GM Volt Forum banner

I just replaced the backup camera on my 2013

22K views 44 replies 16 participants last post by  kbfoo 
#1 · (Edited)
Hi all,

Well, I just successfully changed out my factory backup camera for an aftermarket one. The improvement is amazing! First I would like to thank Just Vlad for his Youtube video of a similar change. That gave me the confidence to remove the back bumper to access the camera. His video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIGVhZmf-Z4.

As it turned out, removing the right side of the bumper and pulling it out enough to access the camera and wiring only took about 20 minutes, including the "nasty clip" at the very top corner of the bumper. Once the bumper was opened, the rest of the job was easy.


Here is what my poor baby looks like with the bumper partially removed:



When I started this project, I researched what others have done and found an aftermarket camera that several people recommended. it was a "Rydeen CM2-T150B-PR HD MINy HD Ultra Low Illumination Car Vehicle Backup Camera" available from Amazon at $ 69. I bought one. Of course about a week later I saw it on Amazon for $45! Oh Well. Several years ago I added a backup camera to my 2011 Jeep Liberty and was happy with that camera, so in my initial testing on the bench, I compared that camera with my Rydeen. They were very close in both resolution and low light sensitivity, but I judged the Rydeen to be slightly better. The Jeep camera was one from Ebay for about $16 and was titled "UNIVERSAL Waterproof Rear View Reverse Camera BackUp HD Color CCD NTSC TV system".

If I had been able to compare the cameras before buying, I would have gone with the Ebay one. I'm sure I would never have been able to tell the difference once installed, but since I had the very slightly better one, I went with that. I found an unexpected problem with the Rydeen camera. It had a very long cable, enough to install in almost any vehicle with no splices. They had stickers warning that the camera was a 3.5 volt camera and to not cut the cable. There were a couple of potted cable connections in the cable and one was sure to be a voltage regulator. I powered it up, and sure enough one got warm. I cut the cable just beyond that, but was still left with about 8 feet of cable, when I needed maybe one. I didn't want to try cutting a piece out of the remaining cable as it contained both the video and the power lines, and would have been a mess to splice. My solution was to double the excess up and enclose it in a piece of split loom, which I eventually zip tied to an existing loom in the car.


Here is the cable after I cut off as much as I could.





And here's the final cable after placing the excess in a loom.



I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. I decided that rather than trying to tap into the chassis harness for the camera, I would just cut off the connector from the old camera and splice it to my new camera cable. This was fairly straight forward and shrink sleeving made a nice job of it. I also decided to remove the original camera from the bracket and substitute my new camera. The old camera was fastened with 3 very tiny Phillips head screws, and I was lucky to find that I had one screwdriver bit set that went to a 000 Phillips size. I actually used the 00 size. Nothing else I had fit. I had to machine the bracket opening to make it larger for appendages on the rear of the new camera. I attached the new camera with adhesive and was ready to install it all.


Here is the new camera mounted in the original bracket:



I mounted the camera, zip tied the excess wire in the loom to an existing loom of wires and started to replace the bumper. Here is where I made a really stupid mistake!! In pressing the bumper back into position to secure the many clips, I accidentally pressed on the camera and pushed it out of the bracket, due to the non-fully cured adhesive! Of course the "nasty" clip at the corner had just clicked in. It really only cost me about 10 minutes to remove the bumper again, but a couple hours to clean the camera and bracket then re-attach them. This time I let them cure for an hour or so while I did something else. It then all went back together without any more hitches.


Here is the installed camera (in the center between the two license light housings) Sorry for the
glare (the 4 white bars that reinforce the bracket). The excess wires are zip tied to an original run of wiring.



My next post will show the results of this change.

Thanks for staying with me through all this.
 

Attachments

See less See more
10
#2 · (Edited)
My last post showed the essential tasks in replacing my factory backup camera with an aftermarket one. Since there is a 5 picture limit to each post, I will use this one to show the actual results of the change.

This first test actually took place before any of the work I talked about in the last post.

Once I had selected the new camera I decided I should try some quickie tests on the car to see if it was really worth pulling the rear bumper to install it. I really feared this task! I have a 7 inch GPS I use in my motorhome. One of the features of this unit is that it will support a rear vision camera. This makes it ideal to use as a totally portable video monitor. I set this GPS on my dash instead of the smaller one I usually have there and used duct tape to temporarily mount my new Rydeen camera just next to the factory camera. I ran the wires through the tailgate and up to the GPS. This way I was able to simultaneously compare images from both cameras. It wasn't a totally definitive test as I didn't know how well the two monitors were matched, but wanted to see the differences. Boy were there differences!


Here is a shot of both monitors showing both cameras at the same time. The new camera is
shown on the GPS on the dash, and of course the original camera shows on the Volt center monitor.



As you can see, the new camera shows infinitely more detail than the stock one. After running this test under several conditions, I decided to complete the mods.


This is what the old camera looked like during the day looking out of my garage:




And here is the new one:




Here are the results of the old camera at night:




and the new one at night:



I think the pictures speak for themselves. I am totally happy with my update.

[By the way, I'm fairly new on this forum. Can someone clue me in on how to show full size pictures initially instead of the thumbnails. I used 800 by 533 sized pictures.] As you can see the following post by Mister Dave allowed me to edit this with large photos. Thanks Mister Dave

Thanks
 

Attachments

#9 ·
The way I do it is to find a parking lot or a stretch of deserted road with a straight white line. Drive so that the left side of the car is exactly on the line, stop and put the car in reverse. You can now see exactly where the guide lines fall with respect to the side of your car. Now repeat this aligning the right side of the car. You can make adjustments to make the guide lines fit somewhat better by changing the downward angle of the camera. If the lines are too narrow, raising the camera effectively widens them.

I have not yet calibrated the lines on my Volt, but I suspect they are too narrow. I doubt I will pull the bumper again to shim it somewhat higher.
 
#10 ·
Sorry about the pictures that were missing. I deleted the thumbnails to clean up the appearance. The pictures were still embedded in the text on my system. After a report that they were missing, I tried them on another computer and they were missing. They should be OK now.

Dick
 
#12 ·
I would also like to thank you for the detailed post! What a great illustration of the details, time, and effort involved. I especially enjoyed the comparison of the two cameras side by side.

The only thing that annoys me about my Volt is the backup camera, and that it does not provide parking guide lines. This cuts the usefulness of the unit in half. I guess I am spoiled. But the increase in detail and resulting visibility also make this a worthwhile upgrade.

I'm a little nervous about pulling the back bumper, but I think this mod will be a great weekend project.

What kind of adhesive did you use on the cam and bracket? Some kind of epoxy?
 
#13 ·
I kind of hate to tell you what adhesive I used, but I think it serves the function well. I used ShooGoo (or is ShoeGoo?). It is very strong, clear, and remains flexible. Time will tell if I made a good selection. I originally used Silicone rubber calking, but accidentally pushed the camera out of the bracket while re-installing the bumper. After cleaning all that, I re-did it using ShooGoo.

Dick
 
#17 · (Edited)
Update to my backup camera installation

Now that my replaced camera has been operational for some time I have noted a couple of problems:

1. Even though I am connected through the factory harness to the BCM pin that others have stated keeps the camera on for several seconds after you shift out of reverse, my monitor still goes black for those several seconds before the normal screens appear.

2. The guide lines provided by my replacement camera are far too narrow to show the path the car will occupy as it backs up.

First I researched the delay (or lack thereof) and what I found out about the green/white wire on the BCM which other posts say to use for the camera power instead of the backup lights, is that that pin on the BCM is what powers the backup lights! They are the exact same circuit (at least per the schematics in the 2012 service manual and the actual wiring on my 2013 Volt). On my car, the camera has a built in 20 second delay before turning off after taking it out of reverse. This is plenty long to bridge the roughly 5 second delay of the display. After noting that I still had the black screen for several seconds, I ran some tests.

I set up the removed factory camera on my bench and hooked it to a video monitor. This camera has an "ignition" input as well as a "reverse" input, and of course the normal ground, and video connections. If you ignore the "ignition" lead and just power the "reverse" line, the camera turns on and off exactly as the position of my simulated reverse gear changes. However, if you connect the "ignition" line to +12 volts, as it is in the factory condition, the camera then turns on exactly when you shift to reverse, but it remains on for about 20 seconds after the car is shifted out of reverse. I am now looking into what's available in a time delay relay which will give me the same effect with my aftermarket camera.

The other problem is harder to solve. I guess I was very lucky when I installed a backup camera in my 2011 Jeep Liberty several years ago. I bought a camera from Ebay, installed it where it made the most sense, aimed it to the angle that seemed best, and the guide lines exactly matched the width of my car to show just what clearance I would have backing up. I figured that the camera makers must really know what they were doing. Ha! Not even close.

I was not nearly so lucky with my Volt. The guide lines are about half the width of my car, which makes them almost useless! I have collected several cameras over the last several years. I compared guidelines between the various cameras and they vary by a wide margin. You can adjust the effective width of the lines compared to the width of your car somewhat by changing the downward angle of the camera, but it is a very coarse adjustment. You have absolutely no control of the angle of the lines when you do this. You may get the lines to align at one point, but getting them parallel to the path of your car is then impossible.

More on this subject when I figure out a solution. I did see a write-up of a camera that had software settable guide lines. It came with a remote control whose only function was to set up properly calibrated guide lines. Unfortunately, not only was the camera very expensive at around $250, but it is no longer available. If I recall correctly, it was a Sanyo brand.

I don't know yet what I will do to solve, or at least minimize this problem. As it stands now, I would be better cutting the loop that enables the guide lines and settle for the same "lineless" view as the original camera but with much better resolution and visibility.

Dick
 
#22 ·
I looked at the pics I took during the project, but didn't find any that showed the mounting, so I took a couple of the camera as it sits now, without the mounting bracket, then I grabbed a few screen shots from the YouTube vid I linked at the beginning of my OP.



This is my original camera removed from the bracket. The mounting holes have a raised lip around them.




And this is the rear view, with the top of the camera to the right.




These last 3 are pictures from the video. Sorry about the fuzzyness.




This (really fuzzy) picture is the camera sitting in place without the mounting bolts.




Another view of the camera and bracket


Hope this helps.

Dick
 

Attachments

#26 ·
Just an update. I did order the 17 camera. Tried to get the old one out without removing the bumper. It was a total fail. I put my finger on the two screws but could not get my socket onto them, there's just no room.

So will have to pull the bumper and do it right!
 
#27 ·
Would you answer a basic question from an ignorant 2014 Volt owner? I bought a model without a backup camera. My dealer says he can't add a backup camera and I must go to a third-party to get it done. I've read through all the fine work you folks have done and feel I'd better not try this myself. I know I'll save some money if I buy a camera and bring it to a third-party to install it for me. So my question:

What camera do you recommend NOW that's compatible with a 2014 Volt?

I gather it doesn't matter that my Volt did not come with a camera--it still is the same Volt structurally that comes with the camera and a camera can be installed just like it was done at the factory, right?

Thanks!
 
#30 ·
Well I think the used camera I got from eBay was a warranty return or something.
The image quality is poor. Lots of purple on the edges of objects and it's dark. Like the very first camera I had when I got my volt in 2013.

So not sure if I should get a brand new 2017 camera or a new 2013 camera now? The delis of view is wider than the 2013.
 
#34 ·
The 13 and 17 pin out looking at the wire side is like this
3 2 1
6 5 4

13 Wire and function
1 - Red - CAN +
2 - White - CAN Shield
3 - Green - Back up lamp +
4 - Blue - CAN -
5 - Black - Ground
6 - Red/Green Stripe - Power

17 Wire and function
1 - Red - CAN +
2 - Blue - CAN -
3 - White - CAN Shield
4 - Black - Ground
5 - Red/Green Stripe - Power
6 - Not used

I repined the 13 interface harness to match the 17 and put the backup lamp into pin 6 even though it’s not needed.
To get the pins out you'll need to work the wire seal out then used a release tool from the wire side to lift up on the lock tang and pull the wire out from the backside.
 
#35 ·
So you re-pinned the small connector on the camera itself?
On my '13 both ends of the camera pigtail harness are the same color pin-out. So I guess it doesn't matter.
As long as I get the signals to go to the correct place.
 
#41 · (Edited)
I replaced my 2013 original backup camera (22923842) with newer OEM drop in replacement 22883286. Picture is now much better. The '17 camera (23320691) is very similar to this but it has different pig tail connector that will not just plug-in without modification. The 2017 model(23320691) and this 22883286 both have connector on the camera.

Since '17 camera was not functional - I pinned the pigtail back to original on 22883286 camera.

BTW: the bumper cover corner near the tail light, you must push the tab down while sort of pushing the cover up and pulling out to get it to disengage.
The non-functional 2017 camera, the Ebay seller refunded my purchase. Thanks again to him.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top