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I got a 10.4-inch flip-down monitor for the “main passenger cabin” — the back seats in the van. Installing it was exciting, seeing as how I had to cut actual holes in my very expensive van to do it. I posted a list of tips elsewhere to help others get through this, and I’m going to list them here as well.

Here’s a clue on the monitor: 10 inches is plenty. I had a 9-inch TV in the van prior to this and it worked fine, too. I considered a 13-inch flip-down monitor for about the same price, but I was told this was all I needed and it was higher quality. It sure is all I needed. It’s easy to see from the rear seats, and it’s HUGE from the middle seat. 13 inches would have been too big.

Basically the install goes like this:

1. Figure out where you want the monitor
2. Mark the spot on the headliner
3. Cut a small hole there (2 inches by 2 inches). You use the hole to run the cable and find the roof beam
4. If you put your monitor in the center, there should be an upside-down A beam. Drill holes into this and use sheet-metal screws to attach the monitor mounting plate.
5. Pop off some of the headliner supports
6. Run the feed/power cables from the side near a door beam
7. Reattach the headliner
8. Run the cables wherever you want them
9. Attach the monitor

Sounds simple enough. But how do you remove the headliner? Where do you run the cables? What do you use to cut the hole? And so on…

Here’s my list of tips:

1. Don’t remove the headliner. Just cut it with a utility knife (carpet knife, razor blade, etc). It is made of 1/4-inch foam material. It’s easy to cut.
   
2. Cut the hole about 1 inch by 8 inches. Make it wide enough to fit your piece of plywood, but it doesn’t need to be any bigger than that. (Yes, you will need a piece of plywood for stability.) I’ve since been told that the plywod is no longer needed. I’m glad I put mine in for the stability it provides, but you can probably get away just fine without it.
   
3. There is a mounting bracket under the headliner on my Odyssey about 8 inches “south” (towards the rear of the car) of the center line between the air vents. If you press on the headliner before cutting, you will probably find a “solid” spot. This is a good place to mount the plywood since it is a metal brace that extends a couple inches down from the ceiling. I mounted here with the provided self-tapping screws and I didn’t puncture the roof. Yay!
4. I used a piece of stiff cable (garage door cable) as a fish-line to pull the power cords. I don’t know what “air channels” I should have used, but this worked so far. Use some “wire loom” to wrap the cable to protect it from the heat on a hot, sunny day.
5. The interior body panels on the Odyssey come off easily. Most of them are “grab and pull” removable. Grab the plastic kick plate on the door “thresholds” and pull it up. Off it comes!
   
6. The side panels are almost as easy. You need to remove the top seat-belt clip for some. Otherwise these are held on by one snap clip and side tabs. The side tabs go under the rubber moulding around the doors. Note: You can get away without removing these by running your cable in the gaps under the rubber moulding. There’s plenty of room in there.
7. The rubber moulding (the door seal moulding) comes off and goes back on easily. Don’t be afraid to just grab it and pull it off. It doesn’t appear to be glued in place, and it reattaches as easily as it comes off. Removing it is not optional. You will have to do it. Don’t be afraid.
   
8. You have to remove this moulding to put most of the interior panels back on properly. Put the panel in place and then put the moulding back on around it. Make sure the rubber edging goes over the plastic tabs on the body panel piece.
9. The air vents snap off easily. Grab the vent handle and pull. It should pop right out. If you knock some of the vanes loose, they’re easy to put back in place.
10. The lights by the air vents come out with a single screw. Pry the clear cover off the light (check the car manual for “light bulb replacement”) and the screw is exposed. Remove the screw and the light assembly falls out.
    
11. The air vent/light housing itself has a snap clip that attaches to the roof. It helps to pull this part down to get more room to route wires.
12. Once the light and vent are removed, pull down on the hole to snap the liner free from the roof at this vent point. (I did the passenger side. I think it’s safer to mount the module on the passenger side. But it’s your choice.)
13. The rubber moulding around the doors also holds the headliner on. Go ahead and pull it off around the headliner so you can pull the headliner down an inch or two. You will need the room so you can run the cable.
14. Run the cable to the hole you made to mount the display in. Do this before you mount the display. Again, I used a stiff cable to fish the line over. I fed my fishing cable it into the hole I cut and pushed it over to the air vent. It helps to have two people on this.
    
15. Feed the cable from the outside edge of the liner, not from the air vent. You need the air vent exposed only to help you guide the cable.
16. Leave enough cable to attach it to the monitor at the ceiling. Go ahead and route the rest of the cable at this point if you want. I routed mine up to the passenger floorboard. It went down behind the door beam panels where the front passenger seatbelt attaches. Then I pulled up the front passenger kick plate (threshold) and ran the cable under the wire clips already under there. I pulled off the fuse box plate piece on the passenger floorboard and ran the cable around the fuses. I hung it out the top of that kickplate to attach to the box later. Leave the panels detached until you are sure everything else fits and is working.
    
17. I didn’t have enough cable to reach the power from the radio. I had to use an extra 18 inches of wire (3 pieces: ground, power, accy) to reach the radio wires. I had an old computer case lying around, so I cut some wires from that. They don’t need to be real thick.
18. I was hoping not to pull the radio out, but I had to anyway. It was much easier than I thought it would be. The dash piece around the radio is not screwed down. It is held on by some more of those clips. Just grab it and pull. Oh, but wait: set your parking brake and put the car shift lever all the way down to D1 first. This gets it out of your way.
19. Which wires are which? I found a wiring diagram on Google for the Honda radio harness. It wasn’t easy to find.

    http://users.rcn.com/dhintz/Michelle/Audio/audio.html
    http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Number/46730#46730

    You want three wires: Ground, Battery and Accy (accessory, or ignition). Make sure you hook the monitor wires to the right places. Don’t swap Accy and Power, for example.

    Pin 2: White/Red is Accessory power (Ignition on power)
    Pin 10: White/Blue is memory backup power
    Pin 20: Black is Ground

20. Now is a good time to check for power and a video feed. Use a voltmeter first if you have it handy. Hook up the monitor and see if it all works before you put the radio back in, before you mount the plywood, before you put the headliner back up. Make sure it comes on and goes off with the ignition switch and radio.
    
21. Don’t forget to snap the air vent housing back in place against the roof after you put it all back together. The snap seems to move around freely, so you may have to line it up just right. It seemed to snap in place easily for me.
22. Plywood: Mount the plywood to the roof mount that comes down a couple inches from the roof. It has some mounting holes already, but these are no good for us. I suspect this is for a factory install job. Anyway, the self-tapping screws go into this piece easily. You may need to pre-drill holes through the plywood and into the bracket. I did — it was the only way I could hold everything in place while working the screwdriver. I used two screws. Seemed like plenty. I was off-center on this bracket (too far “north” towards the front of the car) but it mounted fine. The headliner holds the plywood in place; the bracket just helps hold it all up.
    
    Notice how I made my hole way bigger than necessary. Live and learn.
23. Make sure the power cable is hanging out before you bolt on the mounting plate.
    
24. Mount the mounting plate against the plywood. Use all the screws you can; Try to pinch as much headliner between the plate and the plywood as possible.
25. Attach the power to the monitor, tuck the extra cable in the trough near the back, and mount the monitor to the mounting plate.
    
26. There are some self-adhesive screw hole covers in the box with the monitor. The manual doesn’t mention them. Use them to cover the holes. They double as pads to keep the monitor from rattling against the case.
27. Make sure it all still works, and then put everything back together. The vent, the light, the body panels, the rubber moulding.
28. Oh - Another thing: I ran an extra set of video/audio cables to the rear of the car for connecting to a Nintendo later. I want to mount some permanent adaptors at some point, but for now the cables just hang out under the back seat. You may want to do something similar before you put all the body panels back on.

I hope this helps. I didn’t mean to make this a step-by-step, and I don’t think it is. I really just had a few tips. But once I started writing it, it turned into a “then do this” sort of thing.

My total install time was about 4 hours. That included figuring things out along the way, taking photos, Googling for wire colors, and explaining it all to my 13 year old son. I estimate I could do it (carefully) in about 90 minutes if I had to do it over now.

Good luck!

I have installed the

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2004 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Carputer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.