Backup / Rear Camera Installation

dbnichols · 08-03-2009, 09:29 AM #1

I had installed the rear camera several weeks in advance of getting the AVIC-X90BT, and ultimately the AVIC-Z110BT.

Here are some shots of the rear camera installation. Basically, you have to contort yourself to fit in the back seat area. I pushed the front passenger seat all the way forward, dropped the back seats down, and then sort of sat on the rear console lid while doing all of the initial interior work on pulling the back trim and getting to the engine compartment grommet.

One note for anyone who is going to pull the interior of covering the interior back wall of the car...make sure you take a picture or memorize where all the little soundproofing batting pieces go, and how they are arranged. They are like a jigsaw puzzle once you take them out, and figuring out how they were arranged is pretty damn tough all things considered. I had to sit there and figure out how one of the pieces was arranged, and it took longer than just about any other step.

At any rate, you'll see in the first couple of pictures, I dropped the back driver's side tail light, and tapped into the reverse light. I put all this in a small loom, to keep it neat (I don't like seeing wires hanging out) and ran it into the engine compartment, and over to the other side (passenger) to find the engine firewall grommet to the interior. I mounted the camera directly in the middle of the license plate area so it wouldn't appear offset in the image on screen. Since I didn't have the aftermarket head unit at this point, i hooked up an LCD monitor in the garage to make sure the signal was passing correctly, since I didn't want to run all these cables only to find out it didn't work! That would have sucked BIG TIME!!

From the next set of pictures, I've already pulled the passenger side rear panels, and I've pulled the BOSE subwoofer. After pulling the BOSE unit, you simply pry up the main carpet foam covering, and then pull out the two smaller pieces from either side of the BOSE mounting bracket. Next, unbolt the aluminum covering to get to the wiring harness, and tap the illumination and reverse signal cables for later connection to the head unit.

You can see from a couple of the pictures, the actual grommet from which I passed through the RCA cable of the reverse camera. This thing is tough to get a hand into, unless you have small arms. I managed to run a snake through there, and then commenced pulling the RCA cable through. I made the mistake of not making the puncture in the grommet big enough, so as a pulled it, it pulled the grommet off, and through! NICE!!

So, now I had to stuff my friggin' arm in there and shove on this stupid grommet until it popped back in place. Not a big deal, but something I could have avoided if I'd just make the initial puncture a little larger. So, now I pulled the RCA and my illumination and reverse lead together and coiled them up (after testing again!) under the carpet until the head unit came in.

The main reason I took these pictures was to help out anyone who is having problems visualizing how this grommet deal works. It's not a huge deal, and most of the time was spent dealing with unknowns. It took me about 3 hours to do all of this from start to finish. If I was doing it again tomorrow, we'd be talking 2 hours. Definitely a time savings, knowing what you're getting into and where the stuff is at, but it is still a small space and you need to take your time, especially making sure the wiring is clean and in pulling the interior trim.

It is VERY easy to break some tabs on the interior trim if you don't do it right. There are a few articles / post on pulling the back plastic trim, so I'm not going to go into that again, but definitely take your time, and it should go just fine.

-B-

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