My next little project was to install a rear mount backup camera in the Scion. The reasoning behind this was due to the fact that the tint on the rear window was starting to bubble along the rear defroster lines and as a result making the view out of the rear window be distorted, especially at night. This obviously makes backing up a bit of a chore since the tint already makes it harder to see at night without the distortion of the bubbling tint material. My solution since I didn't want to go through the hassle of removing the tint - add a rear mounted backup camera.
At first I had to figure how I would mount a monitor somewhere on the dash or somewhere around the center console. When I started looking for these cameras on Ebay I ended up finding something that really killed two birds with one stone and solved the problem regarding the monitor. I found a combo dash cam/backup cam with the dash cam portion being a mirror mounted unit that covers the original rear view mirror but serves as a mirror and a monitor for the dash cam that's on the unit. Of course the back up cam is mounted in the rear over the license plate and wired up to the dash cam, which means routing 20 ft of cable through the car over to the front to link up to the dash cam. The first part was to install the rear cam. Since the license pate is mounted on the hatch and there's nowhere else to mount the cam since the only thing in the rear is the bumper (which I'm not gonna mount it there), this meant that I'll be mounting the cam on the hatch. The cam mounted with a couple of small sheet metal screws. Since there was no real way to get the pigtail into the hatch I ended up having to drill a hole just above the license plate to route the pigtail then drill two small holes for the sheet metal screws in order to secure the cam in place over the license plate. I had to remove the emblem panel in order to gain access to the sheet metal in order to drill the holes without damaging said panel. With the cam mounted I was able to reattach the emblem panel and move on to routing the cabling. I had to pull the side trim from the inside of the hatch in order to route the cable along the hatch up to the ceiling of the car. Since the hatch is totally independent from the rest of the interior paneling I had to drill a small hole to feed the video and power wires out from the inside of the hatch. From there I had to split the power wire and the video wire. For the power wire I had to add another length of wire to extend back to the backup light fixture on the right side. Since the backup light wasn't mounted in the hatch I had to add wire to get there. I had to pull the interior panel out along the trunk area to hide the power wire until I got to the backup light. Since there was an access panel behind the backup light I was able to bring the wire right to the wire harness without removing any more trim or paneling. I used a 2 way splice connector to pinch the power wire to the backup light to connect the added power wire for the cam. With that done I could move on to the video wire. I had to pull the side airbag panel out a little bit to tuck the video wire into it, then continue by tucking the wire under the ceiling panel around the sunroof all the way to the front and around to the top of the rear view mirror. After tucking the wire I reseated all moldings and panels so everything is back to the way it was, leaving just a few inches of the video cable hanging out from the panel right above the rear view mirror. The next thing was to hang the dashcam/mirror in place. This was accomplished using a couple of rubber straps that came with the kit. I hooked up the power cable and fed it down to one of the USB sockets in the 12v receptacle in the center console. I hooked up the video cable, tucking the excess back inside the panel so no cable is sagging unnecessarily. Lastly I turned on the ignition so the camera would power up. I put the shifter into reverse and verified the camera was on when I saw the four LEDs light up. By this time the ole lady came out to check on my progress and was able to sit in the car while adjusted the camera after getting the rear camera to come up on the mirror screen. Once we got the rear camera adjusted good enough to see the road as well as the environment around the rear of the car. With that the whole setup was complete and ready to go, minus adding a micro SD card for recording purposes. That was taken care of later in the day so now the whole package is complete. Besides having the ability to see out of the ass end of the car we can now record shit in front of us as well. This hardware will definitely be added to the other vehicles in the near future.
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