I just got an Escort 8500 radar detector for christmas and my dad told me that the guy at Best Buy has the radar detector hooked up so that it can display the A/F ratio, Oil Pressure, etc. from his car. It seems this is somehow through the "SWS" Safety Warning System where the radar detector can get alerts of road hazards, etc. and is not hard-wired to the detector. Does anyone have any info on this? I can't seem to find jack-crap about this. If not, I'll have to go find this guy

 

I'm pretty familiar with all of the Escort and Bel Tronics stuff and I've never heard of that... I'm pretty sure the guy your dad talked to WAS/IS a ****** idiot, after all how does the radar detector convert a signal into a readout when there is no input? As for the SWS system, it simply works off receiving a "special" radar signal which the detector can decode... Go find the guy...

 

Yeah, I just find it hard to believe that this guy would completely pull it out of his ***. It is far-fetched, but it seems doable. There are apparently 60 pre-programmed SWS signals with 4 remaining that are not specified. It may require a flash rom for the radar detector, but if you had a 'black box' that was able to convert the OBD codes to infrared signals, one could have a wireless connection to the radar detector and have it display such info. It's not REALLY high on my list of things to do (since I have obd1 and am happy with my present gauges), but it's kind of interesting.