So I received the backup camera about a week ago. Everything in the packaging looks like good quality. I measured the handle on my sedan and the replacement one with the camera and it should fit perfect.
Last night, I finally decided to tackle the install - ended up getting about 1/2 way done in 3 hours. So not an easy install. Thus far, I have the unit fully connected to the MMI, but I have not run the cable back to the trunk, or installed the camera. The real PITA is getting everything stuffed in through the glove box. The camera works great, but it took some time testing with the pins to get the setup right. It turns on when you go into reverse, and goes back to the last MMI screen when out of reverse. You DO get the steering angle lines. For those with the 7" nav screen, make sure pin 8 is set to ON so the text is in English.
For install, I followed AJ6's install guide from
here, but there's a few steps that it didn't show well enough:
1) Some have mentioned that you might not need to remove the glove box to install. This is not the case, or rather it would take even longer and cause more trouble to avoid doing this. The glove box is really not that hard to remove. You'll just need 2 of the long extensions for a socket, an 8mm socket, a 10mm socket, a nice pry tool or flathead, and some CAREFUL elbow grease.
2) When wiring the camera adapter box to the MMI unit, AJ6's instructions show that his MMI plug colors and locations are different than the non-nav unit S3's (mine). The MMI unit has 3 plugs - 1 white, 1 purple, and 1 yellow - that connect on the back left. He notes that you'll use the grey colored one, but in fact you'll use the purple one. purple cord gets disconnected from the MMI, connected to the outer plug on the module, and then the kit's black cable plugs into the module and back into the MMI.
3) To get everything tucked in behind the MMI unit, it's quite a PITA. There weren't a lot of pictures to show how this was done. You'll need to pull the MMI unit out as far as the cables will allow, unplug the purple connector from the MMI, plug in the new kit's black cable into that connector, remove the harness connector, change plugs in the harness as instructed in AJ6's DIY, connect the harness adapter, and then finally fish the cables back through the back corner hole that the harness wiring comes from. Doing this is a LOT easier if you get a second pair of hands to help hold the glove box and MMI while you push the cables back as far as you can. It's a lot of touch and feel around to get everything through, and really hard to get pictures to illustrate.
all-in-all, I would not recommend this DIY for someone who is not mechanically inclined.
Tonight I plan on completing the install, but I'm hoping that someone could shed some light on how to remove the bottom doorway trim without breaking anything. If I can't get much info on this, I'll probably end up stuffing the cable under it on the bottom side with some wedge tools - which so far seemed to work fine in the front passenger side. But I'm thinking this might be trouble when I get to the seat belt areas.
Anyone done this part before?
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