I have a Pioneer AVIC-D3 that I will be installing soon, as well as a backup camera and some other stuff. The one thing that has been bothering me is where I should mount the camera.

I saw the one mounted in the hole for the wiper, but I am not willing to give up my rear wiper. I also prefer not to drill holes in body panels, but I realize that is something of a tall order. If I mounted it in the rear window, would it be able to see through, or would it not be able to see through the tint?

Anyone have any other ideas for mounting?

 

Cut a small hole in your license plate and put it through there

 

A lot of cars with these standard (such as the Prius) have them tucked up under the area of the hatch handle and license plate lights. I don't know if that is possible with your camera and I have not looked at that area seriously for this on my car but it's worth a look.
I kinda like Fred's idea too if you can squeeze it back there.



One thing I have noticed that you may want to think about as you install it. All of the factory cameras point noticeably at the ground behind the car. Being wide angle you can still see straight back pretty well, but I find it to be very helpful when backing into a spot and being able to see pretty much straight down from the bumper. Once you get used to the view it is pretty useful.

 

I have a pioneer camera and i mounted right next to the license plate, no holes, no screws, put it with the double sided tape that comes with. when i put it reverse i can see the whole car behind me and part of my bumper.

 

If you are handy you can fab a mount in the shape of a U to mount underneath the hatch handle.

 

Although I have yet to receive my xB, I have the same idea of installing an aftermarket Nav.

For a backup camera, I am contemplating installing it in the rear wing, angled slightly downward. This will probably required cutting into the wing to make it flush and somewhat hidden. Just my $0.02.

 

Ok, I am going to go next to the plate mounted near the hatch handle, but how do I fish the wire through the hatch into the car? I would like to use one of the existing little boots, but there seems to be no way to access the hatch side...I don't want to run it on the face of the hatch, it will look like poo and will probably get torn to pieces when the hatch is opened and closed.

Any ideas?

 

You just need to pull off the hatch panel and use a fish wire to get down into the area behind the license plate. Start at the top where the boot is, stick a fairly stiff wire (somewhat flexible as well -- solid copper wire is good for this) and try to fish it down. Use it to pull whatever wire you need to pull through.

 

i'll take pics of mine and post em tommarow...

 

Awesome, thanks.

 

While, I didn't do the following exactly, I am contemplating it.

I was able to run the video cable along the passenger side door sill all the way back to the rear hatch and up along the C pillar. From there I routed it through the rear squirter boot (visible in the center when you open the hatch). I then routed it to the third brake light. The cable is not visible anywhere.

The third brake light has plenty of space to fit the Pioneer camera IF you cut a space in the middle of 3rd brake light lens. It's easy to pull off the housing for the 3rd brake light, just pull on each side. It's held in place by two clips. It's also easy to ge the cable through the boot, just 'unplug' the boot from each side and compress and expand the boot until the cable is all the way through.

Mounting the camera in there will block out the LED in the middle of the third brake light, but it would be very well hidden. I'm still thinking of whether I should do this or not, but for now, I mounted it right under the 3rd brake light with the double stick tape that it comes with. It's visible when you look out the rear view mirror. It's a little annoying, but I'd rather keep my rear wiper.

 

I sell a license plate frame with a hole just for a camera. If you dont have the camera yet i also have a few with the camera installed. The price for the pac brand is like 150.00 shipped and the pyle cam is liek 75.00 shipped. Let me know if i can be of any help!

City-Soundz.com

 

Damn, I just spent several hours messing with the backup cam I put in the wiper location. I decided I didn't want the wiper and I would use the turn on for the wiper to turn the camera on whenever I wanted.

So I figured out the purple wire was 12v ignition. The pink wire was sending a ground when the switch for the rear wiper was turned on. Well, when I hook things up, that friggin camera stayed on the whole time. Regardless of wiper switch but only with ignition on.

So I check the purple and pink wires again. Now the pink wire was constant ground. I unsoldered everything, then put it back to stock. That friggin pink wire started sending ground in switched position again. It was driving me nuts. Alas, to make a long story short, the damn camera body grounds itself and so the ground the pink was picking up was from the camera body (even though the camera has it's own ground wire).

Now I gotta wire up a relay. ____es me off. FYI, the wiper location I'm discovering isn't the best location. It's a bit high to pick up on the rear bumper so I had to angle it down which makes the camera stick out. Even still it's not quite low enough for the bumper. In addition, the wiper location angles a bit too much to the passenger side.

I bought one of the decent LED cams from eBay. But the annoying little LEDs turn on even when there's enough light to operate and when it does that, it goes into this super bright mode which I hate.

I'm thinking I should have mounted the camera lower like under the handle like I first wanted to or I should have gone with a simple license frame camera w/o LEDs.

 

Im going to try this: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcapetech321

Ill let you guys know what happens, this might take a week or so. Im installing my deck tonight (Kenwood DDX-6019).