In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 17 Dec 2016 07:55:43 -0500, Retired
wrote:
On 12/16/16 11:33 PM, micky wrote:
I have a long foreign trip planned starting in March and plan to rent a
car, maybe a Kia Picante (I think it is) or a Mazda 2.
I will have a phone with maps, most days (If I know where I'm going the
night before and take the time to dl the proper map) and I may have
paper maps of much of the area (I really prefer paper maps.) but there
will be times when I'm just wandering around, on roads that wind and
have barely any relationship to north, south, east or west.
I just installed a rear view mirror with a compass in my own car, and
it's great. I've used the sun or the shadow of telephone poles and
speed limit signs to navigate in the past, but that's really hard when
it's anywhere near noon, or when it's overcast.
The rentacar will probably be this year's model or last year's, and I
think they will be too cheap to have a compass, but they may have a
electically self-dimming mirror... Do you think even these little cars
will?
So I wonder what you think about the idea of taking my rear view mirror
with me on this trip, and changing the mirror for my own until I return
the car?? Likely to work? I don't see how I can get in trouble,
right? Is a cheap, small Japanese car likely to have an electric
mirror. (used for self-dimming)
I planned to take a hand compass, but that might mean stopping and
getting out of the car each time I want to check direction.
My own car doesn't have the standard 6 pin connector which iiuc late
model cars have for the rear view mirror. But it was easy enough to
figure out which 3 of the 6 pins on the compass/mirror were needed** and
make my own adapter to fit my two pin connector, an adapter that I can
take with me. It has two wires that are stripped, twisted, and soldered
so that I can insert them in the 2-pin socket that is meant for the
mirror.
Won't the rentacar have either a 2-pin socket like mine, or a 6-pin
socket that will just plug into my mirror without any adapter? These
things are standardized aren't they?
*No, they are not*
Bummer. So I have to actually go look at Mazda and Kia and maybe even
Fiat and see what they use in the US. Maybe that will help. (They
don't promise you the make of car you sign up for. )
,,,,,,,,,,
If all you need is a *portable* compass, consider an "old-school"
automotive compass such as this one:
https://www.napaonline.com/napa/en/p...551/BK_7305551
I've had ones like this. They barely work. 45 years ago I wrote to
Airguide to ask if I bought a more expensive model would it work better,
and they wrote back to say, "No, they are all the same and only the case
is different" and they enclosed 2 or 3 more pieces of 2-sided tape, so I
could find a better location. Might they would work better now?
I've also used the Radio Shack dashmounted electronic one and that
worked well but reqires power from the fusebox, or I guess the cigarette
lighter. I still have that and it's smaller and lighter than the
mirror. So maybe I should connect a cigarette plug and take that. It
required calibration, which required knowing which direction was north,
which tends to require a compass.
I also have another one, never used, that I gave to a friend. He died
about a year ago at 79 and either his brother gave everything to
Goodwill or when my friend's apartment flooded he had already taken it
to his sister's, who told me I should come and look for, more or less,
whatever I want. To calibrate that one had to drive around in circles.
Also the rearview mirror doesn't require anything more than driving
around in circles a few times, and it figures everythng out.
The posters here gave me the idea to use a cellphone app, and that woudl
be v. good but I don't have a magnetometer in my phone, which excludes
about half of them, and maybe the others need cell towers nearby.