Heat shrink each lead -- be sure to remember which wire is to the inside conductor and which is to the outside conductor since you want to mate them up the VES correctly. I happened to use yellow for the inside wire and black for the ground wire. 3/32" (initial size) heat shrink worked nicely.
Next I added 3/16" (initial size) heat shrink tubing over both and twisted the wires. Since the video signal is alternating current, the twist may help reduce any RF interference. (Actually I have no idea -- it just looked better and kept the wires neat.)
Now solder the leads from the video out cable to the exposed wires on the VES. I started with the black lead. This is small, fine soldering, take your time. If you are soldering in the car, you may want to keep a damp rag handy to neutralize any errant solder bits. And be sure to handle the hot pencil soldering iron carefully -- pre-establish a place to set it down when not in use and don't wave it around the car since it will instantly melt or scorch plastic trim, headliners, seats, dash boards etc. And be sure the place you establish is not something you will back into or step on. (Don't ask.)
Now tape up your connection. I found cutting the tape into short narrow strips helpful.
Okay, did you notice that something changed in the pic above? Yes the white wire broke. I probably cut a few a few strands when I was stripping it and I moved it around a fair bit when I was soldering the black wire.
So I had to strip more off each end, and solder in the yellow wire from the Video out cable. I did not take pictures of this (3 AM and a wee bit ticked at myself for letting this happen) but it is not as neat as the black wire.
Here's a pic of the resulting tape blob--hopefully yours goes better.
I then ran the video out lead to the drivers side of the VES and taped it down in a couple of places to keep it secure. The are no factory pre-drilled holes to route the cable to the bottom of the unit. I chose to route to the drivers side, away from the cooling fan in the VES to avoid RF interference wherever possible.
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In my case because I had the VES out of the car, I routed the video-out cable to the bottom of the VES unit and connected it to the video-in cable of the 2nd screen. As part of another project, I had pre-run a cable from the Nav2Go unit to the back of the console. Tape the two connectors together so the outside edge of the RCA plug does not contact anything and tape the edge of the VES mounting bracket as it is a bit sharp so it will not damage the video cable.
If you have not removed the VES, the video-out cable will be hanging on the driver's side -- you can then plug it into the 2nd screen cable as needed (tape the connectors) and be sure to tape or tie-wrap the cables so they don't get caught in the crap we all put in our consoles.
Now is the time to test. Reinstall the VES (if you removed it) and put a DVD in the VES. If everything goes right you should see something like this (I used Grinner's Moddin' Art (what else?) as my test DVD. Cool eh?
another dual display pic:
If everything works correctly, simply re-install the VES cover, put the tools away and enjoy!
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