dak911

I think I remember reading some posts about "building in" a garage door opener in the dash of a 996 ...or some other car....
It involved powering the "hand held remote" from the dash and installing a switch in one of the blank spots...

Horsepwr

Here is my post on this.

https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...ener-hack.html

dak911

tnx exactly what I was looking for

z driver 88t

FWIW this was one of the first things I did on my 996. Really has a nice integrated look with OEM fit and finish. Pretty straightforward project.

Horsepwr

You are welcome. Honestly this was so simple to do I don't know why everyone doesn't do it.

Dennis C

I went another route with my 996. I installed an aftermarket, auto-dimming rear view mirror with an integrated Homelink transmitter. It was an easy swap, and it gave me two features that I wanted.

Dranon

which rearview did you get?

Dennis C

I bought it from Scott at www.radar-mirror.com. I don't recall the model number, but it was auto-dimming, it had three Homelink buttons on the bottom, and it had a compass display in the mirror glass.

It looked like this:

Horsepwr

Nice

Indy300

i like this idea! How was the installation?

Dennis C

It was pretty easy.

The hardest part was getting the new mirror attached to the windshield in a stable fashion. The Porsche OE mirror attaches bayonette-style to a round button that's permanently mounted to the windshield. The new mirror uses a tapered wedge-style connection, like you'd see on most American cars. You need to make sure that you buy the adapter that allows you to covert the Porsche button to a wedge. It's a little aluminum piece that fits over the button. I had to do a little bit of work on mine with a Dremel tool to get it to fit properly, but it was stable once I got it attached. As an alternative, I found some installations online where people left the Porsche button in place, and then glued a wedge mount to the windshield just below the Porsche button. This approach allows the mirror to sit a bit more snugly to the windshield than the Porsche button does. Kits for this are readily available at auto parts stores. It has been 5+ years since I did this, so perhaps better adapters are available now.

The new mirror comes with a long wiring harness, allowing you to run it down the a-pillar to the fuse box. It's a simple electrical connection.

There is one more option, or at least there used to be one more option. I believe you can send your OE mirror to www.radar-mirror.com and they can add Homelink buttons to it. This might be a good way to go if you wanted to stick with an OE mirror.

5CHN3LL

I posted a DIY on this myself a few years back, either for my 996 or my 986. Hiding the opener in the center console blocked the signal enough that it never worked reliably.

I also installed a Flash2Pass unit in my Boxster, but that too was thwarted by the metal front trunk - the range sucked, and I gave up on that experiment after a few months.

I would definitely go the rearview mirror route. If you're going to go big, there are rearview mirrors with integrated Valentine V1 remote displays as well - HomeLink plus the V1 would be quite an upgrade for the mirror...

SoCal911t

This what I found with my install also. I patted myself on the back for buying a 12v generic remote so I could hardwire it and not worry about replacing batteries. The remote would open the garage door no problem from the far reaches of my back yard but was hit or miss 6 feet away buried in the console.

peterp

You can also buy homelink units on eBay for $20 or $30 and hide that homelink unit behind the dash like you would a remote. That also can be hardwired to eliminate battery and can be reprogrammed without needing to take everything apart again if you get a different garage door opener or house. I would (from a security standpoint) wire it into a switched source, so you can't open the garage door without the ignition key, but probably most prefer the convenience of using an unswitched power source. Somebody on RL provided a lot of info on using the homelink in a prior thread if you search for it.

For the garage door mod, Heidi and Frannie's YouTube video is (like all of their videos in my opinion) the "gold standard" of how to's on this subject.