you turn on your car, that line will go high (due to the headlights seeing it's dark out) and the TR7 flashing won't do a darn thing. So you need to put a second TR7 to not let the fact the lights are on as soon as you turn the key signal come through to the Z1 till after the first TR7 has compleated the flashing.

If you have auto headlights and you DON'T have a swtich to turn them off, on parking, or auto, then this doesn't apply to you and you have a car that functions different than I have ever seen (and that is very possible).

If you do have auto headlights and you DO have a switch, just turn the lights to off. Then when you turn on the car, switch the light to parking, and then off again.

This is all based off the ILLUMINATION line (labeled ILL on the wire in the back of the Z1). It doesn't really matter what your headlights are doing as long as that line is floating (or grounded) when it's booting up, then it goes to 12 volts for a second and then back to floating or grounded.

We can get into DIMMER vs. ILLUMINATION but I only have a "dimmer" line in my lincoln Avaitor which powers all the interior lights using a signal not just 12V high. And the Z1 picks that up as well. But just connecting it to 12V is enough to try this.

Before even trying this little trick. Turn off your lights. Turn on your car, let the unit boot up. Go to Settings - Hardware - Connections. And look at that Illumination selection. Turn on and off your headlights. Does that go from OFF to ON (or LOW to HIGH, I can't remember which it says)? Turn your lights off, does it go back. Or go to the "Driver's View" in the navigation screen. Does the sky go from blue to night with stars.

If it doesn't (and you are doing this at night time) then there is something wrong with your Z1 or your installation of it.

If it doesn't and you are doing this in bright daylight, you might have a car smart enough not to dim your radio when it's light out. Try this at night or put a blanket over your dash (or where ever your senser is) to make it think it's night time.

If it does (the sky changes or the illumination changes value) then your timing is a bit messed up. Power on the car with the key, wait 3 seconds, parking lights on, wait a second and 1/4 ish, parking lights off.

Trust me, this trick works. But the timing can be a little hard to get the feeling of. Or you might have a car with weird interior wiring. If you disconnected the ILL line from the back of the Z1 from what ever you have it connected to now, and connect it to a toggle switch, and the other side of that switch is just 12 Volts from the battery. And you use the toggle switch instead of the head light switch it will work. I just don't know how every car out there uses it's ILL line (when it goes on or off or what ever).

For what its worth, on my car I have to turn the headlights on, just switchin on the parking lights does not work.

Hey thanks for the info edrock and ducatiboy, I do belive that when I turn on the parking light it kinda dims, I know when the hid comes it def dims so I'll gues it will work.
I also had a another question I just realized today that my factory radio has 2 pins that pulls the radio out instead of taking apart the dash ? I don't think it has a cage like other double dins, so would this be a problem for the install of a avic Z1 if I get one and one if someone decides to break into my car 1 day to easly steal it lol
I'm also relieved they sell wiring kits for my car so I dont have to cut the wiring. Thanks a million guys

I didn't use a din cage, I don't know if double din ever does as this was my first double din swap. My stock HU had two brackets that I removed and bolted right to the z1, fit perfectly.

just got my z1 installed the other day..i have a 06 f250 and the headlight trick works everytime..thx for the info

So I finally got this to work and thought I'd post to possibly help others that may have been confused as well. What I think I learned (may not be right but works for me):

You must disconnect your ebrake wire on the Z1 if you want to use this full time. Basically what I notice is that when the system detects a change in the ebrake (if you have it hooked up correctly) it will remove the bypass and relock the unit. This isn't a big deal I guess if you release your ebrake before you start your car and never use it again for the remainder of the trip, but generally isn't the order I do things in. I was trying over and over to get it to work by leaving the ebrake up, doing the "trick", and then letting the ebrake down. This did not work for me. I'm not sure if others just make sure to put down their ebrake first? I read some reports of that here but then others said it didn't seem to matter. So I'm just reporting what I found.

The timing appeared to be a bit tricky for me personally. Now that I have the hang of it, I seem to be able to do it every time but at first I Think I was waiting to long and trying to do it too early. I'm not sure but doing three short pulses right after the unit first displays something seem to give the best results.

I can verify that the one flash on the parking lights DOES continue to work after 3hrs. of driving. Pb is grounded. At star-up...flash once during the initial start-up screen.

Anonymous said:

I can verify that the one flash on the parking lights DOES continue to work after 3hrs. of driving. Pb is grounded. At star-up...flash once during the initial start-up screen.

Do you still get the ebrake warning if you use this bypass and ground the ebrake?

I dont get the warning when I do the bypass..

outatime said:

Thanks guys for the help

Going to have a dig around tomorrow morning and see if I can't get this all sorted out, have posted a message on a mustang forum to try and find the correct wire to use but from what I can make out its a wire from the headlights switch that goes from 0V to 12v when the lights are on/off.

So the orange/white z1 harness wire is ok for 12v ? I don't want to fry anything!

Thanks again.

I'm fixin to be in the same boat here, (once I get home). I plan on installing the Z1 in my 05 GT Vert. As such, I am watching this thread for some answers. I'm not really after getting DVD usage as much as full Nav functionality while moving.

The 05+ does have a light sensor, (it backlights the instrument cluster which varies with outside illumination). But no daytime running lights or auto lights.

Hack works for me every time. Thanks guys.

as a side point, at night I dont have to "flash" my headlights, if I wait to turn my lights on until the screen is booting up, it unlocks the unit. I have only done this twice, but it has worked both times.

Also I have a ford f-350 2006 and when I first had it installed, the dimmer on the Z1 didn't work (at night it would blind me). when I took it back they said that my factory harness does not have the correct wire to hock up to. (They told my why but I forgot what they said). So they ran a illuniation from the Z1 to a factory wire from the parking lights and everythng works great. Hopefully this might help those of you that are having problems with late model Fords.

hey guys....back again here. i am going to attempt to connect my Z1 Illum. wire to my 05 F150. Is there anything special that I should know? Or is it as simple as connecting the 2 ORANGE wires???

thanks

sorry forgot to log in...i posted above comment

southcounty said:

hey guys....back again here. i am going to attempt to connect my Z1 Illum. wire to my 05 F150. Is there anything special that I should know? Or is it as simple as connecting the 2 ORANGE wires???

On my Lincoln Aviator (should be a similar wiring scheme) it was just that simple. I just connected the 2 orange wires.