[MFG]

I finally had time to try the instructions above to block off the interference from the instrument cluster and the radio display. I followed the information above and it fixed my problem completely.
I took some pictures incase anyone wants to see the dash apart. It was really very simple to disassemble.

 

[Romnm]

On my 2023 ZR2 I have a blend mount mirror mount with power connected with a GEN5DIY harness connected at the mirror. My Valentine1 Gen2 constantly gets a 33.751 false while driving. I have the same setup in my 2023 Corvette that does not false. My Valentine1 Gen1 does not false at all. There is also a member here with an Escort Max 3 that has the same false.
Does anyone have any suggestions to fix this problem?

Problem solved, looks ghetto but it actually works the aluminum foil blocks the RF frequency coming off the info screen. When I remove the aluminum detector goes stupid.

 

[ppek]

So to finish up this discussion, I never got around to the tinfoil around the camera trick but I did find out the answer. This answer comes from another very nice fellow on the Radar Detector forums. He was also nice enough to send me the disassembly instructions from the GM service manual. I am going to use his helpful tips on my truck this weekend. I am also going to post his findings below.
Hopefully this will help some of you guys.



My V1G2 alerts to my own 2023 Chevrolet Colorado displays @ 33.749 while mounted to the windshield with a single bar for strength and with 3 to 5 beeps about every 5 to 20 minutes out on the road. If I have the V1 mounted on the top of the windshield it registers as the front antenna and if on the bottom of the windshield it registers as the rear antenna. However, my R8 does not have this issue. Of course I could just use the R8 and be done with it, but I want the V1G2 to work as well.

I used the V1 as a sniffer to determine where the signal was coming from and found it was both the center display AND the instrument cluster display. The V1 would detect as much as 3 bars of signal strength depending on how close I got the detector to the back of the display. See pic below for 2 bar signal while pointed at the back of the center display.
View attachment 459758

I started my mitigation with the center display as it was worse than the instrument cluster display. The picture below is the back of the display removed from the vehicle with the plastic cover off, but HVAC controls still attached.
View attachment 459759
Since the display itself extended above the metal bracket I decided to use aluminum tape on the plastic area to extend the metal shield and block the signal from escaping. I added tape to the top of the display as can be seen by the below picture as well as around the connectors since these areas are where the V1 indicated the strongest signal was coming from.
View attachment 459761
This proved to be effective as I could no longer get 2 bars of signal strength when the V1 was positioned as in the first picture. I would still get an occasional 1 bar beep up close, but most of the time it was no beep.

For the Cluster Display I took a very similar approach except I added the tape to the inside of the back cover. Actually, I could have added it to the outside of the cover, but liked the concealed idea more. See pic below...
This proved to be effective as I could no longer get 2 bars of signal strength when the V1 was positioned as in the first picture. I would still get an occasional 1 bar beep up close, but most of the time it was no beep.
View attachment 459762

I also went back and tried adding even more tape to the center display just to see if I could get rid of even more noise, but it appeared to push the signal out through the screen toward me and I did not want that. I preferred it go down into the dash and not at me.

In summary it was a relatively easy mitigation and I have taken two 6 hour drives since the mod without a 33.749 alert. Of course this will void the display warranty, but that doesn't really concern me all that much as I have way too much money into counter measures to let this stop me.

Maybe this can help others with similar issues??

Great post, this is very helpful and I'm going to try this to eliminate my false alarms. Is there any particular foil tape you recommend? Looking on Amazon, I found a lot of silver foil tape made for duct taping, but I also found some copper tape like this that advertises EMI and RFI shielding. Would this be better?

 

[purpleRac3r]

A close friend just bought a new Traverse and had the same issues with his V1 Gen2 getting false signals from within the vehicle. He contacted Nate at Valentine directly for assistance. It turns out the culprit frequencies fall between the standard ranges in the app for blocking. Valentine was able to walk him through blocking the 2 frequencies, no dash disassembly or foil required. It worked perfectly on a recent road trip.

 

[w1kedz]

A close friend just bought a new Traverse and had the same issues with his V1 Gen2 getting false signals from within the vehicle. He contacted Nate at Valentine directly for assistance. It turns out the culprit frequencies fall between the standard ranges in the app for blocking. Valentine was able to walk him through blocking the 2 frequencies, no dash disassembly or foil required. It worked perfectly on a recent road trip.

I wondered about this, it seemed to me that my V1 doesn't have any issues that V2 should be able to block the offending frequencies since you can fine tune in app. Thanks for the confirmation here. I've been putting off upgrading to V2 because of this. Is it possible for you to get the frequencies he blocked? I know I can isolate them after getting the detector but if someone has already gone through this exercise that info would be valuable here.

 

[purpleRac3r]

Absolutely! He said they were 33.750 and 35.100. Hopefully this helps anyone with other detector brands as well, who may be experiencing similar falsing.

 

[ppek]

Has anyone done the foil on a Canyon? I'm in the process of trying this. I got the 3 bolts out, but the display doesn't want to come out easily, and I don't really want to pull too hard. The instructions above are for a Colorado, and I'm wondering if there are any differences, of if the display on the Colorado was also a hard pull to get out?

 

[ppek]

I thought I would post a few comments after I went through this. First, I found this video that helped with the removal of the display screen. Also, I have a Canyon, and there is one slight difference from the Colorado dash instructions that have been posted. There is a screw under the leather trim near the passenger side vent. With that, you need to pry the thin leather strip out first to get to that screw, so you can remove the long piece with the vent attached. Other than that, the instructions are identical. I used copper foil tape I bought on Amazon, and I first tried only doing the center display, but I still received KA warnings, so I ended up doing both the center display and the instrument display.

I really considered just programming out the frequencies being thrown, but I didn't want to risk a police radar being on the same one. Overall, not too bad of a process, even though it's a little nerve racking taking apart your brand new truck!

 

[w1kedz]

...
I really considered just programming out the frequencies being thrown, but I didn't want to risk a police radar being on the same one.
...

Given that my V1 first gen doesn't alert on these frequencies and it was the defacto standard for the last couple of decades before the V1 2nd gen came out, I tend to think you are fine programming out these frequencies. Glad the project worked out for you though.

 

[ppek]

Given that my V1 first gen doesn't alert on these frequencies and it was the defacto standard for the last couple of decades before the V1 2nd gen came out, I tend to think you are fine programming out these frequencies. Glad the project worked out for you though.

My first gen also did not alert while in my canyon. I don't think it's that the 1st gen didn't alert on that frequency, but didn't alert on that faint of a signal on the frequency. When I looked the frequency up. It did show it is in the range used by some police radar. I'm not sure if you can program the 2nd gen to not alert on 1-2 bars on a particular frequency, or if you just totally block out a particular frequency, which I didn't want to risk.

 

[ehubb]

Well, here I am searching for this topic because I bought a Uniden R4W and at first had no issues (2024 Bison). I had a rather large mount for a HAM radio phone on the lower right side of it coming up from a ball mount in the dash which was empty but sort of boxing the radar detector in (mounted on a blend mound from the mirror) and it had no false alarms. I didn't think anything of it when I changed that empty mount to a simple arm sticking out with just a small clip mount for a Kenwood D75 HT radio. Of course I didn't test anything because everything was working fine. Then I got on the road for a 1500 MILE ROAD TRIP and the R4W was constantly alarming on the Ka band and I couldn't figure it out. I eventually just turned down the sensitivity on the Ka band until it stopped, but now I see that this is a STUPID GM RF leak. WTF!?!? Grrrrr....

 

[BlueZedR2]

Radar detectors are illegal only in 2 states (Mississsipi and Virgina) and DC.

Radar jammers are more states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and DC)

There is no federal laws regarding radar detectors or jammers, but cops in some states have RDD (radar detector detectors).

I run one, a Uniden R7 since my OG Valentine 1 (bought in maybe '92) finally died a few years ago and Valentine's quality had dropped. I've had zero issues with either my ZR2 or my '25 CR-V causing false alerts with it.

I know that in Canada, radar detectors are HIGHLY illegal. They will confiscate them on the spot, and I seem to remember an absurd fine too, like, $450 or something (even back in the '90's!). Knowing how things have been up there over the last couple years, it wouldn't surprise me if the fines were bigger AND included jail time. The Valentine's are supposedly RDD-proof since their housing is magnesium (if I remember) so it's a Faraday Cage, but I think if you got too close to one you still might be sniffed out. Not worth it in Canada IMO. I think the other detectors now are shielding theirs by having a metal coating on the inside of their plastic housings, again, making a Faraday Cage.

 

[ehubb]

I'm going to do some experiments this week, I'm pretty sure I can just shield the detector because of discovering, accidentally, that my giant phone mount being between it and the dash was enough to shield it from GMs crappy RF engineering. I will report back here on how to bandaid this without tearing the dash apart...

 

[ehubb]

Ok, finally got around to fixing this. Here's a picture of my Uniden R4W mounted on the mirror via a BlendMount showing the frequency that is leaking out of GMs poorly designed / shielded center media unit:

Here's a picture of the shield I used (a thin piece of aluminum shim and some velcro) which is just enough to block the RF coming from the dash:

I would have never discovered it would take so little to shield it except for having a temporary mount for a HAM radio just below the radar detector and above the touch screen. The radar detector never had any false alarms until the day I took out the HAM radio mount and it took me a while to realize what was going on.

If you want to do this and test things first, just take some aluminum foil and fold it over a few times into a 2" wide strip and hold it under your radar detector until you figure out where you need to block the RF coming from the dash.

Hope this helps someone down the road!

 

[BlueZedR2]

Ok, finally got around to fixing this. Here's a picture of my Uniden R4W mounted on the mirror via a BlendMount showing the frequency that is leaking out of GMs poorly designed / shielded center media unit:

View attachment 491210

Here's a picture of the shield I used (a thin piece of aluminum shim and some velcro) which is just enough to block the RF coming from the dash:

View attachment 491211

I would have never discovered it would take so little to shield it except for having a temporary mount for a HAM radio just below the radar detector and above the touch screen. The radar detector never had any false alarms until the day I took out the HAM radio mount and it took me a while to realize what was going on.

If you want to do this and test things first, just take some aluminum foil and fold it over a few times into a 2" wide strip and hold it under your radar detector until you figure out where you need to block the RF coming from the dash.

Hope this helps someone down the road!

Well, dunno if that qualifies as "poorly designed/shielded". There are standards all electronics have to conform to with levels of emissivity. If it met those, then you can't blame GMC because you have a very sensitive radar unit or poorly shielded/poor filters one. My R8 doesn't false just due to the truck, or any other of the 3 vehicles I have or even any of the rental cars I've used it in. Maybe you just need to step up to a better detector with better signal processing and filters? Or, it would be easier to open up the radar detector and put aluminum tape inside that instead of having to rip your dash apart.

Best of luck!

 

[ehubb]

Well, dunno if that qualifies as "poorly designed/shielded". There are standards all electronics have to conform to with levels of emissivity. If it met those, then you can't blame GMC because you have a very sensitive radar unit or poorly shielded/poor filters one. My R8 doesn't false just due to the truck, or any other of the 3 vehicles I have or even any of the rental cars I've used it in. Maybe you just need to step up to a better detector with better signal processing and filters? Or, it would be easier to open up the radar detector and put aluminum tape inside that instead of having to rip your dash apart.

Best of luck!

This is a fairly high-end (and new) Uniden and I'm not the only one with the problem. I can get the detector to ignore the spurious signal coming from the dash by turning down the sensitivity or blocking that frequency range so I'm pretty sure its not the detector detecting a signal that isn't there. But maybe its year specific or it could be a bad batch of head units from GMs supplier or just something changed in the dash, etc.? In any case, its nice you didn't have the issue.

 

[Mr Stig]

I have an Escort Max360c and it falses quite a bit on Ka displaying a single bar of signal strength. I did read this detector is prone to Ka falsing but perhaps I need to do a bit of additional research to see if it's tied to the vehicle. I does it also in a 2018 Camry.

I tried the same radar. I got constant false ka to the point where I thought it was the detector. I switched to my old trusty uniden r4 and its flawless.

 

[w1kedz]

... spurious signal coming from the dash ...

Without being an engineer from GM you can't really qualify the emissions as being spurious. For all you know they are an intentional part of system. The vehicle has a lot of speed sensing equipment related to adaptive cruise, auto braking alerts, etc.. The detector is the foreign/unintended system in the vehicle.

I also mounted both a V1 original and V1v2 w/ no false alerts or reporting on Ka, ocassionaly false laser alerts from cars like tesla, etc. I regularly clock CHP using the V1 from 5-7 miles lead on the odometer. The R8 is super expensive, but I'm viewing all these reports on several reddit threads and forums right now regarding false alerts, each seems like a different make/model of vehicle. I feel like they haven't quite mastered filtering of the signal to cancel/ignore false alerts. I'll stick to V1 lol.

 

[ehubb]

Without being an engineer from GM you can't really qualify the emissions as being spurious. For all you know they are an intentional part of system. The vehicle has a lot of speed sensing equipment related to adaptive cruise, auto braking alerts, etc.. The detector is the foreign/unintended system in the vehicle.

I also mounted both a V1 original and V1v2 w/ no false alerts or reporting on Ka, ocassionaly false laser alerts from cars like tesla, etc. I regularly clock CHP using the V1 from 5-7 miles lead on the odometer. The R8 is super expensive, but I'm viewing all these reports on several reddit threads and forums right now regarding false alerts, each seems like a different make/model of vehicle. I feel like they haven't quite mastered filtering of the signal to cancel/ignore false alerts. I'll stick to V1 lol.

Uniden is in the radio business, including radar detectors, among other things. If I had to bet on Uniden erroneously detecting a signal that isn't there or GM / a supplier messing up the RF design / shielding, I'll bet on Uniden.