- Jun 30, 2004
- 16,601
- 2,009
- 126
[TWO DAYS LATER]
I pierced the rubber boot for the rear-body-to-tailgate wiring at the joint where it plugs into the body-panel anchoring the tailgate hinges, just below the tail-light. I thought I would do damage to this marvelously well-preserved boot, but the wires I passed through it make a really snug interference fit through the hole, and it can be sealed with RTV silicone adhesive-sealant as a finishing touch once I've finished with the wires,, the dashboard switch and the camera itself.
The antenna and power wires from the camera to the wiring harness behind the rear luggage panel fit nicely behind a thick weather-stripping that merely mates with the top of the tailgate. This weather-stripping I describe here does not have the purpose of sealing the interior from exterior weather, but the wires seem to fit behind it without distorting it in the least. The wires are routed neatly around the edge of the sealing weatherstrip for the tailgate and out of the way -- and out of sight -- as if they weren't there at all.
When I started contemplating the various options for mounting my camera -- machine-screws and nuts, strong adhesive or Neodymium magnets -- I was very wary about the last option. The second-hand observations I gathered from other forum posts elsewhere seemed to warn about handling the magnets, keeping them away from small children who might suffer more than having their fingers merely "pinched". And on the other hand, I also wondered if the magnets could slip off and drop my camera onto my tailgate window. How would I know? I've never had any experience with Neodymium magnets until now.
So I alternately fretted over whether the magnets would be too strong or too weak. That is, I wondered if there would be difficulty attaching them to the camera bracket, or whether they could be jarred loose going over an unexpected speed bump. And as I conferred with my electronics friend in Virginia, he argued that there would be risk of mounting the camera askew from its intended location on the body metal, and he told me there would be paint damage for trying to adjust them.
So he was upbeat and very positive about my strategy from lining up the camera bracket with magnets to drop the assembly precisely on the desired area.
Here's the jig I devised to seat the bracket/magnet assembly on my air deflector panel:

I could think of a few ways to temporarily mount this foam-board block on the deflector panel. I didn't have any two-sided tape. I could glue the block to the deflector with any of three different adhesives -- including Flex Seal Glue. I've already proven that large zip ties will hold the bracket to the car, so they might have worked equally well to hold the foam-board block. In fact, I wish I had tried the zip ties first, after having chosen to use glue.
I'm only glad that I didn't use RTV adhesive/sealant. The Flex Seal seemed to prove a possibility I might have used it to mount the camera on bare windshield glass. That stuff is a very strong adhesive. But foam-board breaks up and pulls apart with enough effort and force, and Flex Seal can be removed with paint thinner and the use of something like a Dobie dishwasher pad. I would say, after this, if you want an adhesive to stick something on metal, Flex Seal is the better choice over RTV.
Even so, I coated the round magnet surfaces with RTV, having seen some of these magnets with a rubber coating meant to avoid damage to the mated surface. This was also my Virginia friend's recommendation.
The jig worked perfectly. But then, when I thought to remove the jig, I used an Xacto saw and put a scratch in my paint. In the process, I also discovered that the RTV behaves more like a lubricant before it sets. I accidentally moved the magnet/bracket assembly a millimeter or two. Luckily, I had marked the four corners of the bracket on the deflector panel with a white paint pen. So it was easy to move it back into place.
After the sun comes up in a few hours, I'll wait for the right amount of daylight and take a snap of the mounted camera, to post here.
As for the scratch I made in the paint, I had a bottle of Bronze Blue Pearl touchup paint in the garage refrigerator, and another little bottle of primer. I also had a clear-coat paint pen. You can probably see the paint touchup in the right light, but otherwise it looks as though nothing had changed about the deflector panel's paint. It's an old car. It's not perfect. So I can live with the paint touchup. (You should see the little shiny paint dimples I put on the hood of the Trooper last year to repair chips from years of encountering small stones bouncing up from the highway!)
It's been 10 hours since the bracket/magnet assembly was installed with the RTV on the magnet surfaces. For all intents and purposes, the RTV has set.
That camera ain't ever gonna come off that deflector panel! And it ain't ever gonna slide around or move out of place!
I'll post that snap later today -- as I said, after the sun comes up.
These are the only things I have remaining to do. The ground wire from the camera was secured to the driver-side luggage-compartment grounding point hidden behind the interior trim panel, so I didn't need to extend that wire. The Camera power wire has to go all the way forward to the dashboard, for connection to a five-pin rocker switch. I've already routed it as far as the pillar between the driver's front and rear door, so that job will likely be finished tomorrow after some tedious soldering and crimping.
I've learned now how these five-pin rocker switches work, and it's rather simple. They have two LED lights: an illumination light intended to go on when the side-marker and parking lights are turned on with the steering-wheel combination switch and its illumination control lever; and a second LED which also lights up when the switch is flipped to the ON position.
The LED connection to the tail-light relay switch and circuits (all in parallel) needs to be made at some convenient location, and I can do it later after connecting a coil of yellow wire to the appropriate pin on the switch. All these wires need to be installed in advance. It's a bitch to remove the knee-bolster lower dash-panel, so all the wires need to be ready for connection -- to the camera, the fuse-box extension and the parking/side-marker harness (somewhere) . . . .
First, I'll use the temporary cigar-lighter plug and wire that came with the camera to test the new antenna. The antenna sits behind the lower luggage trim-panel, just behind the back seat of the Trooper. Input from my Virginia electronics friend makes me hopeful that extending the antenna to the SUV interior will pose no problems or drawbacks. But I want to test it before I reinstall the interior trim panel.
So -- again -- I'll take that snap of the mounted camera and post it later today . . . [there MUST be an interest in all my prolix ramblings here: the number of hits on this thread now exceeds 1,000. So I'll continue with this journal of my backup camera project under that encouragement.]
PS By the way. despite all the web-forum stuff about the Flex Seal products being an overhyped promotion hoax, I must tell everyone -- the Flex Seal Tape and Flex Seal Glue are really good adhesives. Anything you put together with the glue is not likely to come apart, and the stuff is troublesome to remove. In hindsight, I wish I'd used it on the magnet surface. But the black RTV I used is definitely good enough.
I pierced the rubber boot for the rear-body-to-tailgate wiring at the joint where it plugs into the body-panel anchoring the tailgate hinges, just below the tail-light. I thought I would do damage to this marvelously well-preserved boot, but the wires I passed through it make a really snug interference fit through the hole, and it can be sealed with RTV silicone adhesive-sealant as a finishing touch once I've finished with the wires,, the dashboard switch and the camera itself.
The antenna and power wires from the camera to the wiring harness behind the rear luggage panel fit nicely behind a thick weather-stripping that merely mates with the top of the tailgate. This weather-stripping I describe here does not have the purpose of sealing the interior from exterior weather, but the wires seem to fit behind it without distorting it in the least. The wires are routed neatly around the edge of the sealing weatherstrip for the tailgate and out of the way -- and out of sight -- as if they weren't there at all.
When I started contemplating the various options for mounting my camera -- machine-screws and nuts, strong adhesive or Neodymium magnets -- I was very wary about the last option. The second-hand observations I gathered from other forum posts elsewhere seemed to warn about handling the magnets, keeping them away from small children who might suffer more than having their fingers merely "pinched". And on the other hand, I also wondered if the magnets could slip off and drop my camera onto my tailgate window. How would I know? I've never had any experience with Neodymium magnets until now.
So I alternately fretted over whether the magnets would be too strong or too weak. That is, I wondered if there would be difficulty attaching them to the camera bracket, or whether they could be jarred loose going over an unexpected speed bump. And as I conferred with my electronics friend in Virginia, he argued that there would be risk of mounting the camera askew from its intended location on the body metal, and he told me there would be paint damage for trying to adjust them.
So he was upbeat and very positive about my strategy from lining up the camera bracket with magnets to drop the assembly precisely on the desired area.
Here's the jig I devised to seat the bracket/magnet assembly on my air deflector panel:

I could think of a few ways to temporarily mount this foam-board block on the deflector panel. I didn't have any two-sided tape. I could glue the block to the deflector with any of three different adhesives -- including Flex Seal Glue. I've already proven that large zip ties will hold the bracket to the car, so they might have worked equally well to hold the foam-board block. In fact, I wish I had tried the zip ties first, after having chosen to use glue.
I'm only glad that I didn't use RTV adhesive/sealant. The Flex Seal seemed to prove a possibility I might have used it to mount the camera on bare windshield glass. That stuff is a very strong adhesive. But foam-board breaks up and pulls apart with enough effort and force, and Flex Seal can be removed with paint thinner and the use of something like a Dobie dishwasher pad. I would say, after this, if you want an adhesive to stick something on metal, Flex Seal is the better choice over RTV.
Even so, I coated the round magnet surfaces with RTV, having seen some of these magnets with a rubber coating meant to avoid damage to the mated surface. This was also my Virginia friend's recommendation.
The jig worked perfectly. But then, when I thought to remove the jig, I used an Xacto saw and put a scratch in my paint. In the process, I also discovered that the RTV behaves more like a lubricant before it sets. I accidentally moved the magnet/bracket assembly a millimeter or two. Luckily, I had marked the four corners of the bracket on the deflector panel with a white paint pen. So it was easy to move it back into place.
After the sun comes up in a few hours, I'll wait for the right amount of daylight and take a snap of the mounted camera, to post here.
As for the scratch I made in the paint, I had a bottle of Bronze Blue Pearl touchup paint in the garage refrigerator, and another little bottle of primer. I also had a clear-coat paint pen. You can probably see the paint touchup in the right light, but otherwise it looks as though nothing had changed about the deflector panel's paint. It's an old car. It's not perfect. So I can live with the paint touchup. (You should see the little shiny paint dimples I put on the hood of the Trooper last year to repair chips from years of encountering small stones bouncing up from the highway!)
It's been 10 hours since the bracket/magnet assembly was installed with the RTV on the magnet surfaces. For all intents and purposes, the RTV has set.
That camera ain't ever gonna come off that deflector panel! And it ain't ever gonna slide around or move out of place!
I'll post that snap later today -- as I said, after the sun comes up.
These are the only things I have remaining to do. The ground wire from the camera was secured to the driver-side luggage-compartment grounding point hidden behind the interior trim panel, so I didn't need to extend that wire. The Camera power wire has to go all the way forward to the dashboard, for connection to a five-pin rocker switch. I've already routed it as far as the pillar between the driver's front and rear door, so that job will likely be finished tomorrow after some tedious soldering and crimping.
I've learned now how these five-pin rocker switches work, and it's rather simple. They have two LED lights: an illumination light intended to go on when the side-marker and parking lights are turned on with the steering-wheel combination switch and its illumination control lever; and a second LED which also lights up when the switch is flipped to the ON position.
The LED connection to the tail-light relay switch and circuits (all in parallel) needs to be made at some convenient location, and I can do it later after connecting a coil of yellow wire to the appropriate pin on the switch. All these wires need to be installed in advance. It's a bitch to remove the knee-bolster lower dash-panel, so all the wires need to be ready for connection -- to the camera, the fuse-box extension and the parking/side-marker harness (somewhere) . . . .
First, I'll use the temporary cigar-lighter plug and wire that came with the camera to test the new antenna. The antenna sits behind the lower luggage trim-panel, just behind the back seat of the Trooper. Input from my Virginia electronics friend makes me hopeful that extending the antenna to the SUV interior will pose no problems or drawbacks. But I want to test it before I reinstall the interior trim panel.
So -- again -- I'll take that snap of the mounted camera and post it later today . . . [there MUST be an interest in all my prolix ramblings here: the number of hits on this thread now exceeds 1,000. So I'll continue with this journal of my backup camera project under that encouragement.]
PS By the way. despite all the web-forum stuff about the Flex Seal products being an overhyped promotion hoax, I must tell everyone -- the Flex Seal Tape and Flex Seal Glue are really good adhesives. Anything you put together with the glue is not likely to come apart, and the stuff is troublesome to remove. In hindsight, I wish I'd used it on the magnet surface. But the black RTV I used is definitely good enough.
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