I fell a little behind on my updates but with two car shows this week, I spent the past weekend finishing up the open projects so I could get everything put back together and clean up the car.
For power to the rear backup camera, I ended up tapping directly into the wires at the reverse light. The positive is the teal wire and ground is black. Since the camera will stay mounted to the bumper, I used a Deutsch plug to connect the power/trigger wire (in the same RCA cable that goes up to the mirror). I left both the RCA and plug behind the licenses plate so if I ever need to remove the rear bumper again, I can just disconnect them.
The front camera wiring is more straightforward since that is controlled by a switch. I mounted the camera under the splitter. I’ll see how well it holds up there, but for now it is pretty much well hidden. Similar to the rear, I made sure I kept the RCA and power plugs accessible so if I need to remove the front bumper, I can just unplug them and leave the camera attached. The biggest pain was running the wires through the firewall. GM left a plug about 3 or 4 inches above the battery cable, but trying to get to it from the inside (so I didn’t lose it into the great abyss) took a lot of contorting. Once I got the plug out, it was pretty easy to feed the wires from the engine bay into the car. However, I’d rather not have to go through all that again, so I also decided to run the wires for the line lock…which will be next on my list.
To my dismay, after powering up the front camera I immediately discovered the image was upside down.
Unfortunately, the camera cannot be rotated…since the new rear camera I got is more versatile, I went ahead and ordered another one. It will be easy enough to swap out, and if the location works then I’ll go back and drill a hole through the bottom of the bumper to route the wires better.
While I had the interior apart, I thought it would also be a good time to get a dash cam installed. My wife and I both have VanTrue dash cams in our daily drivers, and they have worked great. Although I will occasionally mount a GoPro to the Camaro, I thought it would be nice to have something little more permanent. I even picked up a circular polarized filter, which should help cut down on the windshield glare. I mounted it as high as I could behind the mirror...its a pain to see the menu on the back screen, but it has built-in wifi so I can adjust any settings through my phone.
