Backup Camera and Rearview mirror display install

2003 Double Cab. I have a Prius (will be sold when I'm 100% confident in the Tacoma) and I really like the backup camera feature but I don't like that it isn't at eye level. When I backup I find that I'm looking at the rearview mirror, the dashboard display and the side mirrors. All that eye movement is disconcerting. When I look down at the dashboard display I loose my peripheral vision. So I decided to find a display built into a rearview mirror. My second issue is that I carry my bicycles on a hitch mounted rack. The rack is dead center of the vehicle so the camera lens will have to be mounted off-center. This is how the Prius is anyway so I'm used to it.

I found this article: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-backup-camera-and-displays/

The article is current and doesn't appear to be paid for by the products unlike so many "review" sites.

Camera, I bought the Pyle PLCM38FRV for $17.35 on Amazon.

Rearview mirror, I bought the Auto-Vox T1400 for $109.95 on Amazon.

After installation I found that I needed a female - female RCA connector. I bought the DB Link BF106 for $5.91 on Amazon.

So for $133.21 I have all the fixin's for a cheap backup camera solution. You will also need a hole saw (tell you why later), electric drill, electrical tape, crosspoint screw driver, 3M waterproof wire taps, probably other things I can't remember at this time.

Final thoughts: I'll fill this in later

 

So lets get started.

First I need to know where to mount the camera and, of course, check that every thing works. For a quick trial I hooked my jumper cables to the battery to get power back to the tailgate area. I have a couple of alligator clips on a + and - lead so I hooked one end of each to the jumper cable clamps and one end of each to the camera leads then hook up the RCA cord and bang! we've got a picture. Tough to see in this shot but there actually is a display in the rearview mirror.

Another advantage to trying all this out ahead of time is that there are three small wires in the camera bundle. By hooking two wires together you can reverse the image. And hooking another wire gives you the marking lines on the video feed. The lines aren't adjustable but remember that you only paid $17 for the camera.

So everything works.

You can see that I've removed the tailgate "cover" in this picture. That is the red piece of metal running along the top with the screw holes. When you remove that cover you will see that there are some reinforcements on the tailgate. You don't want to try to drill into those reinforcements. Find a clean, unobstructed area of the tailgate to mount your camera.




Now I can move the camera around outside of the tailgate and watch the display to see what my eventual video will look like. I quickly realize that I'm not learning much because I can't actually get the camera anywhere close to where it will eventually mount.

At some point I just say screw it and decide that this place looks good enough. I put the painters tape on the car to hopefully help keep from messing up the paint. Also it give a handy place to put a sharpie mark indicating where I want to drill. Actually the real reason for the painters tape is that it shows me where on the tailgate I can drill without hitting a reinforcment piece.

 

Raise your right hand and repeat after me. I will not drill a hole in my Tacoma using the technique presented by this idiot. There, promise me you won't. It turned out ok for me but I seriously just got lucky.

See this hole saw? This piece of crap comes with the camera. It's size is 18.5 mm. Good luck finding that at your local big box store. Mine was all wompy when you put it in the drill and tried to drill a hole. I got really worried that if it eventually actually drilled all the way through the tailgate that the hole would be too big and the camera would just fall out. Being too lazy/cheap to go to the store and get a proper stepping drill bit, I reached into my box 'o bits(tm) and got out the biggest bit that would fit my drill and one of those cone shaped hone bits. You swore an oath and promised me that you wouldn't do this.




I drilled a 1/2" pilot hole and then free handed enlarging it with the hone bit. That's right. That is possibly the stupidest thing that anybody could do with an electric drill. A $10,000 vehicle and I'm too lazy/cheap to drive 5 miles and get the proper tools to drill an 18.5mm hole into said vehicle. You want stupid. Come to my house.

Anyway somehow I didn't totally fudge it. The hole is round, the camera fits so the patron Saint of electric drills must have been smiling in my direction. I forget my catechism classes but I think that would be Saint DeWalt.

Here is a picture of what is left of the hone bit for your amusement.




And here is the camera mounted in said hole. I still had the rearview mirror in the back so I hooked it up to see what the final results looked like. I painted the edges of the hole with zinc enriched primer. That is the silver that you see. And I've since cleaned up the excess primer. So the camera looks better sitting in its hole.



Thoughts at this point. The camera position is ok and I'm going to live with it for a while but, it could be better. I'd like to be able to see the hitch ball. I saw, on Crutchfield's website, a camera that you could angle up and down. That is an option. Also, I could make some shims so that I could angle the camera in its current hole. The instructions show how to use shims like this but sadly they were not included for $17.35.

Here is a link to the camera instruction and installation manual. On page 2, diagram 2 it show the use of shims as I am considering.

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/684073/Pyle-Plcm38frv.html

 

Inside the car. All these pictures and I don't have a good one of the final install of the rearview mirror. I'll get that tomorrow and update this thread.

Based on my success with freehand drilling a hole in the tailgate I momentarily contemplated putting some super glue on the mirror and just throwing it at the windshield. But I decided that my luck wouldn't hold.

I removed the original mirror and tried to come up with a way to mount the new mirror in the original fashion but I just don't think it will work. The new mirror comes with a trim piece to hide the wires. I held the mirror, together with the trim piece, up to the window to guage position. I suppose it could go anywhere but I use my sun visors * and I wanted to be sure that those cleared the mirror. Luckily, with the trim piece the mirror sits exactly where I would want it and the sunvisors work just like they are supposed to work.

The mirror comes with multiple attachments to fit preexisting mirror mounts. I don't know what all those other things in the box would fit but I needed to use the standard metal attachment piece.

To find the center line I applied painter's tape and then used a 12" level. I checked it a dozen times in different ways until I felt that I had it right. the line on the left was a mistake. The two horizontal lines are where I will mount the attachment piece.




I cut away the tape between the horizontal lines. I marked the attachment piece with a "T" to indicate the top and also to show which side should face me. Double and triple check your work at this point because once glued on those metal buttons are a bear to get off.




Here is the glue I used. Orielly's has it as does just about ever other car parts store.





* I have a 13 year old daughter that has to put the sun visor down and look into the mirror before we can move the car. So non working sun visors could be a problem at my house.

 

Back to the rear of the Tacoma.

A lot of thought went into how to get the wires out of the tailgate and up to the cabin of the Tacoma. Should they run down the passenger side or the driver's side? I decided to follow the wiring that is already on the truck and that runs along the driver's side.

This first picture is looking towards the tailgate with the tailgate laid down. Drivers side is on the right. There are some convenient weep holes already in the tailgate. I decided to use one of those. At first I ran all the wires out of the hole that is at the furthest right. But then I decided that if any water got to the right side of the tailgate that I'm blocking the "outside edge" hole. Therefore, I pulled all the wires back out and put them through the hole that is second to the "outside edge". That is what you see in this picture. Oh and you'll want to buy some split wire wrap. This split wire wrap is 3/8". The grommets I used are 3/8" grommets and they should need a 1/2" hole but check that with whatever you buy.




I marked a spot on the truck side so that I would know where to drill a corresponding hole.

Go ahead and warm up your cusswords because you'll need them when you start dealing with the split wire wrap.

I decided to go and get a proper stepping bit to drill the next hole. Best $39.99 I've ever spent. I removed the tailgate so that I could do this right.

I like to use zinc primer because I believe it give superior rust protection.



I spray it into a cloth and then use a small paint brush to dab it on.




Paint it thick. You don't want the rust worms to start devouring your lovely Tacoma.




And, here is the end result.

 

Connections to the backup lamp.

There are three wires that you will have to deal with at the back of the Tacoma.

RCA. This is a thick wire with a male RCA connection on each end. One end will plug into a pigtail from the camera. The RCA wire must be snaked underneath the body and enter into the cabin. There are easier ways to snake the wire than my method but I tried to follow a preexisting loom. I wrapped the RCA wire in the split loom and snaked that alongside / on top of the existing wiring loom running along the driver's side frame rail of the Tacoma. I secured it with zip ties. In a couple of areas I used a straightened coat hanger to help direct it along the loom. It is very difficult to follow the loom above the gas tank but it can be done.

I could have done this much easier without following the loom but as you can tell from the first hole I drilled I'm something of a perfectionist. I don't have any pictures of this because all you'd be able to see are some zip ties against the backdrop of the bottom of the bed.

On the Double Cab there is a convenient, water resistant entry into the cabin from underneath the truck. It is below the driver seat between the frame rail and the outside edge of the body. There is a thick rubber grommet that keeps water from entering the cabin. If yours is intact, in good shape, and pliable then you should be able to stick your pinky finger from the cabin side down and provide enough stretch to run the RCA connector up. I hope that makes sense.



Once inside the cabin the RCA line followed this bundle of wires along the drivers footwell under the threshold. All that brown stuff is sand. I vacumed all that out and then had to remove the other three thresholds and clean in those areas too. The OCD kicked in.



Bring the RCA line up to a point under the dash near the fusebox.

Power and Ground. The other two wires at the back of the truck will feed up the back edge of the bed behind the driver's side tail light.

Remove the taillight and fish the wires up. One black, ground. One red, power.

I used 3M waterproof splice taps (vampire taps) to attach the wires into the loom. I'm a wiz at soldering but honestly these taps do a great job. Are removable and come with a silicon waterproofing. To solder I'd have to strip wire, solder and then waterproof with electrical tape. And electrical tape is a poor way for waterproofing. I have lots of shrinkwrap but I'd have to cut the wire in order to use that. So I've started using these taps in certain areas. Besides did you know that it is actually much better to crimp instead of soldering? Yep, marine studies have proved it.

Add a picture here to show the taps and document the wire colors.

That is all the wiring from the camera. The way this works is that when you put the truck into reverse it gives power to the backup lamp. You've tapped into that circuit so now you will automatically feed power to the camera. When the camera has power is sends a signal along the RCA for the display to pickup.

 

Wiring from the rear view mirror.

There is one thick wire coming from the rearview mirror. Amazingly this contains three wires. An RCA line, power and ground. I snaked this thick wire along the front edge of the headliner and down the backside of the A-pillar trim.

I removed the grab handle, the A-pillar trim and the driver's sun visor. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures.

From there is was an easy drop down to the area of the fusebox.

Remember that male RCA connector coming from the camera. Well you're gonna want to connect that to a male RCA connector coming from the camera. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it ain't gonna work. You need that female - female connector that I told you to order from Amazon.

I'm sorry, I tried to keep the sex talk out of this narrative but I just couldn't do it. If you have young children around perhaps you can use this as a segue into a discussion about the birds and the bees and RCA connectors.

So now you have two RCA connectors down by the fuse box. Use the female connector to hook 'em up. Actually you have 3 RCA connectors. Ohhhh, what's that third one for?

This rear view mirror display has two RCA inputs. Input #1 should be used for the rear view camera. But you can also add a second camera. You could for instance install a camera at your passenger side mirror. Wire it into a switch or into the right hand turn signal. Now when you flip the switch or turn on your right hand signal you can see the view from the second camera. Or maybe install a trail camera at the front so that you could check your line for running up that big rock obstacle. (The second camera is beyond the scope of this instruction set.)

Now you have everything hooked up except the power and ground to the rearview mirror. The mirror comes with an add-a-circuit. I didn't like the quality so I picked up a better one at the parts store.

Here is an instructable about add-a-circuits but really if you've done all this work so far you should take one look at the add-a-circuit and know exactly what to do. It is dead simple.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Add-a-Circuit-to-Your-Car/

The last connection is the ground. I crimped a split connector onto the ground wire and grounded to that large bolt holding the bottom of the fuse box. This connection works and it is fine but it is too sloppy for me. I will make a better ground at some point. I want to add some lights and other things and I'll change this split connector to a ring connector at some point.

That is it. If all your connections are good (mine weren't) then the next time you throw the car into reverse you should see an image in your rearview mirror giving you guidance to back up.

 

place holder 6

 

place holder 7

 

So, how was the camera mounted back there? you used epoxy?

 

Oh sorry, No the camera body screws apart. A larger flange is on the outside and a spring clip on the inside. If the hole was the exact correct size the camera body would have slipped into the hole, without unscrewing and the spring clip will hold tension. The hole I drilled (mangled) is ever so slightly too small, so I unscrewed the body, left the spring clip on the inside, flange on the outside and screwed the two together with the Tacoma body sandwiched between.

If this doesn't make sense please tell me and I'll find a better way to explain. You can also look at the link of the camera instruction manual. diagram a shows how it is mounted.

 

So the back cover of the cam is metal and you can screw it in place, got it.

 

yep. I think the entire camera is metal.

 

Subscribed.

 

I promised some pictures of the wiring at the tail lamp and pictures of the rear view mirror.

Drivers side tail lamp. Pull your power and ground wires up into here and tap into the harness.



4 pictures of the rearview mirror. I think it looks quite nice.

 

how's the camera been working for you?

 

Nice clean job and it looks great!

 

Lotsa work. Excellent results!

 

Nice!
I have something similar that I put on my truck being that the camper blocks the view out the back.

The thing I like best about is that the field of view is so wide I have no blind spots.
Even if I had a stock bed with nothing in it and a clear view out the back I'd still prefer the monitor in the rear view mirror location over a normal mirror.

Here's a crappy video I made of the monitor itself. It's a touch screen so you can change the view. It also has a gps compass and speedo. I just regeared to 4.88's and use the mirror to tell how fast I'm going. It also has a front facing dash cam and records front and rear at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dzOJpDUU00

 

The hole under the driver seat is also present in my 98 extended cab. Could only find examples of it with double cabs online, so figured I'd mention it in case anyone was wondering.