Ron Jr

First let me thank Midcity Engineering and all who wrote DIY's on this without them I would never have even thought to do it.

Well the weather cooperated on Sunday a bit windy and chilly but no rain so I decided to install the camera. I had gone into the engineering menu a couple of weeks ago and activated the camera so I have been getting the Check Entire Suroundings message, thats good. I decided on an Audiovox camera that mounts on the license frame, why you might ask well I wanted the camera in the center and I like to support local companies and Audiovox corp headquarters is here on LI (or it used to be 20 years ago). Also I could just walk into Best Buy and pick up the camera and FAKRA adaptor at the same time.
I removed the head unit (very easy actually) and checked that I had the correct FAKRA cable and here is the first snag. I have the I-Pod adaptor and I assume the right anlge plug is for it. This plug is also in the way of the video aux jack. It did not want to come out but with a bit of a fight it finally did. My FAKRA is correct but will the I-Pod plug go back in, luckly yes though a bit tight.
Now to the trunk once again thanks to all who came before me with instructions you are all trailblazers. Pretty easy to remove the trunk liner now the chrome trim on the outside is a real PIA especially when you forget about the two Torx screws in the trunk DOH! Drill some holes and feed the cable through route it to the passanger side and hook up for power.
No problm so far now here is the hard part getting fro the trunk to the passanger compartment. This took some time and scraped nuckles but I finally won. I went the door sill route and it was fairly easy once I got out of the trunk. I used a molex conecttor I had in my electric box to make the connection to the FAKRA adaptor then bottoned it up. Total time about two hours. Not to bad.

white46

good to hear everything is working.

cbcharlie

take some pictures. im curious how the camera looks in the back. did you have to splice any wires?

PolePosition

Best mod ever! Take some pictures of the camera you used

Ron Jr

You have to tap into the power and ground for the backup lights, also since the power leads on the camera wasn't long enough I had to splice in about a foot of wire. I used Molex to connect the video lead to the FAKRA adaptor, not the best way but easy I might go in and solder on RCA's. I'll have to wait till the weekend to take pics as it is dark when I get home, Darth is also going to the bodyshop to get a minor problem taken care of on Wed and I won't have it back till Fri.

Pic stolen from the web.

Ron Jr

OK here are the pics I promised.

VaderSS

nice install man!

I adjusted my camera so I could see the edge of the bumper for reference. Heck I can get to about 2 inches (before my nerve kicks in!).

The Headliner was an eaiser and faster way for me than running the cable throught the door sills...

smikes19

I just installed my backup camera last night as well. Thanks to vaderSS for his tips.

Two main issues that were a bit of a bother -- after getting the fabric trim off around the doors so that I could run the wire through the headliner I saw the curtain airbags folded up in there. So i decided not to f with that and I just ran my wire through the bottom trim.

Also, my FAKRA connector barely fits -- the adjacent connector (sirius? ipod?) is pointed towards the aux video port. I suppose mercedes intended the aux video cable to be a right angle connector also.

killacam7479

If there is anyone in Chicago that can do this for me, let me know. Midcity was a bit pricey for me.

micropower99

I just ordered my kenwood camera, gunna do this mod as well. Looks good btw.

Rick Hunter

I also adjusted my camera to view a bit of the edge of the bumper.

It would be nice if the view was gridded like it is on some other cars.