if you own a car with one of these camera mirrors you'll know how incredibly useful they are, and will probably not want to buy a new car without this system on it ever again





they're rapidly becoming essentially a standard across the industry, the level of rear visibility you get is quite frankly insane.
this isn't a back-up camera (which i usually low to the ground and optimized for low speeds) this is like if your rear view mirror could make your car transparent and see through it.
the visibility is so good that it almost eliminates your blind spots
and they work just as well at night too!

For a while I've been sad that there's no aftermarket system, and assumed you coulnd't just yank one out of a modern GM car but.........

i stumbled across this reddit post, which seems to imply that gm rear view camera tech only needs like $200 in oem parts and a 12v power source + some mounting and wiring to just work, as in zero firmware flashing BS or installing defeat systems
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cadillac/co...ured_you_guys/
(the main install complaint this guy had is the mirror is incredibly heavy so you need a really beefy mount, something custom may be needed for our cars)

this could potentially increase rear vis on the c3 from "not great" to "absolutely perfect" with very little work. Not sure where I'd mount the camera/antenna though, since its like an extended shark antenna



this is what it looks like mounted, not too goofy looking imo, and the wiring could maybe be routed through the t top interface...?






Unfortunately the parts are rather expensive new, and not much cheaper from a pick and pull or ebay, something like $1000 for mirror+camera
but you can supposedly buy them from GM china, specifically SAIC-GM (SHANGHAI GM) , but im not sure how to order parts from there?

 

What about us ragtop guys? Especially if we have both tops?
Any suggestions there?


Paul

 

if you can stomach losing some rear vis, down at the very rear of the deck where the uptick in the rear deck body piece could also work, problem is that shifts your rear view downwards instead of it being "Straight back" from where your normal rear mirror can see, the perspective will be weird but maybe you'll adjust fast

 

I have driven my C3 for 29 years. Mirror works just fine and I just turn my head when backing up. I know, novel concept, but it works.

But seriously, the car is not that big. When a car disappears from the rear view, it is already next to me in my peripheral vision.

 

Yeah.....not going to ruin my car by sticking that stupid looking camera on top of the car. Just use the mirror and how about turning and looking back like we did in the old days.

 

You hardly notice that it's there

 

As with a lot of new things, it seems silly and unnecessary until you actually use it and live with it for some time, and gradually you realize all the advantages

also doesn't look nearly that bad

in fact a shark fin on a shark makes some sense, pulled these pics from a thread on another forum
https://www.digitalcorvettes.com/thr...-shark.251025/

 

I hope you guys have painted over the backup camera screens on your new cars
I'm not interested in adding this to my car but I'm also not against someone else doing whatever they want to theirs. If I'm not mistaken the OP avatar is an Tesla-electric Porsche so he's into tech
(My Q-Jet works fine but EFI changes a lot of things)

I wonder how much of that fin is actually the camera and if it could be stripped out of that housing and put into something smaller. Lots of the cameras today are a lot smaller than that appears to be so it's possible that seems to be. On a pre-78 vette I wonder how much view would be affected if it was mounted under the rear-window overhang rather than on top

Anyway, neat toy for the right car, kind of out-of-place on my dinosaur
M

 

I'm into improvements in general, but yeah it's a tesla large drive unit

that's actually a fantastic point, it's very likely the camera is like 20% the volume of that shark fin, and if you don't need the shark fin's antenna ability, yeah it'd be better in a much smaller housing (likely 3d printed, epoxy sealed to make it very rugged), underslung so it's almost invisible from a distance but directly inline with the rear view mirror

 

My SRX has a 1" cube with a dime-size fish-eye lense...its located by th license plate and has about 120 degree view. I would use one (*with recorder*) in the front grill of the '68 for parking and for *Fools* on Louisiana roads

 

Parking cams are a thing but yeah, they're usually huge FOV and mounted very close to the ground, excellent for high precision low speed maneuvers but replacing your rear view mirror with that would be....counterproductive...
i believe these rear cams tend to be very high res, very close to flat fov, and have various night vision capabilities
also i think the mirror/screen has some magic where its super non-reflective when in screen mode?

 

I have a front and rear "parking" cameras hooked to a display in the mirror. Done for "because I can" reasons.
DD has a dashcam for idiots, I might get a second mounting bracket so I can run it in the vet but it's pretty far down the list
M

 

Figure out gow to get from gm shanghai for 200 and i would do it

 

True

never worried about these sorts of things, the girlfriend has a BMW with all the bells and whistles but as above, use the mirror, turn head, same as on my motorbike

if I wants a hood or roof ornament I would buy another Beemer

 

Mooser! You don't want a 'shark' fin on your Stingray??? (Looks a little puny for that size 'shark'.

 

I have toyed with a few different models that worked to some extent. All had license plate cameras for backing into spots that the rear hides.

The first was a rear view with a camera built into it. It had a recording function and a front view camera as well. IT was an android system and had a lot of bells and whistles. It strapped on over the original rear view mirror but it blocked the view of the right side of the car somewhat. I almost hit a post that was guarding a gas meter in a parking lot at a convenience store, tore that one out right away

second was a pop up unit that I had mounted into the sunvisor. It worked the best as it came on immediately but it had no recording functions. It was fine with the top off but with the top up the sunvisor didnt close all the way. The cheap popup case eventually broke and I was going to hard mount it so I would just have to fold down the sunvisor to view it but I mistakenly cut the wires while trying to remove the broken case....#2 into the trash

#3 is still installed. Its a wireless wifi unit that connects to my cell phone...sometimes. Getting to the app, getting it to connect while the phone is still connected to the house wifi wont happen,, and by the time i get it working I could have backed up and been on my way....it doesnt get used much...looking for number 4 solution this winter

 

I haven't bothered to use the backup camera on my F150 that I've had for 5 years.

Civil War reenactors calls things like this 'farbs' or 'Far Be it from Original'. They take the time to get rid of anything not period correct - cell phones, modern glasses etc.

8 track tape player, big chrome foot for a gas pedal, a compass on the dashboard or that weird **** on the steering wheel - no farb problems there. A shark fin with a camera in it and a screen to look at it through ? Dunno about that

 

I used something like this from Amazon:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...1-dc3240e894a8

AUTO-VOX T2 Backup Camera Kit,OEM Rear View Mirror Monitor with IP68 Waterproof Rear View Camera,Super Night Vision for Parking & Reversing

 

I use my SRX backup camera only in parking lots. The SUV has plenty of "Parking Lot Blind Spots".
Some folks seem to think they can collect $100,000 by waiting for my Reverse Lights to come on.
Then they either walk/dart behind my SUV or drive past slowly/or dart very close to my back bumper. in their car...
go figure!

 

I actually drove a new GMC Sierra with the rear view camera. The field of view is not the same as the mirror and I actually found it distracting. Mirror all day for me.