Subject: Headrest Monitor Install - (long) Author: eaglecomm : member since March, 2006 : 4077 posts Posted on: 2006-09-07 11:51:53

Hi everyone,
Here was my attempt to install headrest monitors in my 2000 740iL (E38). The seats, and thus headrests, are the sport model, so these may differ from your headrests. These were also power headrests, so that also may be different from yours. I did have the option of having these installed professionally, but I am a DIY kindof guy and I love a challenge. Plus if I screwed them up too much, I would just get another set of headrests and try again. :-) So off we go.
PS. This is really long. I hope I didn’t leave anything out, but let me know if I did and I can at least add it to the .pdf and re-upload the reference .pdf. All in all I am happy with the install, but wish it were as easy as the rain sensor install.

Here is a .pdf in case the pics aren't there in the future.

Now one of the big reasons I decided to try this on my own is that the pros had said they would install them with a wire coming down beside the metal posts from the headrest to top of the seat.. and then down in to the back of the seat. As said, ‘they will rarely be seen because you can have the headrest all the way down to the seat top’. Well, I am only 6’, but I like my headrests about 2-3 inches from the top of my seat for comfort. And I HATE seeing wires. Just looks unclean to me. Even if I only see them when I get in my car.. I know they are there! Another reason is that I don’t like paying people to do work that I think I can do and would benefit from attempting. And since all of this was ‘cosmetic’, and I wasn’t worried that it would affect my car’s safety and capability to drive if it was a little less than professional, I made the decision to do it myself.

Before we begin, a few notes to the readers and potential owners who may attempt this:
- This took me a little more than 2 full, sleepness Friday nights to complete (meaning starting around 10pm and finishing around 10am). This isn’t for the light-hearted and I can only hope it takes the rest of you less time. I was going slow and methodical because with wiring (as you will see in the post), if you mess up 1 wire.. good luck finding ‘the bad wire’ after you have spent hours slicing and dicing tons of tiny freakin’ wires. Take your time!
- Depending on which headrest you get, there are a LOT of wires in the wiring from the headrest to the control unit. Since I had to cut and rewire 2 sets, there were a total of about 21 wires per monitor and these wires seemed hair thin. My fingers/fingertips were toast after each morning.
- Get all the pieces you need PRIOR to starting this adventure. I had to cut, splice and rewire 6 sets of RCA plugs (Red, Yellow and White), plus run wiring from the interior to the trunk (which I did using CAT6 patch cabling so I had a larger number of wires in a smaller cable instead of trying to find really long RCA cables and trying to snake them through miniature openings in seats, carpets, etc.) as well as run a remote IR eye from the dash to the trunk to control the A/V Controller.

Products I was installing:
- (2) Pioneer 6.5” TME-M710 headrest monitors – in looking back at it, you may want to get a monitor that is not so thick in terms of depth. The back was deeper than I expected and thus it sticks out past the base of the headrest a little. Not a big deal for me as most of my riders won’t know the difference (as this was for my future kids who would care less), but something to note just the same. (Cost: $250 per unit shipped)
- (1) AVIR-4 A/V Controller – this is a 4 IN/4 OUT A/V Controller which allows you to have 4 a/v inputs and 4 a/v outputs with switchable outputs that allow you to switch what inputs you want to go to which outputs. This means that Monitor 1 can be showing whatever is connected to input 1 (TV) and Monitor 2 can be showing whatever is connected to input 2 (PS2 for instance). The real cincher for me was that this unit comes with a remote control and an IR eye that sticks to my dash (about the size around of a quarter) and I wired it under the carpet to the trunk so that I can change what the monitors see with the click of a switch. This also means I can switch the AV of my monitor when it is in AV mode (in television mode) to see what the people in the backseat see.. such as a PS2, a movie, or whatever I plug in to the inputs. (Cost: $120 shipped)
- (1) RCA Lyra RD2780 60-gig (modded) mp3/video player – I had this from awhile back and with a little modification to the ashtry area, I was able to make it’s new resting place concealed within the ashtray. (Cost: don’t remember though I think you can get them now on eBay for about the mid $100s and plus another small chunk of change if you want a bigger hard drive). Honestly there may be better ones out there, but this is sufficient for me. Though I don’t like that the controls for On/Off are on the top which means I can’t permanently mount it. Anyways, I digress.

Alright, gimme the good stuff, you say?!?! Well here we go!

Monitor in headrest:
The first thing I decided to do was to get the monitors in the headrest. Unfortunately my camera wasn’t working at the time so I didn’t get any pictures of this part, though I feel that they wouldn’t have done you any good. You basically have to cut in to your headrest, scoop out enough foam to allow it to fit in there snugly and glue it in. I had to cradle my headrests for a moment before I whipped out the Leatherman to make my first incision. They didn’t even see it coming. :-( I made an X carving and started to pull out foam. For my sports, I pulled all the foam right down to the plastic liner on the inside because my monitors were deeper than I expected them to be. They were a little under an inch in depth. When I bought them, I thought they were only going to be about a half an inch in depth. Oh well. In my first attempt to secure them (and I am jumping forward a little here to give you a lesson) I used Velcro strips because the install instructions I was going by said to use Velcro. It turns out that in 100 degree weather, the glue on Velcro tends to turn to mush and out comes your headrest. So the second time around I used the same stuff I put on my Angel Eyes with. It is Loctite Silicon Adhesive (or whatever brand you choose) and so far it seems to be holding up quite well. I also had to shave a little of the plastic interior frame of the headrest to allow the wire to come through and thus allow me to get it in to the metal posts.

Wiring through the headrest posts:
One of my main factors for this was I wanted a clean look with no wires going from the headrest to the seat. I found out that the metal posts for the power headrests I have are hollow and thus all I needed to do was to drill 2 holes large enough for my wiring and fish the wires through. 2 issues found there way to me for this. 1. Both ends of the wire for my headrest were large plugs. No way to get them off and the only superclean way to do it would have been to buy the cables for the TME-770 which are made for small posts (granted I have never seen these in person but that is what it looks like on the website), but of which costs about $70 per cable. So that led me to cut the wires and go about repairing them after feeding them through the metal posts. 2. The metal posts were a bear at first to drill in to. So the easiest way around it was to get a metal Punch and dent myself a little hole in the area where I wanted to drill and that gave me enough to steady the drill bit and get some holes made. I was close to getting very upset that I wasn’t going to be able to make holes as I don’t really have a giant garage of tools lying around that could help me in this endeavor. Be very careful to make the holes only as large as you need them. Remember, this is your headrest support and you don’t want them snapping during an accident. It would also be good to get some grommets and try to grommet the metal post to keep them from rubbing the wires. Though my wires had a metal wire mesh enclosure under the rubber so they should be fine for some time.

As you can see in the pictures below for this section, don’t make the mistake of going in one hole and coming out the other before you get them in your seat. What I did was to tape some string to the end of the cable, feed the string and cable in the post, then pull the string out of the hole and wait. As you can see from the pictures, one hole is at the top being unseen and covered by the headrest and the other is as close to the end as you can get so that it allows as much movement of the headrest as possible. Once you have the string hanging out of the bottom hole, you can now press the posts back in to the seat and once you have the seat backs off the seat, you can see the posts hanging down and the string hanging down. Now you can pull the wire through the second hole. If you pull it through before you get it in the seat, you will realize that the hole in the seatback is only large enough to allow the post through. Remember.. this is for a clean look. :-)

Reconnecting the cut wiring:
Once the headrest is in, you can now reconnect the cut wires. This was mainly time consuming as there were a ton of little tiny wires that needed to be stripped, connected, covered (I used some liquid electrical tape I got at wal-mart) and then a heat shrink. I tried to solder the connections back together, but it just wasn’t working out for me. Doing that in the car was almost impossible. Could just be my lack of soldering skills. Once I had them all connected, I wrapped them in regular electrical tape to keep them together and keep them from being exposed to anything else in the seatback. Good as new! Again I jump forward as I have now finished the wiring and I want to point something out. It turns out that there was 1 small set of wires in the big bundle that I didn’t put back together very well and when I finished, the second monitor didn’t work. :-( I was very upset. I found out that by pressing on each wire, I came to 2 smaller bundles that caused the screen to flicker when I pushed on them.. meaning to me that the connection was not good. I redid those and the screen works perfectly now. The note is that you are working with wiring. Take your time and understand there is a huge risk that when you do something yourself… it might NOT work. You just have to be prepared to try and troubleshoot the issue.. even if you don’t know what is wrong.

Separate personal experience:
One thing I did was to put my headrest where I wanted it (meaning using the power controls to lift it in to place) and then unplugged the power unit for the head rest. This way someone can’t fool around with the headrest and put it all the up and start cutting in to my wire going through the post. If anyone knows how to put a stop or limiter on how high the headrest goes.. please let me know.

Now use these exact same steps for the passenger seat. :-)

On to the ‘control unit’ for the headrest
Mine were square silver boxes as you can see in the pictures below. They had 2 AV input sets (RedWhiteYellow), a monitor out for the monitor plus and a power assembly plug for the power and a slew of other connections that I didn’t use such as foot brake wire, emergency brake wire, dimmer, main unit control and a few others. All I wanted was power and ground.. and they have an extra ground wire that allows it to be used when the car is in motion. The rest were cut off and sealed with the liquid electrical tape. As you can see in the photo, I wire tied the units to the metal back inside the back seat. I have air bags back there that inflate/deflate to allow you to adjust lumbar and back support. I made sure that attaching these on to the back didn’t disrupt the usage. Everything seemed fine. Though I don’t really inflate those often.. if ever. The wires ties hold it pretty securely. Same for the passenger side. Now on to the wiring!

Wiring the CAT6 cable from the trunk:
For the wiring, I decided to use CAT6 cable to run from the trunk to the seats. 1 cable per seat which gives you 8 wires to utilize per seat. From the trunk it came through the area beneath the ski pass. This seemed cleaner than trying to run a bunch of bulky RCA cables from the back, though it did require me to cut more wires and reconnect them. The alternative would have meant trying to get the bulkier end of the RCA cables through small crevices and tight spaces. I had originally wanted to run the CAT6 cable under the carpet through the middle hump and up through the center console, but for the life of me I couldn’t get the vents and then the heated seat panel out of the center console to find the coat hanger (I also tried a heavy gauge wire) that was pushed through from the rear seat. Unfortunately I spent a good hour or 2 trying to go this route and after many cursewords and a bucket of sweat, I decided to run the wiring under the back seat and down each side of the car under the door sills. This was very easy and allowed me to get the cable to a break in the carpet midway up the front seats (as shown in the pictures). I then removed the 4 bolts for the seat and leaned the seat back on to the back seat to give me access to the carpet underneath. You can actually follow that break in the carpet and go under (yes, under, as there is a gap under the seat for other wiring) the bar that the seat slides on it passes over this gap so the wiring doesn’t get pinched. The cable then is easily moved to where the seat wiring comes out of the floor and then connects to the seat connector. I gave myself some extra cable to allow it not to be stretched when the seat moved forward and backward and then wire tied it to the existing wire cable. As you can see in the picture, once you get the wire under the seat, you can follow the other wiring to the back of the seat. If you haven’t already, you need to remove the top and the bottom of the back of the seat. I don’t have these steps in this install, but there are other installs on E38.org that cover this. There is a small pathway in the left side (on both seats) where another wire for the other electronics in the seat slips up and around to the back. You can see it starting in Picture13 below circled with a red circle. I followed this wire and then secured it with a wire tire once all the wiring was complete. At this point you can strip it and I used 4 of the wires to run a full set of RCA plugs. 1 for Yellow, 1 for Red, 1 for White and the last for the ground wires all wired to 1 ground wire. The other 4 on this side were actually used for my mp3/video player which I will write a little about later. The last thing was to wire the RCA cables to the correct wires in the trunk. Remember to write down which colors go with which wires and then of course, it can help to remember which CAT6 cable goes to which seat. If you only have the monitors to worry about, then it won’t matter much. But I had used the 4 other wires from my driver’s seat to carry the RCA cabling from my MP3 player. So I needed the right 4 wires.

Now that the RCA cables are run, what about power for the monitor?!?!
I decided to use the power in the seats for the power for my monitor. If anyone wants to give me horror stories about why I shouldn’t have done this, please let me know. So far it has been a few weeks and my car hasn’t caught on fire yet. :-) Yes, when the car is off, the monitors can still be played for about 5-10 minutes I think. Same as the seats and general interior current of the car as is standard. The tv also runs for that time if I leave the monitors on. Probably because the nav/tv module and interior is still powered for a few minutes after the car is turned off. This doesn’t bother me as I don’t think they will draw enough current to cause any issues starting the car at a later time. The driver side was the easiest as I used the power headrest power and ground as they were very easy to see/use.. red is hot and brown is ground. The passenger seat was more difficult. I had to locate a red/brown under the seat. The red wire was covered in a black bundle close to the door area and near the front of the seat. There were multiple brown wire options. None of the wires in the back of the seat seemed to show positive with my meter. Doesn’t make sense, but it was also about 7am and I had been working all night. I was happy to find what I found!

At this point, if all you had to wire was the monitors, you are done. I had to wire the A/V controller and I will write a little about the MP3 player.

The RCA Lyra RD2780
So I keep referring to it and it is really basic, but I have a RCA Lyra RD2780 which comes stock with a 20Gig hard drive inside. I found a link that tells you how to hack the hard drive and install whatever larger hard drive you want. I think I remember seeing a 120Gig notebook drive lately. If anyone has one or wants the hack website, let me know. I can tell you first hand it works and is fairly simple. Now I have a 60Gig media player that I can record movies to and have a nice little stock of movies for the kids to watch without having to change DVDs (my first one, Alexis, is due December 21st, 2006 :-)). So I pulled out the center console and hacked up (literally) the ashtray holder and now the Lyra fits in the area where the ashtray was. I also took out the lighter plug and wrapped it up and it sits under the center console. The Lyra is plugged in beneath the center console with a car plug adapter. There is no metal around for arcing and the lighter plug is well-wrapped so there shouldn’t be any issues with sparks flying. From the Lyra, I wired a set of wiring from the audio cable down the side of the center console towards the driver seat, through the break in the carpet, under the seat post again and followed the CAT6 cable to the back of the seat. Then I wired the 4 wires to the 4 leftover CAT6 cable wires and that allows me to pass the Lyra audio/video out to the trunk where it will be plugged in as an input to the A/V Controller.

Now to the A/V Controller.
As I wrote in the beginning, it is a AVIR-4 A/V controller. This specific controller allows you to have 4 inputs (each input is 1 Video, 1 Left Audio and 1 Right Audio) and 4 outputs. This means that I could theoretically have 1 for the tv, 1 for my Lyra, 1 for a game console and 1 leftover for something else. The controller allows separate ins/outs PER MONITOR. Which means 1 output can watch/listen to tv, 1 can watch the movie, and 1 can play a video game. Assuming one of those 3 is the front nav monitor and the 2 rear monitors are using headphones. :-) I also have the input for the tv module coming from the A/V controller which means the front nav monitor can show anything I use as a audio/video source. Please also understand that none of this fixes the fact that the audio is not in Stereo as I didn’t use the stereo (for now) of the CD Player. But I have listened to a movie through the regular audio cabling and it sounds just fine for now. This upgrade was mainly for my sanity as my future kids concentrate on the screen and less about distracting me from driving. One of the best parts about this controller is that it has a cable called a remote IR eye which allows you to plug 1 end in to the unit and the other end can be put anywhere you feel comfortable in the car. The ‘IR eye’ is a about the width of a quarter, length about 1.3 inches and about .5 inches in depth. Overall not huge. They also give you a remote control that you point at the eye and change the different inputs to the different monitors. The only hard part here is that the LED indicators which tell what setting the monitor is on and whether the unit is on… is in the trunk. But for the other upsides, for now I can live with that downside. I attached the Controller to the 2 screws on the outside of the CD Changer bracket. They fit perfectly and were spaced perfectly. Then I wire tied the top of the controller around the CD Changer. This lets me keep the entire trunk area free and clear for now of electronics. There is a slight bulge on the left side as the trunk cover gets around the controller, but only noticeable to the trained eye and not an issue overall for me. This placing was secure and the wiring looked clean. Your choice of power/ground in the nav area us up to you to power the a/v controller.

And now for the pictures!!

Picture1: Headrest apart from the post and the inner black housing.



Picture2: After drilling through the post, the wire slides through.



Picture3: The hole on the right is the drilled hole to pull the wire through. The hole on the left is the original hole used by the black stoppers at the bottom of the post.



Picture4: After inserting the posts back in to the seat, pull the string through which is attached to the wire to get the monitor wires in to the back of the seat.



Picture5: Picture of the driver side monitor in the headrest. Not as perfect as professional, but I think it looks just fine.



Picture6: The headrest while I was snaking the wire through the post.



Picture7: After both monitors are in. Next step, pull the lower back of the seats off and work on the wiring.



Picture8: Wire coming up along the side under the door trim and the seat is lifted so the wire runs under the seat at the break in the carpet to wire up to the seat.



Picture9: As the cable is run along the door edge, it will cross under the seat where the crease in the carpet is (in red) and come up where the seat harness wire is shown on the right.



Picture10: As you can see in the middle far right (in red), there is actually a break in the carpet where you can slide the cable underneath to hide it.



Picture11: Now the CAT6 cable comes out from under the carpet with the seat wiring. After you get the proper length, you can wire tie the 2 together if you like.



Picture12: Under the seat, I just snaked the wire back (in red) to the back of the seat and the next 3 pictures will show you where I brought it out. I just followed the other wires.



Picture13: This shows where I brought the CAT cable through to the back of the seat. I just followed the other wiring.



Picture14: Close-up of the last picture. Sorry for the blurry image.



Picture15: Now the wire is through and ready to be placed and connected.



Picture16: Here were all the wires spread out that run to the monitor. I cut these to wire it through the post and now I have to reconnect them. There are a couple bundles in there (the larger ones) that have 4 or so wires wrapped inside them. All in all about 21 tiny wires to reconnect. Very tedious. Take your time!



Picture17: This is a picture of where I located the input box. I wire tied it to keep it secure and checked the lumbar support bags to make sure they inflated/deflated properly for long term fitting. Everything seems secure.



Picture18: Close-up shot of the box. The power cord is not attached though.



Picture19: This is a picture of the AVIR-4 a/v controller and placement.



Picture20: Wires coming along the side that came from the cabin. The white/yellow/red wire set is the remote IR extension I had to create b/c the wire wasn’t long enough.



Picture21: Each of the RCA cables had to be opened up and connected to the CAT6 cabling.



Picture22: Work in progress. Tons O’ cables. :-)



Picture23: Final shot of the A/V controller after all wiring is completed. Notice I have much room for growth for more inputs. Only using 2 of the 4 inputs right now.



Good luck and have fun!!

2000 740iL (9/99 Prod) - Raleigh, NC Jet Black/Black, Michelin Pilot A/S on //MPars, Crystal Corners, Crystal Taillights, Mirror Indicators, Angel Eyes, 16:9 Widescreen, MKIII, Front/Rear Heated Seats, Xenons, TV with In-Motion, Lyra RCA to play movies and MP3s concealed in the ashtray, Alpine headrest monitors, AVIR-4 A/V Controller with IR Remote, ValentineOne, StealthOne, Escort ZR3 Laser Shifter, RevHigh CAI, Wolf Whistle Siren, Aluminum ///M pedals, Quad Brake Lights, 20% tint

My other rides' are a bug and a 750 (Suzuki Katana). :-) Previous vehicles owned (none wrecked): '74 VW Bug, '72 VW Bug, VW CamperVan, VW Karmann Ghia, '85 Toyota Truck, '86 Toyota 4Runner, '88 Toyota 4Runner, '86.5 Toyota Supra, '95 Acura Integra, '96 Acura TL 3.2, '01 Lexus IS300, '02 BMW 330Ci, '03 Toyota Tundra, '96 Honda Magna (750cc). How about Donating to BimmerBoard?

• Headrest Monitor Install - (long) (pic) (url) - eaglecomm 2006-09-07 11:51:53 (29407 views)
  • Nice job. I would have liked to see some pics of how - Magnum 2006-09-08 09:14:48 (497 views)
  • Have any pics of the RCA unit in the ashtray? (nt) - Stu 2006-09-08 04:13:59 (473 views)
    • No, but can take some tonight. (nt) - eaglecomm 2006-09-08 06:13:44 (403 views)
  • Nice install Great writeup - BJames38 2006-09-07 21:53:22 (349 views)
    • Yes, we are enjoying the current peace and quiet - eaglecomm 2006-09-07 22:42:49 (365 views)
  • Congrats on an Excellent Mod and Documentation (nt) - giff 2006-09-07 20:33:27 (374 views)
  • Super nice job! (nt) - JL 2006-09-07 14:28:28 (377 views)
    • Thanks all for the nice words. BmrBoard is great and it feels good to give back! - eaglecomm 2006-09-08 03:58:27 (403 views)
  • Re: Headrest Monitor Install - (long) - ronalds8 2006-09-07 13:48:56 (513 views)
  • Mind Boggling! Super job. (nt) - farnarkler 2006-09-07 13:04:09 (440 views)
  • WOW!!!!! - Kevin Brown 2006-09-07 12:38:50 (421 views)
    • Re: WOW!!!!! - casper740i 2006-09-07 21:49:04 (384 views)
      • Hey Ronnie, we got to get together soon! Ask the locals for a time/place! (nt) - eaglecomm 2006-09-07 21:52:58 (354 views)
    • Careful, I may take you up on it! The engine is something I know nothing about! (nt) - eaglecomm 2006-09-07 13:11:06 (441 views)
      • I see people selling 'parts list' for BMW on Ebay. (nt) - bmw635 2006-09-07 13:42:56 (423 views)
  • Awesome!!!! - Stu 2006-09-07 12:23:22 (394 views)
    • Hahaha.. yeah, it was 6 pages of text in Word and then 18 w/ pics. (nt) - eaglecomm 2006-09-07 12:27:55 (409 views)
  • Thanks for the detailed post. I think I may try this some day... (nt) - rtrn2sndr 2006-09-07 12:22:45 (379 views)