# Wire to center vent area for GPS



## Bergman (Mar 2, 2012)

I'm planning to mount a Garmin GPS over one of the center vents in a E91. the Proclip mount is simple. The challenge is neatly routing a power cable from the fuse box or other conveniently access switched circuit. Can anyone suggest easy dash disassembly to route the power cable? I don't want to have the power cable dangling in front of the dash or across the top of the dash. is there an easy way to remove a vent to allow fishing the wire or some way to lift the upper dash open to tuck the wire?


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## Bergman (Mar 2, 2012)

As a follow-up, I managed to pull the trim panel and slip the wire behind it. Even working gently, I broke one of the retaining clips. the one behind the start/stop button must have been a bit brittle. Now I just need to find a good ground near the fuse panel. This is easier said than done as all the screws go into plastic.


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## Mech_Man (Jun 2, 2008)

Bergman said:


> As a follow-up, I managed to pull the trim panel and slip the wire behind it. Even working gently, I broke one of the retaining clips. the one behind the start/stop button must have been a bit brittle. Now I just need to find a good ground near the fuse panel. This is easier said than done as all the screws go into plastic.


To the left of my fuse block was a bracket and screw that were metal to metal. Great for grounding my GPS's direct wiring. I'm sure your actual fuse block is different than my 08-335i, but look at the bracket and see if there's anything similar.

Also, it's ridiculously easy to lift up the center console, (at least for my model). Lift straight up to pull off the shift knob, then with just finger-tips pulling the sides of the shift cover, it pops out - dangling with some wires. Then some obvious screws on each side and the entire hump cover pulls out. It doesn't come all the way off without disconnecting some wires, but I didn't need to go that far, so I just set it aside.

And on those wires, I located the one that serves the cigarette lighter and used a crimp-connection to do a direct wire for my radar detector.

I"m thinking that regardless of if you started your wire from the fuse block or from the center console, once you're in the console guts, it should be pretty easy to run a wire up to where you need it by the vent outlet.

Let us know how you get it to work, (pictures would be helpful to the next person).


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