DIY: Pioneer Rearview Camera

So that was my prep work last week.


Again, I made a smaller pilot hole and then enlarged the hole with subsequent larger drill bits taking time to test if the camera plug could wedge in there and then stop. With my trunk out, this was extremely easy to do. There is nothing on the other side of the rear bumper in that location so you won't drill into anything on the other side. You will want to verify before drilling though...


Then, I fed the camera plug through the rear bumper through the drilled hole and wet the grommet with some water and slipped in the grommet in the hole! Woohoo! looks stealth and stock.





This is what it looks like from the inside of the trunk compartment with the wire surrounded by the rubber grommet.





This is the amount of wire I have to route to the front of the cabin into the cabin through the rubber grommet in the passenger foot well. I will route the wire along the passenger side wheel well, under the intake airbox, along the side of the body under the door sill, out the passenger front wheel well, run it alongside the CF tub and wrap it around the front to the rubber grommet.
Because there is so little material and stuff for our car's weight reduction, there is a lot of room to route wires and zip tie to.

This is what the camera looks like mocked up and mounted by some packaging tape for now. I won't mount it with the double stick tape until I calibrate the image on my HU on final install.

For the reverse signal wire, thanks to kmarei, I will be tapping the reverse light wire (grey/green stripe) down in the rear diffuser and route the wire with the camera wire to the front.

So, now to routing....I stopped at this step but gathered up all my stuff.


1. TESA wire insulation wrap (recommended by audio installer) to wrap all the routed wires...obtained off Amazon.
2. POSI TAP wire connectors (used this when installing Eurocompulsion/HPSI water/meth injection kit on my Abarth) my favorite super easy wire splice connectors obtained off Amazon.
3. Wire

Today's project (while it was snowing outside) was to run the rearview camera wire from the trunk to the front....(and I was able to get the trunk back into the car...woohoo!)


So using a Posi-Tap, I spliced into the reverse light harness wire for the camera's reverse signal wire. By doing this, the camera knows to power up when it receives a signal you are in reverse. I then ran that wire up to the top of the trunk above the passenger tail light to meet up with the camera wire. I then wrapped the wire bundle in Tesa wire insulation.


I routed the wire bundle over the tail light, over the aluminum bracing, above the wheel well and down near the air intake canister. I then removed the strip liner under the rocker to access a tube running along side of the car under the door sill to zip tie the wire bundle to and exit out the front wheel well. Because that aluminum tube runs all the way to the front of the tub, I continued to zip tie the wire bundle to that aluminum tube to keep it away from the A arm in the passenger wheel well. It was relatively easy to route the wires.


Tapped into the reverse light wire with Posi-Tap:



Wrapped wires in insulation wrap:



Front wheel well routing:

Next step after routing wire bundle was to find the grommet on the exterior of the tub that I can poke a tiny hole in to run the wires into the cabin. I couldn't find the grommet from the passenger side wheel well when I was working on the brakes and suspension so I put ramps under the front wheels to have more under access to the front tray. I can now understand why we don't have much rattles....that front tray was bolted up by at least 16-20 fasteners!!! LOL.






And you can see the effort for the littlest weight reduction... retaining clips using plastic screws...which were a PITA to remove....had to cannibalize one of them...will just replace it with a push tab retaining clip.

But persistence pays off and B O O M! I found the grommet....pretty easy to get to once the front tray was dropped.


Grommet inside the cabin behind the BCM in the passenger foot well:



Grommet outside the cabin: woohoo!



Will tackle the next step in the next few days....
BUT, like I said, I was able to put the trunk bin back into the car!

Tonight's project after shoveling the driveway of 3-4" of snow drift and before dinner was to try to route the reverse camera wire bundle into the cabin through the grommet.


Removed passenger foot well carpet, removed 4C aluminum kick plate.
TIP: There is a strip of Velcro underneath the carpet on the firewall side of the footwell. Place a terrycloth towel on the Velcro strip and push down. This towel will help avoid scratching the floor of the carbon tub while removing the kick plate.


After removing the 3 large head Phillips screws on the base of the kickplate, the one Phillips screw on the fender side on the upper right corner of the kickplate and the one Phillips screw up in the front of the center console, carefully lift and pull the kick plate with 2 hands and place the bottom edge on the towel. You will have to lift the kickplate's center console anchor over a protrusion on the center console and then carefully pull out the kickplate. Think of it as trying to extract the breadbox in the game "Operation"


Went under the car and took an Xacto blade and put a small slit in the grommet large enough to be able to fit the wrapped wire bundle through. I then tied some string to my nylon fish line and poked it through the slit into the cabin and passed the string into the foot well. Untie the string from the fish line and retract the fish line. Securely tape the end of the wire harness to the other outside end of the string and pull the wire harness through the grommet into the cabin. Woohoo! Success!


Zip tied to secure the wire bundle along the route. Stopped there.


Fish line with string from *outside* of cabin through the grommet....





Fish line with string *inside* of cabin in passenger footwell...





Wrapped wire bundle route secured by zip ties into the grommet...

Yeah baby.... :grin2:

Doc, nice work.
I am working on this project also but will replace the rear view mirror with 4.3" TFT screen and toward facing DVR (I opted out of GPS as most of these mirrors run iGo on Windows CE with which I have no experience with). My Nav is via my iPhone 6 with Navmii and can route sound via Bluetooth through the Parrot when streaming Music connected by the lightning cable simultaneously which works well and map updates are free).
I note in another thread you mention that you can leave the screen and camera on while driving to improve rear vision. How did you achieve this if the camera is powered on with the reverse light? I am trying to determine if it I'll be annoying streaming vision all the time to the mirror while driving (mirror screen can be switched off) or whether it is more annoying when it is switched off, to turn it on manually when reversing. I can just tap the reverse light wire, but then it will purely only be a reversing camera rather than a rear vision camera (anyone else's thoughts are welcome).
Regarding the passenger grommet, could you alternatively thread the cable through the centre without cutting another hole in it?
How difficult is it to remove the side under panel beneath the door sill. It seems to be attached beneath the door sill panel.
The aluminium tube gets pretty hot (? Water from rad or inter cooler). Are you concerned about heat damage to the cables? I will also wrap with TESA tape and corrugated conduit and attach with cable ties.
What kind of medicine do you practise?
Cheers, Bill

Here is the underbody strip along the underside of the passenger side rocker. There a few 10mm nuts, a bunch of Phillips screws and a few Torx head screws.

http://imageshack.com/f/pm1O7Dt3j

Will be getting Thermoflective wrap and stainless zip ties today from Amazon and will rewrap the wire bundle and zip back to aluminum hose. After removing the underbody strip today in prep for additional wrap, I did see a stainless zip attached to that aluminum tube so it probably does heat up.


EDIT: just got tape and SS zips....