I want to thank "Boom" from Acura-tl.com for the great research and instructions he shared. I got the conversion from him. He geared his conversion for an Acura TL Car. I am going to gear this conversion for Infiniti G35 owners.We Infiniti owners tend not to know much about Mods:)Please see "Boom"'s site for the GEX cable conversion instructions:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/boom3/
For those who doesnt know how the hell this will work, here a simple explanation. What we going to do is make the GEX unit be the "switch". Notice in "Boom"'s instruction, you need to cut the RGB cable included in the GEX into two. One end, the green end, will go the display. The red end of the cable will go to the Nav unit. The GEX then will be in between and will be doing the "switching".The IR board will be need as a receiver for the remote control, which comes with the unit. The IR will receive signal from the remote control and switch between Video modes.
Please follow "Boom"'s instructions. The only thing you need to omit is the part regarding the pinout for the ACura Navigation Adaptor. Obviously we have a G35 not an Acura. Another difference between the Acura and the G35 is the location of their Navigational System. Their system is located in trunk. Ours is located on top of the glove box. Consequently, we need to use long wires to route the signal in front, if we mount the GEX unit in the trunk or somewhere else other then on top or near the glove box. Both Acura and G35 owners still need to wire the IR Board to the front, so we can point the remote control to the IR eye.Keep in mind where you would like the IR. I placed mine near the left middle vent so both driver and passengers can use the remote easily.When making the IR board, I use about a 8 inch set of three wires to extend the IR Eye out from the board for convience of placing the eye.
Once you figure how to do "Boom"'s conversion, it pretty much 80% percent done. The 20% will be instructions for our G35.
Here's a brief summary of what we need to look for in our G35's.(refer to General Setup)Then I will give parts and instructions:
Our Infiniti G35 has 4 wires from the Navigation System to the Screen (Display Unit). The four wires are consider the "RGB+sync" wires. For the not informed, the "R" is for red, "G" is for green, "B" is for blue and the sync is the "stabilizer". Remember in elementary school how you can mix red,green, and blue to make all the colors... well that is how our RGB monitors work.. Back to the point..Our G35 has the RGB wires separated from the sync wire. As you can see from the Navigation schematic (thanks to Brian Lewis) that there is a plug or adaptor (labeled M82 and M83) that you could unhook and separate the connection between the Nav system and the display unit without cutting these wires. Well in the same plug is another wire, the ground. I will explain more about the ground. But for now lets concentrate on the RGB and the sync wires. Notice there is no sync wire in the plug however. The sync wire is a pink colored wire located on the bunch of wire that plugs in the back of the Display Unit from the Nav System. The adapter for that is labeled M40 on the diagram. Okay let move on to the parts and then the instruction.
I used the FM Modulator from the GEX for the sound.
Parts I used:
FM Modulation:
You need to buy two adapter in order to plug the G35 antenna into the Modulator of the GEX. See the Fm Modulation Adaptor Diagram to see how they look like. The G35 used the two prong type of antenna instead of the conventional one prong.
For the IR board, use the capacitors and resisters that Boom's suggested. You dont need the 7805 regulator. Instead we will use the yellow wire from the "Green Connector" of the GEX as a power source. It is +5V. I wrote in more details on the IR Schematics for those that need them.
IR Circuit:
I used a regular bread style board for the Circuit. Mine is about 1inchX1.25 inch in size. No fancy board needed. I pretty much order everything for Digikey.com because I could not find the LM1881 chip locally,except for remote eye.
1. One LM1881 separator chip from DigiKey.com $2.78
2. One 680K ohm resister-680KH- ND $0.05 each
3. Two .1uFD 35VDC Tantalum Capacitor.-P2053-ND 0$.39 each
4. One 100uF 35VDC Electrolytic Polarized Capacitor-P10294-ND $0.63
5. One IR eye from Radio Shack-276-640 $1.49
6. About 15-20 feet of Cat5e from HomeDepot. About $.25 per feet.
7. IC socket for the LM1881 -RadioShack-276-1995A $.90 . Use this to solder to the board then put the LM1881 chip on afterwards, so you dont damage the chip while soldering.(see picture)
Parts for the GEX to the front Nav and Display:
1. 40 feet of Shielded Alarm/Audio cable from Homedepot.It is a grey cable with 4 wires inside-red,green, black, and white shield with aluminum and a bare ground wire.-$.18 per feet.(See Photo)
2. About 20 feet of a cable containing two 18 awg wires, bought from Homedepot also. As long as they are stranded and 18 gauge . The two wires will be use for the 12V ACC and the 12V constant powerlines to the GEX.-$0.15 per feet.(See Photo)
3. Two spools of 20ft single 24AWG shielded audio wire from Radio Shack-part#278-512-$3.50 per spool.
4. A male 4 pin PC board Housing from "Molex". Molex part # is WMLX-101. Two female housing from Molex.See picture. I got mine at Fry's Electronic in Component department. Hope you guys could find them if you guys dont have a nearby Fry's. About $5 total.(see picture)
4. A package of "Tap-in" Squeeze Connectors 22 to 18 awg wire from Radio Shack -64-3053 $2. One package of same type for 18 to 14 awg wire.HomeDepot $.80. You could get the same at Radio shack but it's $2. I could not find the 22 to 18 awg from Home Depot though. They only had 18 to14.(see picture)
Unless you are lucky you probably have to order from Digikey.com. I had my shipped Priority post for a total of $18 for the IR board parts.
Instructions:
1. Remove the Nav/Radio Unit console. Refer to the attached file.Noticed 1 to 7 steps. Just remember to do the reverse when reassemble.
2. Locate the M82/M83 adapter.It is located on the right side of the radio unit near the glove box. It is tape to a tube of wires. The adapter is white with red,black, white and grey colored wires. See photo for the general area of the adapter location.
Unplug the adapter.
3. Using the 40ft Alarm/Sound wires, you need make two set of wires that runs the RGB wires from Adaptors M82&M83 from the NAV and The Display unit to connect to the "Green" and the "Red" Connectors from the GEX. The length depends on where you want to put the GEX. Trunk seems to be best.
4. Solder the Male Molex to the wires that goes from the Green Connector to the Display Unit female M82 adaptor. Solder the M82's (solder the Male Molex plug that leads to the M82 wires NOT the M82 wires) black wire to the red alarm/sound wire, the white to the green wire, and the red to the black. The white will not be use. The bare wire in the shield alarm wire is connected to the grey ground wire. Do the same to Female Molex Housing to the Nav M83 adapter(again not the M83 wire but to the Molex Plug that leads to it). (refer to the Navigation Diagram for color of wires)
5.Once you determine the correct length, solder the RGB wires from the GEX "Green" and "Red" Connectors. "Green" going to the Display and "Red" going to the NAV. The bare wires from both will be connected to the bare shielding around the Green and the Red connectors. This is important or else you will get interference.
7. Now is the scary part. YOu can either cut the pink sync wire from the back of the Display unit or the back of the Nav Unit. Display area is much easier to work with. Make sure to leave good lengths on both ends. Now you essential have two sync pink wires.
8. Using the one spool of Single shield audio wire from Radio shack, solder the pink wire that goes from the Display. Using the other spool, do the same to the pink sync wire that goes to the NAV. Route both wires to where the GEX Green and Red Connectors are. Connect the Nav Pink wire to the Red connector and the Display pink wire to the Green Connector.
Now you should have a total of 5 wires from the units infront to the GEX. You now have a total of 4 cables containing these wires.
9. Now we need to make the wire to the IR board using the Cat5e cable. Cut the appropriate length from the GEX to where you want to place the IR eye. Solder 4 wires inside the Cat5e cable to the "infared output","BackPorch Output","Vertical output", and the "Sync Input" of the IR board. You need to utilize 6 out of 8 wires of the Cat5e cable. Choose any 4 you want but remember and write down the colors for reference later.Solder the same four wires to the relative colored wires to the BackPorch,Vertical, Sync of the GEX mention from Boom's diagram.You essential connecting the board to the GEX with a long Cat5e wire. The IR board needs +5V and a ground. A yellow wire from the "Green" Connector of the GEX outputs +5V. Using another two wires of the Cat5e cable, connect the yellow wire and the ground of the IR board.
10. Using the cable with two 18 awg wires, solder the red wire to the 12V ACC wire from the GEX. Use the black for the yellow 12V constant wire of the GEX.
11. Route the two wires up front. I tapped the 12V acc wire to the cigarette lighter 12V wire in the middle arm rest using the 22 to 18 awg tap. I tapped the constant 12v to the bigger yellow wire from the back of the radio unit using the 18 to 14 awg tape. .See 12V Constant Diagram. I have to push down the black rubber tube that contained this yellow wire to tap it correctly. The black ground wire from the GEX need to be grounded. There is a 1/4 hole just in front of the spare tire. Use a 1/4 size screw. Tap and attach the green "parking brake" wire from the GEX to the same ground, that way you could watch while driving.
Don't forget to route the FM modulator too.
Basically, that is it.. What I did was route all the RGB/Sync wires on the right side of the car and I routed the the IR cable, and the power cable to the left of the car. If you coming from the trunk, route the wires along the sides of the back seats, then under the front of the seats, and then through the center arm rest console, and then up front. There is plenty of room. The back floor board carpet will cover the wires up.
Make sure you solder and tape everything!Also I use 1/32'' shrink tube ($1.20 from Fry's Electronic)to easily insulated the pins to the Molex adapters that goes to the M82 and M83 plugs.
Good luck....E-mail me if any problems.
