Easy Fit Cordless Reversing Camera And Screen

I was going to fit parking sensors to my Rav, but could not be rrrs'd taking the rear bumper off so I thought I would give

a reversing camera a try instead. There are plenty to be had, especially on fleabay, but the type I was looking at was in

Maplins for £140. A bit expensive compared to the fleabay type which are wired. I say wired because this type have a

connection between camera and screen, which I did not want. I ended up with a cordless kit from Costco intended for

the American market, price £50 + VAT.

So here goes, first of all I trial kitted the parts to batteries to find best position of camera and rear view I wanted. I used

bluetak and had the camera pointing straight back, which gave a perfect view of everything behind me, but not what I

really wanted. Only need a view of the area right at the crown of the bumper which as you know is quite difficult to judge

in your 4.3. So changed position of camera to facing down at approx 15 degree angle which was ideal for what I wanted.

So fitting procedure, first carefully remove rear door interior trim, and disconnect the useless courtesy light and peel back

the polythene like so -

Put your hand inside and disconnect the plug for the number plate lights. Then loosen the 3 off 10 MM nuts that hold the

exterior trim with number plate lights, go round to outside of door and carefully pop the 5 clips still holding the trim on.

Your door will then look like this-

Next is the camera itself I painted it silver as I did not know how much of it I was going to have showing. But as it turned

out I needn't have bothered. Anyway the thing is designed to fit big American number plates so you need to trim of some

of the excess plastic. -

Now using a hole saw drill a hole in the trim between the two number plate lights, if your handy you can then elongate the

hole a bit. If not use a file. -

Next fit the camera through the hole tilting it to one side (the rear facing side) keep masking tape on the lens at this stage

to stop scratches. I was giong to make some fancy brackets to attach the camera, but its not neccessary. Just used some

big dollops of mastic glue as you can see in this messy photo. -

Ok when glue is hard, re-fit the number plate trim, feed the cable through the grommet hole for the lights into back door

cavity. Screw the 10 MM nuts back in place and clean off any x/s glue, so back door should now look like this.-

In drivers side of boot area, remove the trim which allows access to replace rear light bulbs. Using a piece of wire, thread

the camera cable from rear door cavity, through the rubber flexible conduit into the area you removed access trim from.

In the next photo you will see a piece of plastic flexible trunking, there is a split in it. Open it up and seperate the two red

wires. Using a test lamp, with car in reverse and ignition on, find which one of the two is the reversing light cable. When

done connect the red wire from camera to this wire, I have temporarilly used a crappy scotch connector as I forgot who

I have loaned my soldering Iron and the James Hunt hasn't returned it. Next connect the black wire from camera to earth.

Ok thats the hard bit done, clip all your wires and re-fit trim panels. Remember to re-connect your number plate light plug

and interior light. Now to the screen, its about the size of a Tom Tom and quite light. I haven't made final decision as to

where I'm putting it. So temporarilly its stuck to my sun visor and wired to vanity mirror light, but I have to change this as

that is a permanent live. The problem is getting it out of sight in case some little pikey barsteward thinks its a satnav and

tries to steal it. So need to think about that, but maybe sunvisor is best place for it. Anyway looks like this. -

As you can or cant see on photo, image is very clear. The view I wanted was of the edge of middle of bumper and about

three feet back as you can see in photo roughly the size of the slabs. But thats my preference, the screen is also adjustable

to get mirror image, brightness and contrast etc. So for £50 well worth it and easy to fit, jobs a good un