Quick, question, I'm picking up my new (to me) Mk3 L&K on Thursday and I want to pop my dash cam in it before the long drive home with it. On my old car it was wired directly into the fuse box so was only powered when the ignition was switched on, however I don't want to waste time doing that again and running the wire through the A pillar and across the head liner before driving home, so will be plugging in the power socket. Is the power socket then powered down when the ignition is switched off or not? On the load car I currently have (Nissan Qashqai) it is. I won't have the time to wire it in permanently until sometime over the weekend, so will I need to remember to unplug it or not until then?

Can't help you regarding the MK3 but I'm glad to read that you have found a suitable replacement for your old L&K.

 

Did the insurers eventually pay you the correct amount to buy a similar age & condition vehicle?

 

I realise you may have chosen to buy a newer one which cost more but did they leave you out of pocket?

 

I assume you will also have lost the remainder of your insurance year with the total loss and will have to reinsure, did they up the premium?

3 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Quick, question, I'm picking up my new (to me) Mk3 L&K on Thursday and I want to pop my dash cam in it before the long drive home with it. On my old car it was wired directly into the fuse box so was only powered when the ignition was switched on, however I don't want to waste time doing that again and running the wire through the A pillar and across the head liner before driving home, so will be plugging in the power socket. Is the power socket then powered down when the ignition is switched off or not? On the load car I currently have (Nissan Qashqai) it is. I won't have the time to wire it in permanently until sometime over the weekend, so will I need to remember to unplug it or not until then?

 

As far as I know 12v round sockets (cigarette lighter size)  are permanently live and the USB sockets are powered down when the ignition is turned off.

 

 

Yes, permanent 12V.

55 minutes ago, J.R. said:

Can't help you regarding the MK3 but I'm glad to read that you have found a suitable replacement for your old L&K.

 

Did the insurers eventually pay you the correct amount to buy a similar age & condition vehicle?

 

I realise you may have chosen to buy a newer one which cost more but did they leave you out of pocket?

 

I assume you will also have lost the remainder of your insurance year with the total loss and will have to reinsure, did they up the premium?

After a long battle with the other parties insurance company, it was passed back to my insurance company, who took up the claim on my behalf. The other company only valued my low mileage car which was meticulously maintained with everything by the book and in good condition, at £8,200 after my excess was taken into account. It was impossible to get another L&K with similar miles and condition, same age was coming in at £11.000.

 

My own insurance provider had my car recovered from the body shop and delivered back to me, and they appointed another assessor, who came back with a similar amount. I was however able to talk with the assessor and I had to explain to him the significance of what the L&K meant to the value of the Superb, almost doubling the entry price point to the Superb range. He went away and looked at what comparable cars from dealers were costing, and I also supplied him with 3 Autotrader listings for similar cars with considerable higher mileages.

 

To his credit he came back with a value of £9,700 which I accepted as I had located a MK3 L&K, in the same colour as my old one and very good condition but almost double the miles, but the price reflected the miles at £10,500 and had an FSH and with no problems on MOT histories other than tyres and brake pads nearing their limits. These have all been addressed with 4 top-notch high performance tyres and new pads and discs all round, cam belt and water has just been replaced. The dealer has ordered and replaced N/S rear light (cracked lense) and a N/S headlight had only half the LED DRL working, these took a time to arrive from the factory.

 

The insurance policy still had 3 months to run and to be honest, the premium has increased, but only marginally for the remaining 3 months, despite the car being 3 years newer but less powerful engine (150 HP as opposed to 170), so I'm pretty happy at this stage which I'm told is because insurance has generally gone up anyway. Have to see what the renewal quote for next year is going to be.

 

During the entire process I have covered almost 2,000 miles looking at other Superbs trying to find one that ticked all the boxes and I have come across some real dogs and also a dealer from hell, but that's another tale.

Edited 30 May, 20233 yr by Graham Butcher

You can move the fuse in the upper or lower position behind the glovebox.

 

this will allow you to have a ignition live or permanently live fuse  

Keep your eyes on Copart and the DVLA and you will see what it was sold for and how quickly its back on the road probably to an owner in the dark.

 

Then you will see just how little the insurers actually have to pay out after deducting the excess and the salvage income. It's no wonder they are so keen to write a car off, a car which clearly can be repaired very cheaply given what the chop shop will have paid Copart, their labour and parts and the then reduced resale price.

 

And yet they seem more than happy to spunk away on car hire fees, perhaps that is the key to the write offs that clearly are not, much quicker for it to be assessed a write off from a couple of photos and no physical inspection and to make the derisory pay out offer (at which point the liability for the car hire ends) than to have the vehicle in the repairers for months on end & perhaps refused by the owner a couple of times till put right what they screwed up, all that time the car hire costs are racking up.

2 minutes ago, J.R. said:

Keep your eyes on Copart and the DVLA and you will see what it was sold for and how quickly its back on the road probably to an owner in the dark.

 

Then you will see just how little the insurers actually have to pay out after deducting the excess and the salvage income. It's no wonder they are so keen to write a car off, a car which clearly can be repaired very cheaply given what the chop shop will have paid Copart, their labour and parts and the then reduced resale price.

 

And yet they seem more than happy to spunk away on car hire fees, perhaps that is the key to the write offs that clearly are not, much quicker for it to be assessed a write off from a couple of photos and no physical inspection and to make the derisory pay out offer (at which point the liability for the car hire ends) than to have the vehicle in the repairers for months on end & perhaps refused by the owner a couple of times till put right what they screwed up, all that time the car hire costs are racking up.

Yeah, I was advised to not accept the first offer of a pay-out, so I didn't and they flatly refused to budge or talk about what it would actually cost me to be in a similar position to that I would have been in had the accident not happened, they seemed to think I was being unreasonable, almost as if I had caused the accident and therefore should shoulder some of the cost WTF. When my car was retrieved from the body shop, the driver of the transport truck could not believe that the car was a write-off, it drove OK, and no error messages or warning lights, just body damage. Anyway, the car was taken away again by Copart last Tuesday and with 24 hours it appeared on their web site with sale close date of midday Monday by which time it had reached £1,750 and the reserve had not been met. Then they put a message on site to say that it been sold subject to approval (usually means they are asking the bidder to pay more) and then it was listed as sold, so it potentially sold at £1, 650 loss plus fees.

 

The annoying thing is a fellow member here was looking to buy and repair it for his Son but his application to register with Copart was not processed in time, so he was unable to place a bid.

 

The hire car was an automatic and was supposed to the equivalent sized vehicle to a Superb (really??) for 59 days was probably somewhere around the £100 a day mark so that's a further approx. £5,900 on top of the pay out that has to be factored in and if I really was to push it maybe the cost of the fuel used in my search for a replacement car and my time? I was not really going to accept anything less than another L&K, it was after all what I original chose and for was for a reason, I did not want accept a lower spec car.

I cant recall what was the original thread, in respect of your vehicles value and what it likeley sold for through Copart would you mind posting one or more photos again showing the damage.

 

The car hire costs are sobering, surely it would have been cheaper than that to repair your vehicle in a timely fashion?

5 minutes ago, J.R. said:

I cant recall what was the original thread, in respect of your vehicles value and what it likeley sold for through Copart would you mind posting one or more photos again showing the damage.

 

The car hire costs are sobering, surely it would have been cheaper than that to repair your vehicle in a timely fashion?

The thread and photos can be found here.

 

On 31/05/2023 at 06:16, ApertureS said:

You can move the fuse in the upper or lower position behind the glovebox.

 

this will allow you to have a ignition live or permanently live fuse  

Interesting - could you pass on a little more detail please ApertureS.........

1 hour ago, Berisford said:

Interesting - could you pass on a little more detail please ApertureS.........

Where Fuse 40 is, the white square below it, if you move the fuse into that position then it becomes ignition live.

On 01/06/2023 at 18:33, ApertureS said:

Where Fuse 40 is, the white square below it, if you move the fuse into that position then it becomes ignition live.

No, that does not happen on my car, my son moved the fuse down into the white one and it was dead. The actual connection is switched via the ignition, but it seems that the other connection the fuse is then connected to a switched live and a unswitched live, you need a fuse that picks up the 2 outer connections and leaves the centre connection (unswitched) unpopulated.

 

Threading a dashcam cable down, through the A pillar and then through the dash in the corner and into the fuse box seems to be impossible. The fusebox, for starters in a really stupid location, you have to be a contortionist to get to it and then the tolerances are so tight that it is impossible to get the mini USB plug past to fusebox and the only place go attach the ground cable is to splice it into the glovebox light. 😟

 

Has anyone actually hardwired their dashcam in, if so how did you do it?  On the mk2, it was a doddle, fuse box on the end of the driver's dash, pop the cover off, run the cable down the A pillar, straight into the fusebox, attach ground to one of the bolts there, pop the cover back on, and you're done.

2 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

No, that does not happen on my car, my son moved the fuse down into the white one and it was dead. The actual connection is switched via the ignition, but it seems that the other connection the fuse is then connected to a switched live and a unswitched live, you need a fuse that picks up the 2 outer connections and leaves the centre connection (unswitched) unpopulated.

The centre pin is the feed to the cigarette lighter - the upper pin is for always live, the very bottom pin is for switched live. You dont want to be messing around with what you are saying to do as you are backfeeding an entire Terminal 15 or Terminal 30 circuit which can cause big issues...

 

 

2 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Threading a dashcam cable down, through the A pillar and then through the dash in the corner and into the fuse box seems to be impossible. The fusebox, for starters in a really stupid location, you have to be a contortionist to get to it and then the tolerances are so tight that it is impossible to get the mini USB plug past to fusebox and the only place go attach the ground cable is to splice it into the glovebox light. 😟

There is not a whole lot of room to run the wires but there is more than enough to  run them easily by running over the top and back down. The fusebox is extremely easy to access and takes around 10 seconds to unclip the slow release and the 2 upper clips to drop the glovebox door and expose it fully. And there are many many ground points in the area and the glovebox light is not one of them, you have the entire metal dashboard frame with around 3 big bolts and a few smaller torx screw mounting points all in the glovebox area and the A pillar area.

 

 

2 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Has anyone actually hardwired their dashcam in, if so how did you do it?  On the mk2, it was a doddle, fuse box on the end of the driver's dash, pop the cover off, run the cable down the A pillar, straight into the fusebox, attach ground to one of the bolts there, pop the cover back on, and you're done.

Its no different on a MK3 - run wires down the A pillar (properly!! and not over the airbag) remove the dash end piece and flap the glovebox down to find and attach to the suitable grounds and fuse. 

Edited 7 June, 20232 yr by ApertureS

3 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

No, that does not happen on my car, my son moved the fuse down into the white one and it was dead. The actual connection is switched via the ignition, but it seems that the other connection the fuse is then connected to a switched live and a unswitched live, you need a fuse that picks up the 2 outer connections and leaves the centre connection (unswitched) unpopulated.

 

Threading a dashcam cable down, through the A pillar and then through the dash in the corner and into the fuse box seems to be impossible. The fusebox, for starters in a really stupid location, you have to be a contortionist to get to it and then the tolerances are so tight that it is impossible to get the mini USB plug past to fusebox and the only place go attach the ground cable is to splice it into the glovebox light. 😟

 

Has anyone actually hardwired their dashcam in, if so how did you do it?  On the mk2, it was a doddle, fuse box on the end of the driver's dash, pop the cover off, run the cable down the A pillar, straight into the fusebox, attach ground to one of the bolts there, pop the cover back on, and you're done.

 

Lol, that is totally not the case!!

I'm not sure how u r getting ur "wires crossed"!!!

 

I've hard wired my dashcam to the fuse box, and it was very simple and straightforward - down the A-pillar and into the fuse box behind the glove box.

The hardest part was putting the A-pillar piece back in its place.

 

The first time I wired it to a switched fuse location, #47

I then changed it to a permanent power source because I put a power magic pro.

 

Fuse box......

 

 

Grounding....

 

 

Wiring in the A-pillar...

Yep, I did have my wire tap into position #47 as this location would have been for the rear window wiper if it was fitted, as you did JR RS, I also had a nylon draw tape threaded down though all the packing at the bottom of the A pillar and managed to get it into the area in front of the fuse box. I had already checked to see if the fuse 47 was ignition switched, and also the white connection as ApertureS seemed to indicate that was ignition switched, which it was, but fuse 40 will not fit into that location and make a connection to the 12v power plug as his instruction to Berisford seemed to indicate.

I taped the USB plug to the draw tape but it would not pass between the fuse box and the thick plastic frame behind the glovebox. I also could find anywhere to connect the negative lead. For some reason, I had completely discounted removing the end cap from the dashboard, which would have given me easier access to the fuse box and the negative connection points. 

 

I'll have another go tomorrow at installing this dashcam, I still think that the fuse box in a stupid place though, I'm too old for all these contortionist acts to install / repair a bleeding fuse. 

 

Edit, I just had a look at the Power Magic Pro, its a shame that it outputs 12v, my Next Base dashcam operates at 5V, I like the idea of having the option of constant operation, especially when parking in certain areas.

Edited 7 June, 20232 yr by Graham Butcher

Ok then, today as promised I had another go at the dash cam install any you were quite correct, removing the end of the dash did make a lot of difference, but it was still a bit of faff getting the power cable through the very small gap between the fuse box and the rear of the dashboard itself. All the excess cables are all coiled up and cable tied to the metal work behind the end cap. Now there will be no more forgetting to plug the dash cam, sods says that you are far more likely to a fender bender when the dash is not plugged in thus making it harder to prove who is to blame. 

 

I have been using dash cams for about 20 years now and every time I have been involved in crashes, the camera had shown they were not my fault and thus kept my NCD intact. If anyone hasn't got one, then I encourage you to go out and get yourself one, well worth the investment.