I have hardwired my Valentine in my E36 M3 and it just took about 10 minutes.
You should be able to do the same thing on the E46. Don't bother to take the
wire all the way down the pillar to the dash, that's a waste of time and you
may damage the cover that goes on the pillar. Remember that you have a lot of
wires in the area of the interior light/Sunroof switch that you can tap onto.
On the E46 you should be able to just tap onto the Universal Transmitter
wiring, even if you don't have the Universal Transmitter the wiring should
be there with a little connector on it. Or if you don't want to use the
Universal Transmitter wires, just use a test light to find the wires you
need from the many wires in that area.
The following are the steps I followed. I know my description is long (I
want to include the details) but the actual work really did take JUST 10
minutes.
I snapped out both the interior light and the panel with the sunroof switch
on it. Once those were removed I could see many wires routed through that area.
I mounted the Valentine One using the suction cups high on the windshield
just to the right of the mirror.
I plugged the short, straight (not coiled) telephone type wire into the
Valentine's socket.
I passed the other end of the wire from behind the interior light location,
between the windshield and the headliner. Remember that at this point the
light was removed so I could do this pretty easily. I just pulled down the
trim enough to pass the wire through, and then pushed it back up in its place.
I routed the wire so that it reached behind the sunroof motor and plugged
it into the little Valentine adaptor that has two phone type sockets on it.
I plugged in the wire provided with the Valentine for hardwiring into the
other socket of the little adaptor. This is the wire that has the phone
connector on one end and two open ended wires on the other, with a fuse
in the middle.
At this point I had to find the wires I needed by using a test light, but
as I said before on an E46 you should be able to tap onto the wires for the
Universal transmitter (both +12V and Ground). I read somewhere in this forum
that the Universal Transmitter is powered only when the ignition is on, so
this would be a good place to connect the Valentine to. The Valentine does
not draw much power, so this should not be a problem.
I did not want to cut the cars original wiring so I bought two of those
insulation displacement type push on tab connectors from an auto parts store.
You can use these to tap onto the wires by putting the car's wire in the
middle of the connector and squeezing it with a pair of pliers. Then you
crimp the tab ends to the Valentine wire with the open ends and plug it into
the connectors that you just squeezed onto the car's wires.
At this point I tested the Valentine and it was turning on and off with
the ignition key, as I had wanted. I just tucked away any extra length of
wires and installed the panel and interior light.
I have had this setup working for the past 3 years without a single problem.
It is a very clean installation and you can't see the wire because it comes
out of the right side of the Valentine, wraps around the top and enters
the headliner between the windshield and the interior light.
