17' Series Running wires to fit a reversing camera

Luke.sleeman

Member
Jan 14, 2019
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Victoria
I would like to fit a camera to the back of my expanda so I can see what's behind me when towing. Everything is ready to go at the car end, but I need to fit the camera and run the wires on the van.

At the back of the van it seems there is a helpful bump in the firbreglass, just under the break light, which would be perfect to mount a camera:

IMG_20190130_083108.jpg


On the inside of the van it seems that I can access that area via the high cupboards. However they seem to have this black plastic lining the rear:
IMG_20190202_153614.jpg


From then on the wires run down the bottom then come out the fibreglass at the rear:
00000PORTRAIT_00000_BURST20190130083136797.jpg


It's a pretty simple run from there to the front and the trailer coupling.

Does anybody know what's behind that black plastic and how to remove it? I'm a bit reluctant to start poking around at it in my new van. For those that have rear camera's how did you go about fitting them?

As an aside, what plug do people use for connecting a camera on the van to the car? It would be easy enough to fit a small 7pin trailer plug - but I'm a little worried somebody my try to plug a trailer into it!
 
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2slow

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Jul 20, 2018
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Afraid I can’t help you with the wiring of your camera but I would like to offer the following:

Your last photo shows wiring coming out between the fibreglass and the rear bumper, after you have finished wiring everything up grab a tube of silastic and fill that gap the whole way across the van. It is the perfect place for dust to get in and it will if given the chance.
 

Drover

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The black stuff is something like corflute stuck down, as for running a cable down following the light, its a bluddy pain, anyway first off check surrounding wiring harness to make sure a cable run isn't already there, to run your own, follow the existing cable, it will usually disappear in a far corner and run down inside the pod on one side or the other, you will need some yellow tongue so see if yu can thread it down so it will come out behind your tail light assembly, pull the assembly off the back and have a look for it, don't force it down or you may pull the clearance light connectors apart, they don't have a lot of play and if they unplug you will be severly pee'd off I can tell you....................

If you lucky enough to get your yellow tongue down there then it easy enough to pull your cam wire back up, BUT no joiners it has to slim or it will get caught.......others have by passed this and fitted it around the number plate or on a little post on the rear bar and run the cable easily under the van to the draw bar........I ran mine on the 14 originally from just above the number plate then when I fitted a drop down tyre rack it was mounted above the tyre..........getting a cable down the side was not possible without some destruction.

Whatever you do, one thing you should do once you finish fiddling with wiring at the back is run a bead of sealer along that gap where in your pic you have the wire coming out, run it from one side to the other, this gap will scoop up dust and muck which will then swirl around inside the cavity behind your tail lights, it will then find its way along the cable routes (both sides) and since Jayco don't seal them it will dump heaps of dust inside your cupboards at the rear or just fill your van with dust...... investigate your cupboards a cable will run behind a nice looking brown panel, looks good, but the panel doesn't seal and the cable will go thru a large unsealed hole, not just at the back, most of the out of way places have these secret dust doors, especially around the fridge and floor mounted AC.............

I digress, if you have an easy time of it running the cable your on a winner and stick the cam on top, it will look good unless its a 120 deg cam then everything will be a long way away... other wise just run it under the van, I have used 2 pin microphone sockets from Jaycar, as the connector between van and tug, they work well, I have also used the spare pins on my 12 pin until the fridge connection melted the socket........if you buy a kit from BrashImports then its all included........................just plug and play...............wired up about 5 rigs so far, 2 are mine and the micro phone plugs are going on 3 years, no drama, I do draw power for the cam on van from the fridge circuit, no sound so just need 2 wires, my cams are always on when hooked up a sthey operate as rear view.
Long HDMI cable is also good to use as feed cable, multiple leads so has capacity to add extra cams or functionality without having to run extra cable, just cut the HDMI ends off first.

Nearly finished this post when the site crashed and I lost most of it before I could post, think I've covered the nasty bits anyway.........


PS: When I did fit a cam up high I just drilled thru the black stuff (corflute)to run the cable, screwed down the cam and used an appropriate size of corrugated tube to run the cable. pinned the cable out of the way, looked better than a dealer job..............dont try peeling it off it may spilt or just look yucky anyway.
 
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Luke.sleeman

Member
Jan 14, 2019
35
18
8
Victoria
fit a cam up high I just drilled thru the black stuff (corflute)to run the cable, screwed down the cam and used an appropriate size of corrugated tube to run the cable. pinned the cable out of the way, looked better than a dealer job..............dont try peeling it off it may spilt or just look yucky anyway.

This would get you into the van, but how did you get back out? Did you just run the cable down inside the van and out the floor? Or did you run to a top corner in the back and go back out the corflute?

There is definitely a cable run up to the top because the place I want to attach the camera is next to the high break light. Is there a trick of following an existing run, or just poke yellow tongue in and hope for the best?

I'll definitely fix up the gap down the bottom when I'm done. I was pretty unimpressed when I first saw it!
 
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Drover

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Well you have to follow the cable for the stop light, it will more than likely go down the side of the rear pod, entry from inside the cupboard, once you find that then use your yellow tongue, or it may run down to the bottom inside the van I ended up just running the cable to the end of the overhead cupboard and then down the corner of the walls( it was virtually out of sight), into the cupboard under the bed and out thru the cable run that lead into the cavity behind the tail lights coming out where you have the cable in the pic....I also found a wire in a harness that had 12v supply, didn't go anywhere but it was live so used that for cam power.
At least on these Jayco's all the cables either run inside the cupboards or underneath except for the rear pods with beds they run up the edge.
 

Luke.sleeman

Member
Jan 14, 2019
35
18
8
Victoria
Yesterday I managed to get it all wired in! I thought I would post my experiences, so anybody else who is wondering how to fit a cam can see how I did it!

First step is I cut a hole in the camera mounting bump which Jayco have helpfully added to the back of their vans:
IMG_20190210_163206.jpg

I put tape over the fibreglass when I was drilling to stop the edges of the hole chipping and flaking as I cut. It wasn't entirely successful, but the end result was clean enough.

Next came the fun of trying to run the cable. My hope was to run it to the right of this photo, then down inside the rear fibreglass molding, all the way to where the rear bottom right hand stop lights are. At that point the wiring for the stop lights and indicators comes out from under the fibreglass molding and heads to the front of the van.

Unfortunately I was not successful. I tried just poking the cable through, running a stiffer wire through first, and using some yellow tongue. Nothing could get around the corner where the cable needs to do a 90 degree turn and head down to the ground.

Instead I followed @Drover advice and drilled through the corflute. This got me into the top rear cupboard. You can see from this photo from inside the van, the light poking through the hole I made:

MVIMG_20190210_193507.jpg


From there I poked the cable through the corflute and tucked it under the white backing you can see at the bottom of the cupboards. The results is quite neat:
IMG_20190210_200651.jpg


I ran the cable across to the side of the van. The cupboard at the side actually has some backing I needed to unscrew to get to the corflute. I then drilled a hole in the floor of the cupboard and ran the cable down the rear wall:
IMG_20190210_213135.jpg

I will covere it with one of those sticky back cable runs so it's all nice and neat.

There is a gap at the rear wall where I could poke the cable through into the bottom storage. From there I drilled through the floor of the van:
IMG_20190210_213124.jpg


I actually misjudged the location of the hole in the floor. It came out behind the rear fibreglass molding. I should have gone further forward. I needed to do some poking and fishing around under the fibreglass with a screwdriver to catch the cable and pull it out. It landed out exiting at the exact same spot the cable for the break lights does, which had been my original plan!

From there on, it was a simple run under the bottom of the van along the same path the break light cable follows. There are lots of attachment points and plenty of space to work. I did need to use some yellow tounge to get the cable through the A frame and to the very front of the van.

I decided I wanted to use the existing 12pin trailer plug. I wired the video to pin 12 (auxiliary). I also needed 12v +ve and -ve, so I attached them to pins 2 and 3 which are already in use to provide 12v to the breakaway controller. It was quite a delicate job to twist the ends of the two wires together. Then because the wire was now fatter it wouldn't fit into the pin, so I had to carefully remove some strands. I'm not entirely happy with the end result. If anybody has a better suggestion on how to join two wires in the pin of a trailer plug I would love to hear it.

By this stage it was getting very late. I placed the camera on the van roof:
IMG_20190210_233706.jpg

And was rewarded with this thrilling view from my car dash:
IMG_20190210_233643.jpg


It all works! Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions! Tonight's task is to properly mount the camera and seal everything up!
 

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Drover

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Way to go, good job.......................that white cable run stuff is just the shot for hiding the cable, you could have picked up 12v from fridge supply or testing some of the cables in the jumble behind the rear lights, I found a live one in there.
 

Luke.sleeman

Member
Jan 14, 2019
35
18
8
Victoria
Way to go, good job.......................that white cable run stuff is just the shot for hiding the cable, you could have picked up 12v from fridge supply or testing some of the cables in the jumble behind the rear lights, I found a live one in there.

Yeah, I thought about tapping in around the fridge. As I understand it, it is currently wired into the heavy duty pins 9 and 10 on the trailer plug. Hower on my car, those pins come from a circut shared with an Anderson plug on my car's rear bumper. It's got a nice heavy cable run up to the car battery. I can toggle it on and off from a switch I installed on my dash. By using pins 2 and 3 the camera has power whenever the car is plugged in. There is also the possibility I may be messing with the fridge wiring at some stage - possibly to fit a compressor fridge and/or to wire it into the van battery, and add a DC to DC charger from the car to the van. I didn't want the camera to get caught up in all that rework.

I had a look around and perhaps my best bet to make a better connection in the trailer plug is to buy some crimp pin connectors:
Screenshot_20190211-130630.png

I can solder the wires into the crimp pin connector and then insulate the outside and part of the wire with heat shrink. Jayco provided these type of pins with the 12pin plug for me to fit to my car, to handle the heavy duty cable going into pins 9 and 10 on the plug. I was quite impressed by how robust and safe the final connection was. I've had wires in trailer plugs come loose before and they are a total pain, so it's probably worth the effort to do it right!
 

Drover

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It doesn't draw enough power to worry about, I ran the vid feed thru my trailer plug for a few years, couldn't see the sense of running extra leads for the power, with Big Mal pick up from fridge or I would have needed 40ft of cable, a bit much lol,lol...