Hard wiring a portable GPS

I'm looking at getting a portable Magellan or Garmin GPS unit and hard wiring it to my '11 Tacoma. I'm wondering if anyone on here has done so and what location did you choose to mount the unit. I wanna do something a little custom and I don't want visible wires. I was thinking about mounting a unit above the rear view mirror?

 

Have you considered upgrading the stereo to one with navigation then you can kill two birds with one stone.

 

Ya, I've considered it as I had a Kenwood nav unit in my Dakota. I'd just hate to lose the factory Bluetooth.

 

Eddie, this is the route I choose and have had zero problems with it.

Portable GPS install.

 

Hey, thanks for posting that. I'm looking at doing something along those lines.

 

I took the dash apart and tapped into the factory cig lighters, and ran an aux cig plug down under the dash and had it come out kinda near the e-brake. That way I could still use the garmin adapter, which I had to do because the traffic receive was built into the cable.

Then I ran the wires up and had them come out right between the pillar and windshield. Ran the wire along the bottom of the windshield to the center where the gps is just suction mounted to the windshield.

 

Be careful cutting wires and wiring directly to the battery many GPS units are 5 volt and the voltage regulator is in the lighter plug. I removed the radio run the wire through the defrost vent grill to the GPS stuck to the glass. I took one of the blank switch plugs in the console out and ran the MP3 player wire in the center arm rest through it too.

 

Here is a thread about hardwiring - I just bought a kit from ebay for $15

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/51313-how-easy-gps-hardwiring.html

 

X2 Same setup works just fine