Aftermarket Navigation System

Today’s America is like a cartoon background, constantly looping into an endless mixture of gas stations, strip malls and McDonald’s restaurants. This may sound like an excuse for me always becoming disoriented so I will admit it is very easy for me to get lost. I have little sense of direction. Eventually, the solution to my problem was obvious. I needed a navigation system. Using my wife as a navigator gets pretty old -particularly on her-, not to mention that when she’s not around, I’d have to carry Google Maps direction printouts, which is fine and dandy but it’s cumbersome and too gets old pretty fast.

When thinking about a navigation system, features and ease of use for the money was absolutely one of the most important things I was looking at. I could not justify spending several thousand dollars on an aftermarket system, mainly because I am pretty satisfied with the stock audio performance and I don’t see the need to do away with a perfectly good OEM head unit with an mp3 6-disc in-dash changer. The OEM navigation system was my other possible option but it’s still rather expensive and not as user friendly or feature packed as some of the aftermarket options out there.

The last remaining option was to go with a portable solution; the advantage of this is two-fold: First, you are able to remove the system from the car and minimize the risk of having it stolen. Secondly, it can be used with different vehicles if needed be. One also has a greater variety to select from and prices are dropping every day. Unfortunately, this option has a pretty ugly side to it. And when your car’s aesthetics are important to you, this is a big one. More often than not, these things end up looking like a very obvious foreign contraption, protruding out of the windshield or wherever they’re mounted on. Very utilitarian looking certainly, but often clashing with a well designed interior, like the MkV GLI happens to be.

After researching my options as thoroughly as possible, I bought the Nüvi 350. This Garmin system has a lot of advanced features and one of the quickest and most accurate chip sets in the market today (meaning it can acquire satellite signal extremely quickly and can retain it even on places where older systems would lose connection (such as parking garages or indoors – read more on SiRF technology). It is also extremely portable and low profile which was important to make it as unobtrusive as possible. However, I still wanted the cleanest install I could achieve without making the unit appear out of place and without sacrificing functionality; problem is that short of cutting a custom cubby hole on the dashboard somewhere and molding it in, there are not a whole lot of options. Often people resort to hiding it somewhere like the ashtray which actually makes the unit almost look built in, but somewhat sacrifices functionality making the unit lay out of your field of vision which is something I wanted to retain, if at all possible.

I decided to do away with the dashboard vent/diffuser and installing the European/Canadian market dash tray. For cars with Climatronic like mine, this is supposed to be impossible because the light/temperature sensor for the cabin is mounted on the diffuser and the tray has no way to accommodate the sensor. Indeed this has proven to be the most difficult hurdle to overcome when taking on this little project. The tray eliminates any space underneath it replacing it with surface space for the tray itself, which makes accommodating the sensor underneath short of impossible. The issue is, while the sensor itself is small enough, the sensor housing is a rather bulky piece of translucent dark red plastic (which makes it appear almost black) which allows certain degree of light to pass through therefore telling the car whether it’s daytime or nighttime. This data is then used by Climatronic to adjust the temperature inside the cabin. This makes the bulky housing an integral component of the sensor itself. Due to this, I have yet not figured out a way to retain sensor functionality and build it into the tray. The sensor/housing combo is just too large to sit at top of the tray, not to mention it would look hideous. I resorted to tucking the sensor inside the dashboard. It is still there, it works and I get no fault codes (which I would have gotten had I left it unplugged) but Climatronic now thinks it’s permanently dark. The consequences of this are basically non-existent, as far as I’ve been able to tell. The system operates pretty much in the same manner as before with the exception of the initial blast of air that Climatronic is known for upon starting the car during the day; now the system starts at the same speed setting as it was left upon shutdown. I really don’t mind.

The hard wiring process was rather simple had it not been for the aforementioned tragic error. Running the power chord to the fuse panel was not as hard as I anticipated and made much easier thanks to the earlier installation of the mini-glove box that sits under the headlight switch. I also ran the OEM Auxiliary audio input cable from the back of the head unit, to the tray itself. I then drilled a couple of holes on the corner of the tray to accommodate the wiring.

The adhesive disc for the Nüvi mount was then glued to the tray itself, right in the middle of it. This was the best position possible to allow free motion of the unit within the ball joint mount and maintain it aligned within the drivers’ view. Previous to this, I traced the outline of the disk to the rubber tray mat and then carefully followed that outline with an X-acto knife. I also cut a small slit on the mat right over the previously drilled holes to allow the power and audio cables to pass through it but also allowing the rubber mat to act like a stop to prevent the wires from sliding back and forth.

In my opinion, the results are the best I could achieve. The tray has sufficient enough depth to hide the mount from view by the driver or the passengers, making the silver-edged Nüvi appear almost as if it was floating atop the dashboard. It is within perfect field of vision while driving, making it easy to glance over for directions. It is also within arms length for easy operation. The tray itself still has sufficient storage space for small items even though I don’t use it for anything else. The audio input allows me to connect the Nüvi to the head unit and hear directions through the car’s audio system. Since the unit itself is also an mp3 player, you can use it to play music and still get directions through the car’s audio system; the music simply mutes for a second while the Nüvi announces directions.

Overall, I am pleased with the results. The navigation system itself is still portable (I have an extra cigarette lighter power chord) while remaining as best integrated as possible without going into custom fabrication or dashboard surgery. Many thanks to Rony for taking the time to make the pixel version of my GLI utilized on the custom start up screen.