I have been searching internet but haven’t quite found what is required. I have installed front camera, relatively straight forward with a new head unit.
had a quick look at routing the wires through to rear but doesn’t seem to be an easy route. Talking in particular about
Cayman
as I think Boxter maybe easier with hood. Happy to be stood corrected!
Are the boot (trunk) carpets stuck down? Any advice appreciated. There are snippets out there but can’t find a definitive guide. Also i think trim panels remove with pry tool but dont want to break. Again any advice appreciated. I have a 2012
987.2
.
Thanks in advance.
i just did my
987.2 Cayman
last weekend. It's actually pretty easy.
I got this camera from Crutchfield
, and I chose to mount it with the license plate bracket.
I drilled a hole barely big enough to slip the camera wire though exactly half way between the hole were the tow bar screws in and the level of the license plate screws, centered above the tow hole.
From the inside of the hatch, there's a black plastic panel on the left side, which is the side I decided to run my wires down. You could choose right, whatever, doesn't matter. Remove this panel by unscrewing the obvious thumb screw. This exposes the screws that hold the tail light assembly. There's also a carpeted side panel that you'll need to remove. That black panel partially covers it. Just use your fingers, pry up the bottom of that panel, and pull it out. You won't break it, I promise. When that panel comes out, you can see all of the wiring that leads to the tail light, as well as making it easy to get to all of the three nuts.
Remove the 3 8mm nuts, and remove the tail light assembly. There is a plug that you'll also have to remove. Look at the plug, and you'll see a rectangular slot near the end that the wires go into. It almost looks like it was made for a screwdriver. Well, it was made for a screwdriver! Put a small pocket flat head screwdriver in that slot, and pull straight. The harness will then release. You've now done all of the hard work!
Going back to the bumper, take a long zip tie, one of those 2 or 3 foot long jobs, and insert it into the tow hook hole. Now start fishing it up towards the tail light assembly area. Work it for a second, and you'll see it pop through the hole that's up there. You're home free!
Put the back up cam wire through the hole you drilled, and fish it down to the big tow hook hole. Now use some electrical tape and attach it to the long zip tie. Pull the zip tie through, and the wire will come with it.
Back behind the tail light assembly, you'll see an extra unused hole in the body that the wire will easily fit through. I happened to have an assortment of universal grommets that I used to protect the wire, but if you don't, just use a bunch of electrical tape. Put the camera wire through that hole that's there.
Now for the wiring.
Trace the tail light wire harness back and you'll see that it connects to a second white plug that's about 1-1/2" wide and 2" long. On that plug, you'll see a blue wire with a brown stripe. This is the wire that turns your reverse lights on. This is the wire you want to tap into to trigger the camera. Use a multimeter to verify this is the correct wire in YOUR exact car, but it should be. There's also a good grounding lug just below.
After you've verified that that blue and brown wire has 12V when you shift into reverse, and no voltage any other time, use a pair of automatic wire strippers and open a bit of the wire's insulation. Take the red wires from the camera, and also the red wire from the RCA cord that comes with the camera (the wire that you'll be running to the front), strip the ends, and twist them together. Now take those two twisted wires together and wrap them around the exposed blue/brown car wiring. Hit it with a dot of solder, and tape it up really well. Take a zip tie, and go over the electrical tape to mechanically secure it, because electrical tape doesn't last forever by itself. Plug the male RCA wire into the camera's female RCA wire. Now gather up all of the excess camera wire (not the RCA wire), and neatly bundle it up, and zip tie it up out of the way.
Last thing to do is take that same 2-3 foot zip tie, and start fishing the wire towards the front of the car. It's helpful if you just go ahead and take the panel off that covers the rear shock, but I guess you don't really have to. I did, but I was changing my rear speakers anyway, so I had an excuse.
From there, just keep getting the RCA wire to the front where you radio is.
Before you button everything up, do one last voltage check on the red wire at the end of the RCA you just ran, making sure you have 12V there when you're in reverse.
I'm sorry I don't have any pictures, but I tried to paint as good of a picture typing this out as I could.
I posted a long and detailed description of the process, but it hasn't showed up. I don't know where it went.
your post above had a detailed write-up. Thanks for putting it together!
Hi thanks for taking the time to write that up, it great. Think I can get the back bit done ok and the panel coming off the side will definitely make things easier.
The panel for the rear shock is it easy to get off as a solution to feeding the wire through to the cabin? Or do you think with taking the carpet out behind the seats I should be able to feed thought without removing?
Appreciate you help, these forums are great for advice. First time owning a
Porsche
and love it so far. The way they build these things sometimes there is a lot of head scratching to work them out!
Follow this video
on how to remove the shock tower trim. I highly recommend you get yourself a
plastic trim tool panel set
. I also found this
trim clip remover
handy.
And honestly, while you're in there, I'd recommend you go ahead and replace the rear speakers. The factory ones kinda suck, especially if you have the base or SPP radio. I used
these
, but almost anything is better than stock. My Focals, JL Audio, Kicker, Rockford Fosgate, Infinity, JBL, take your choice. They don't have to be expensive. I like those Focals because you can aim the tweeters to fire forward.
One suggestion - rather than drilling your bumper cover for the wiring, if you remove your license plate you'll find a nice hole, about 3/4" diameter behind it. You can feed the wire in that way, then fish around for it behind the cover and route it into the cabin. BTDT... the wire hides behind the plate if you're going with the license plate mounted camera (which works great.)
The reason I didn't use the tow hook hole is, if ever in a place where I need to use the tow hook, like at a HPDE, the hook could possibly hit the camera wire ruining it.
Likely? No. Possible? Yes.
Hi I did think exactly about doing that and bought a licence plate holder was going to mount it on the top. I bought a light fitting instead and have replaced the stove number plate light with this and using my trusty my trusty metal hanger fed through to the rear light. Have gone into the black blue wire for 12v but haven’t managed to find the feed for the camera when it goes into reverse yet. The Chinese’s head unit all works well but instructions are shocking!
Very crumpled . Thinking brown cable number 5 could be the one.
I am
NOT
a fan of those Chinesium radios. I love the idea of them so much I tried three different ones, but each was worse than the last. The QA/QC is absolutely non-existent with them.
All seems to work fine so far . Pleased with it, just the instructions ahh.
There have been about 2 people reporting difficulty that couldn't be resolved with the radios - other than that - the majority are positive (hence the length of the thread).. as was noted documentation is almost non-existent, which makes forum knowledge quite valuable. As each of us learn what works with the units and how to do things with the units, we can document it hopefully for others to learn from.
I'm sorry you have issues with them. What are you using now for entertainment/
GPS
?
Do you have the CanBus adaptor?
Yes have a canbus. Did it today. Basically spice into the brown Canbus cable and hook up to the feed from the rear camera . Put it in reverse and all works fine.
It has been a bit of a task working it all out but in the end have done it. Issue was going from
quadlock
to iso!
Speakers are speakers connect them up. Then power, ground and switch line to turn on head unit.I went into fuse board so it turns with the car. Also amp needs its own power. This is a base unit 987 not
BOSE
.
it looks like it is OEM which is great.
The typical feed for power to the camera (and hence to the red wire that's embedded in the video cable) is the backup light power feed. Hang on a sec and I'll track it down for you..
And black/blue wire it is, and I used the ground point to the chassis that's just below and to the side of the light assembly.
So that should power up the camera if the camera power feed is connected to it. Does the camera you installed (replaces one of the license plate lights?) has any backup lighting? The ones that mount to the license plate mounting screws (at the top of the plate) generally do - IR LED lighting, usually about a dozen diodes.. they're very effective unless the exhaust is rising up right behind the car (no wind condition) - then they mostly light up the exhaust fumes.
If your camera is like most - the video cable from the camera has a red wire embedded into it. This is intended to carry a power feed that's switched with the backup lights up to the headunit to trigger the reverse display.
FWIW - for tapping into an existing wire on a wire harness - I prefer a "Posi-Tap" connector. These can be used and do minimal damage to the wire being tapped. The sharp point penetrates the insulation and goes into the core of the wiring - between the strands of wire in the core. When it's removed all that's left on the wire being tapped is a small hole. They do come in a variety of sizes - for the backup light wiring I believe I used one made for tapping 18 gauge wiring and providing a connection for 14 gauge wire (the red wire from the camera..)
Posi-Tap installation (one of many you tube videos on the subject):
At the very start of his video - you can see where he did a prior "tap" into his sample wire - arrow indicates what's left if you remove the tap:
Really minimal damage to the wire..
Hi very informative thank you. I like the Posi-tap not used one of these before but will try them going forward. For the camera wiring I went from the rear view camera( white cable provided ) straight into the blue/ black . Other end at head unit put the same white wire into brown and this has worked , rear view comes on when going into reverse. All working fine. I ended up using a new rear number plate light fitting adaptor in the end, took out oem fitting and replaced. quite bright compared to other side but plan to reduce this with a plastic coating .
Oh and tuners work fine also
