DIY Dashcam Installation vs Poor Worksmanship from Installation Workshops

[Comage]

Had been meaning to do a short write up to share my experience when I did a DIY installation/replacement of my old 2-channel dashcam (front and rear) with a new 2-channel dashcam, and also to rant about the shitty worksmanship that I got from the "professional" workshop that did my previous dashcam installation.

I had read up quite a bit on DIY installation of dashcam before deciding to take the plunge, and boy did I learn a lot from it!

Dismantling the Old Dashcam

So I started from the rear camera, and start ed pulling the wires out from the head liner. My fuse box is on the left side of the front passenger car seat - I had checked this out in advance and was ready to install the new dashcam to draw power from this fuse box.

#1. Started pulling out the old wires, and when I saw the wires going towards the driver's side (right side), I started to have a bad feeling about the old installation...

#2. As I slowly pulled the wires out from the rear of the car to the front, I saw that the wires were being stuffed into the headliner in front of the plastic clips, with the plastic clips pressing onto the wires and creating a kink in the wires:

 

#3. So I continued pulling and eventually revealed the excess wire - which was bundled into a messy bunch of spaghetti and haphazardly taped together... and shoved behind the kick panel at the pedals:

#4. Eventually when I tried to disconnect the electrical wires for my old dashcam, I saw that it was tapped into an existing spliced-open electrical wire:

Opening up the electrical tape, I saw that the wire was just twisted and mashed up onto the existing wire...

... and that splice was done just a few centimeters away from an adaptor that plugs into the socket! (wtf!?)

#5. Then tracing the wire back down the line towards the camera... I noticed that one of the wires from the old dashcam (circled yellow) was spliced onto an existing already-spliced wire (circled red)! (WHAT THE F!@#?)

Eventually I got all the wires dismantled. And then sealed up all the splices so as not to short out the other electrical components.

Installing the New Dashcam

I initially thought I could reuse the route that the old dashcam installation had taken to the front of the car - but unfortunately I had to carve myself a new route from the rear of my vehicle to the front fuse box

I started from the back of the car, and routed the wiring cleanly towards the front:

Ran the wires up the A-pillar and threaded all wires behind any plastic clips so they wouldn't get snagged or get kinked when the headliners are smacked back into place.

Now here's the fun part - in all the research that I did online via website and YouTube tutorials, not one of these guides/tutorials suggested splicing open existing electrical wires in order to supply power into the new dashcam.

It's either:

1) Use the cigarette lighter port - i.e. plug the dashcam into the USB/cigarette lighter port, OR

2) Make use of fuse taps (like the ones below) and tap into the car's internal fuse box (not the engine fuse box!)

I needed to have parking power enabled for my dashcam, so I used a 12V tester and tested out all the fuses in my fuse box to see which one I could make use of. Eventually I settled for the constant power fuse serving the Door lights (25A) - the camera needed only 2.4A so I put in a 3A fuse:

ACC power was 15A, so again, that stayed the same and I put in a 3A fuse for the new dashcam:

The final installation looked definitely a lot better than the old installation job:

Afterthoughts

I truly wonder what the f@#$ I had paid for when I went to the "professional" workshop to install my old dashcam - I had paid a labour fee for it back then($50), and truly was not expecting this kind of half-baked job that spliced into any open/live electrical wire without any thought given to it.

I did not go and trace which existing live wires the workshop had tapped into (ABS? Airbags? ECU?) - I guess it's a moot point to go after such things at this point in time.

And for those guys who leave reviews saying the workshop they went to install their dashcam (or any other electrical components) is "Very good! Top notch service!" - is it REALLY good worksmanship that they provided? Or is all the horror revealed when you pop open that kick panel?

Just sharing my experience that it seems a faraway dream to expect a workshop to do up such installations in the correct and proper way... Also, in the recent wake of increasing reports of cars catching fire all of a sudden - is it really surprising? To me, not really. I have been to several workshops for electrical issues or installation of electric components, and each one did wiring in exactly the manner as I described above - splicing open any live wire without bothering where it comes from, or where it leads to.

Sorry for the long post with the heavy use of images. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share your experiences.

Stay safe everyone! Have a good week ahead!

[kobayashiGT]

Well. on the bright side, at least when you are driving with your old dashcam, it is still recording and never short circuit anything.

everyone learn from somewhere. You will only know what you want when when you don't like mah.
 

So yea, your next dash cam will be better!

Enjoy bro!

[Macrosszero]

$50 isn’t even an hour’s worth of labour rates these days. 

[t0y0ta]

48 minutes ago, Comage said:

Had been meaning to do a short write up to share my experience when I did a DIY installation/replacement of my old 2-channel dashcam (front and rear) with a new 2-channel dashcam, and also to rant about the shitty worksmanship that I got from the "professional" workshop that did my previous dashcam installation.

I had read up quite a bit on DIY installation of dashcam before deciding to take the plunge, and boy did I learn a lot from it!

Dismantling the Old Dashcam

So I started from the rear camera, and start ed pulling the wires out from the head liner. My fuse box is on the left side of the front passenger car seat - I had checked this out in advance and was ready to install the new dashcam to draw power from this fuse box.

#1. Started pulling out the old wires, and when I saw the wires going towards the driver's side (right side), I started to have a bad feeling about the old installation...

#2. As I slowly pulled the wires out from the rear of the car to the front, I saw that the wires were being stuffed into the headliner in front of the plastic clips, with the plastic clips pressing onto the wires and creating a kink in the wires:

 

#3. So I continued pulling and eventually revealed the excess wire - which was bundled into a messy bunch of spaghetti and haphazardly taped together... and shoved behind the kick panel at the pedals:

#4. Eventually when I tried to disconnect the electrical wires for my old dashcam, I saw that it was tapped into an existing spliced-open electrical wire:

Opening up the electrical tape, I saw that the wire was just twisted and mashed up onto the existing wire...

... and that splice was done just a few centimeters away from an adaptor that plugs into the socket! (wtf!?)

#5. Then tracing the wire back down the line towards the camera... I noticed that one of the wires from the old dashcam (circled yellow) was spliced onto an existing already-spliced wire (circled red)! (WHAT THE F!@#?)

Eventually I got all the wires dismantled. And then sealed up all the splices so as not to short out the other electrical components.

Installing the New Dashcam

I initially thought I could reuse the route that the old dashcam installation had taken to the front of the car - but unfortunately I had to carve myself a new route from the rear of my vehicle to the front fuse box

I started from the back of the car, and routed the wiring cleanly towards the front:

Ran the wires up the A-pillar and threaded all wires behind any plastic clips so they wouldn't get snagged or get kinked when the headliners are smacked back into place.

Now here's the fun part - in all the research that I did online via website and YouTube tutorials, not one of these guides/tutorials suggested splicing open existing electrical wires in order to supply power into the new dashcam.

It's either:

1) Use the cigarette lighter port - i.e. plug the dashcam into the USB/cigarette lighter port, OR

2) Make use of fuse taps (like the ones below) and tap into the car's internal fuse box (not the engine fuse box!)

I needed to have parking power enabled for my dashcam, so I used a 12V tester and tested out all the fuses in my fuse box to see which one I could make use of. Eventually I settled for the constant power fuse serving the Door lights (25A) - the camera needed only 2.4A so I put in a 3A fuse:

ACC power was 15A, so again, that stayed the same and I put in a 3A fuse for the new dashcam:

The final installation looked definitely a lot better than the old installation job:

Afterthoughts

I truly wonder what the f@#$ I had paid for when I went to the "professional" workshop to install my old dashcam - I had paid a labour fee for it back then($50), and truly was not expecting this kind of half-baked job that spliced into any open/live electrical wire without any thought given to it.

I did not go and trace which existing live wires the workshop had tapped into (ABS? Airbags? ECU?) - I guess it's a moot point to go after such things at this point in time.

And for those guys who leave reviews saying the workshop they went to install their dashcam (or any other electrical components) is "Very good! Top notch service!" - is it REALLY good worksmanship that they provided? Or is all the horror revealed when you pop open that kick panel?

Just sharing my experience that it seems a faraway dream to expect a workshop to do up such installations in the correct and proper way... Also, in the recent wake of increasing reports of cars catching fire all of a sudden - is it really surprising? To me, not really. I have been to several workshops for electrical issues or installation of electric components, and each one did wiring in exactly the manner as I described above - splicing open any live wire without bothering where it comes from, or where it leads to.

Sorry for the long post with the heavy use of images. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share your experiences.

Stay safe everyone! Have a good week ahead!

I also installed my own dashcam. But back in those days my AD did not want to include car camera inside the package, so I decided to try myself after getting the new ride.

Mine was simple laying to my usb power point inside my centre storage box, did not need to splice cables or find fuse box. But at least I can take care to properly route wires behind airbags.

For me, the difficult part is pulling out the rubber seals at the door opening edge which seem to have some metal inlay so very difficult to pull out nicely... even more difficult to put back.

[mersaylee]

29 minutes ago, Macrosszero said:

$50 isn’t even an hour’s worth of labour rates these days. 

Huh!? When my regular shop increased from 30 to 40 per job I also buay tahan liao 😂

[Stratovarius]

Care to share which shop is this? I'm thinking of replacing my old blackvue as the internal battery already dead. 

[Mkl22]

1 hour ago, Comage said:

Had been meaning to do a short write up to share my experience when I did a DIY installation/replacement of my old 2-channel dashcam (front and rear) with a new 2-channel dashcam, and also to rant about the shitty worksmanship that I got from the "professional" workshop that did my previous dashcam installation.

I had read up quite a bit on DIY installation of dashcam before deciding to take the plunge, and boy did I learn a lot from it!

Dismantling the Old Dashcam

So I started from the rear camera, and start ed pulling the wires out from the head liner. My fuse box is on the left side of the front passenger car seat - I had checked this out in advance and was ready to install the new dashcam to draw power from this fuse box.

#1. Started pulling out the old wires, and when I saw the wires going towards the driver's side (right side), I started to have a bad feeling about the old installation...

#2. As I slowly pulled the wires out from the rear of the car to the front, I saw that the wires were being stuffed into the headliner in front of the plastic clips, with the plastic clips pressing onto the wires and creating a kink in the wires:

 

#3. So I continued pulling and eventually revealed the excess wire - which was bundled into a messy bunch of spaghetti and haphazardly taped together... and shoved behind the kick panel at the pedals:

#4. Eventually when I tried to disconnect the electrical wires for my old dashcam, I saw that it was tapped into an existing spliced-open electrical wire:

Opening up the electrical tape, I saw that the wire was just twisted and mashed up onto the existing wire...

... and that splice was done just a few centimeters away from an adaptor that plugs into the socket! (wtf!?)

#5. Then tracing the wire back down the line towards the camera... I noticed that one of the wires from the old dashcam (circled yellow) was spliced onto an existing already-spliced wire (circled red)! (WHAT THE F!@#?)

Eventually I got all the wires dismantled. And then sealed up all the splices so as not to short out the other electrical components.

Installing the New Dashcam

I initially thought I could reuse the route that the old dashcam installation had taken to the front of the car - but unfortunately I had to carve myself a new route from the rear of my vehicle to the front fuse box

I started from the back of the car, and routed the wiring cleanly towards the front:

Ran the wires up the A-pillar and threaded all wires behind any plastic clips so they wouldn't get snagged or get kinked when the headliners are smacked back into place.

Now here's the fun part - in all the research that I did online via website and YouTube tutorials, not one of these guides/tutorials suggested splicing open existing electrical wires in order to supply power into the new dashcam.

It's either:

1) Use the cigarette lighter port - i.e. plug the dashcam into the USB/cigarette lighter port, OR

2) Make use of fuse taps (like the ones below) and tap into the car's internal fuse box (not the engine fuse box!)

I needed to have parking power enabled for my dashcam, so I used a 12V tester and tested out all the fuses in my fuse box to see which one I could make use of. Eventually I settled for the constant power fuse serving the Door lights (25A) - the camera needed only 2.4A so I put in a 3A fuse:

ACC power was 15A, so again, that stayed the same and I put in a 3A fuse for the new dashcam:

The final installation looked definitely a lot better than the old installation job:

Afterthoughts

I truly wonder what the f@#$ I had paid for when I went to the "professional" workshop to install my old dashcam - I had paid a labour fee for it back then($50), and truly was not expecting this kind of half-baked job that spliced into any open/live electrical wire without any thought given to it.

I did not go and trace which existing live wires the workshop had tapped into (ABS? Airbags? ECU?) - I guess it's a moot point to go after such things at this point in time.

And for those guys who leave reviews saying the workshop they went to install their dashcam (or any other electrical components) is "Very good! Top notch service!" - is it REALLY good worksmanship that they provided? Or is all the horror revealed when you pop open that kick panel?

Just sharing my experience that it seems a faraway dream to expect a workshop to do up such installations in the correct and proper way... Also, in the recent wake of increasing reports of cars catching fire all of a sudden - is it really surprising? To me, not really. I have been to several workshops for electrical issues or installation of electric components, and each one did wiring in exactly the manner as I described above - splicing open any live wire without bothering where it comes from, or where it leads to.

Sorry for the long post with the heavy use of images. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share your experiences.

Stay safe everyone! Have a good week ahead!

this is malaysian hack job..... 😁

[Comage]

1 hour ago, kobayashiGT said:

Well. on the bright side, at least when you are driving with your old dashcam, it is still recording and never short circuit anything.

everyone learn from somewhere. You will only know what you want when when you don't like mah.
 

So yea, your next dash cam will be better!

Enjoy bro!

Indeed, when the news recently started reporting the spate of incidents involving cars spontaneously catching on fire, my first thought was:

I am really glad that the shoddy wiring work didn't result in any damage to my vehicle (?) or myself.

Btw the old installation was done back in 2018. 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Comage

[Comage]

1 hour ago, Stratovarius said:

Care to share which shop is this? I'm thinking of replacing my old blackvue as the internal battery already dead. 

Err.. U want recommendation to go look for this workshop? 

Or you hoping to avoid this workshop? 

Don't bother trying to "avoid", because the next one you go to, will do the same thing as well! 

[Dafansu]

Installed my own front and back too, but I just plugged into my multi plug, no 24hrs recording. 

[DOBIEMKZ]

2 hours ago, Comage said:

Had been meaning to do a short write up to share my experience when I did a DIY installation/replacement of my old 2-channel dashcam (front and rear) with a new 2-channel dashcam, and also to rant about the shitty worksmanship that I got from the "professional" workshop that did my previous dashcam installation.

I had read up quite a bit on DIY installation of dashcam before deciding to take the plunge, and boy did I learn a lot from it!

Dismantling the Old Dashcam

So I started from the rear camera, and start ed pulling the wires out from the head liner. My fuse box is on the left side of the front passenger car seat - I had checked this out in advance and was ready to install the new dashcam to draw power from this fuse box.

#1. Started pulling out the old wires, and when I saw the wires going towards the driver's side (right side), I started to have a bad feeling about the old installation...

#2. As I slowly pulled the wires out from the rear of the car to the front, I saw that the wires were being stuffed into the headliner in front of the plastic clips, with the plastic clips pressing onto the wires and creating a kink in the wires:

 

#3. So I continued pulling and eventually revealed the excess wire - which was bundled into a messy bunch of spaghetti and haphazardly taped together... and shoved behind the kick panel at the pedals:

#4. Eventually when I tried to disconnect the electrical wires for my old dashcam, I saw that it was tapped into an existing spliced-open electrical wire:

Opening up the electrical tape, I saw that the wire was just twisted and mashed up onto the existing wire...

... and that splice was done just a few centimeters away from an adaptor that plugs into the socket! (wtf!?)

#5. Then tracing the wire back down the line towards the camera... I noticed that one of the wires from the old dashcam (circled yellow) was spliced onto an existing already-spliced wire (circled red)! (WHAT THE F!@#?)

Eventually I got all the wires dismantled. And then sealed up all the splices so as not to short out the other electrical components.

Installing the New Dashcam

I initially thought I could reuse the route that the old dashcam installation had taken to the front of the car - but unfortunately I had to carve myself a new route from the rear of my vehicle to the front fuse box

I started from the back of the car, and routed the wiring cleanly towards the front:

Ran the wires up the A-pillar and threaded all wires behind any plastic clips so they wouldn't get snagged or get kinked when the headliners are smacked back into place.

Now here's the fun part - in all the research that I did online via website and YouTube tutorials, not one of these guides/tutorials suggested splicing open existing electrical wires in order to supply power into the new dashcam.

It's either:

1) Use the cigarette lighter port - i.e. plug the dashcam into the USB/cigarette lighter port, OR

2) Make use of fuse taps (like the ones below) and tap into the car's internal fuse box (not the engine fuse box!)

I needed to have parking power enabled for my dashcam, so I used a 12V tester and tested out all the fuses in my fuse box to see which one I could make use of. Eventually I settled for the constant power fuse serving the Door lights (25A) - the camera needed only 2.4A so I put in a 3A fuse:

ACC power was 15A, so again, that stayed the same and I put in a 3A fuse for the new dashcam:

The final installation looked definitely a lot better than the old installation job:

Afterthoughts

I truly wonder what the f@#$ I had paid for when I went to the "professional" workshop to install my old dashcam - I had paid a labour fee for it back then($50), and truly was not expecting this kind of half-baked job that spliced into any open/live electrical wire without any thought given to it.

I did not go and trace which existing live wires the workshop had tapped into (ABS? Airbags? ECU?) - I guess it's a moot point to go after such things at this point in time.

And for those guys who leave reviews saying the workshop they went to install their dashcam (or any other electrical components) is "Very good! Top notch service!" - is it REALLY good worksmanship that they provided? Or is all the horror revealed when you pop open that kick panel?

Just sharing my experience that it seems a faraway dream to expect a workshop to do up such installations in the correct and proper way... Also, in the recent wake of increasing reports of cars catching fire all of a sudden - is it really surprising? To me, not really. I have been to several workshops for electrical issues or installation of electric components, and each one did wiring in exactly the manner as I described above - splicing open any live wire without bothering where it comes from, or where it leads to.

Sorry for the long post with the heavy use of images. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share your experiences.

Stay safe everyone! Have a good week ahead!

Very good article! Reminds me of those articles I read last time in this magazine calls Car Mechanics .

[Stratovarius]

1 hour ago, Comage said:

Err.. U want recommendation to go look for this workshop? 

Or you hoping to avoid this workshop? 

Don't bother trying to "avoid", because the next one you go to, will do the same thing as well! 

im replacing the current system. Can tell them to use back the existing contact points right? 

I dont drive everyday now so is it still possible or rather logical to install parking mode recording? 

[Comage]

1 hour ago, Stratovarius said:

im replacing the current system. Can tell them to use back the existing contact points right? 

I dont drive everyday now so is it still possible or rather logical to install parking mode recording? 

In theory yes, but also depends on many other things, like what are the current wires they spliced into... 

I've seen workshops who see the existing shoddy splices done by previous workshops, and even they themselves don't trust to use back the previous splice points. So what do they do? 

Yep... They go and splice open a fresh wire... Anything to get the job done. 

If you trust any of these workshops, just pay them and close your eyes when you hand over your car keys to them.

[Comage]

6 hours ago, Macrosszero said:

$50 isn’t even an hour’s worth of labour rates these days. 

To put into context, this $50 was back in 2018... and the job was indeed done in one hour (thereabouts).

I didn't know how long these things usually take, so I didn't rush the workshop but just left them the keys and went for lunch and waited a while at the nearby coffee shop before they called to tell me "it's done".

[ER-3682]

That is the reason,why some Major AD Void Warranty if 3rd Party Camera is fitted..1st know case is PML.

[Volvobrick]

So far I have always DIY installed dash cams and reverse cams. Always tap power from the fuse box. Don't have to worry about others doing a lousy job. Only worry about me doing a lousy job! 

[PSP415]

7 hours ago, Comage said:

Had been meaning to do a short write up to share my experience when I did a DIY installation/replacement of my old 2-channel dashcam (front and rear) with a new 2-channel dashcam, and also to rant about the shitty worksmanship that I got from the "professional" workshop that did my previous dashcam installation.

I had read up quite a bit on DIY installation of dashcam before deciding to take the plunge, and boy did I learn a lot from it!

Dismantling the Old Dashcam

So I started from the rear camera, and start ed pulling the wires out from the head liner. My fuse box is on the left side of the front passenger car seat - I had checked this out in advance and was ready to install the new dashcam to draw power from this fuse box.

#1. Started pulling out the old wires, and when I saw the wires going towards the driver's side (right side), I started to have a bad feeling about the old installation...

#2. As I slowly pulled the wires out from the rear of the car to the front, I saw that the wires were being stuffed into the headliner in front of the plastic clips, with the plastic clips pressing onto the wires and creating a kink in the wires:

 

#3. So I continued pulling and eventually revealed the excess wire - which was bundled into a messy bunch of spaghetti and haphazardly taped together... and shoved behind the kick panel at the pedals:

#4. Eventually when I tried to disconnect the electrical wires for my old dashcam, I saw that it was tapped into an existing spliced-open electrical wire:

Opening up the electrical tape, I saw that the wire was just twisted and mashed up onto the existing wire...

... and that splice was done just a few centimeters away from an adaptor that plugs into the socket! (wtf!?)

#5. Then tracing the wire back down the line towards the camera... I noticed that one of the wires from the old dashcam (circled yellow) was spliced onto an existing already-spliced wire (circled red)! (WHAT THE F!@#?)

Eventually I got all the wires dismantled. And then sealed up all the splices so as not to short out the other electrical components.

Installing the New Dashcam

I initially thought I could reuse the route that the old dashcam installation had taken to the front of the car - but unfortunately I had to carve myself a new route from the rear of my vehicle to the front fuse box

I started from the back of the car, and routed the wiring cleanly towards the front:

Ran the wires up the A-pillar and threaded all wires behind any plastic clips so they wouldn't get snagged or get kinked when the headliners are smacked back into place.

Now here's the fun part - in all the research that I did online via website and YouTube tutorials, not one of these guides/tutorials suggested splicing open existing electrical wires in order to supply power into the new dashcam.

It's either:

1) Use the cigarette lighter port - i.e. plug the dashcam into the USB/cigarette lighter port, OR

2) Make use of fuse taps (like the ones below) and tap into the car's internal fuse box (not the engine fuse box!)

I needed to have parking power enabled for my dashcam, so I used a 12V tester and tested out all the fuses in my fuse box to see which one I could make use of. Eventually I settled for the constant power fuse serving the Door lights (25A) - the camera needed only 2.4A so I put in a 3A fuse:

ACC power was 15A, so again, that stayed the same and I put in a 3A fuse for the new dashcam:

The final installation looked definitely a lot better than the old installation job:

Afterthoughts

I truly wonder what the f@#$ I had paid for when I went to the "professional" workshop to install my old dashcam - I had paid a labour fee for it back then($50), and truly was not expecting this kind of half-baked job that spliced into any open/live electrical wire without any thought given to it.

I did not go and trace which existing live wires the workshop had tapped into (ABS? Airbags? ECU?) - I guess it's a moot point to go after such things at this point in time.

And for those guys who leave reviews saying the workshop they went to install their dashcam (or any other electrical components) is "Very good! Top notch service!" - is it REALLY good worksmanship that they provided? Or is all the horror revealed when you pop open that kick panel?

Just sharing my experience that it seems a faraway dream to expect a workshop to do up such installations in the correct and proper way... Also, in the recent wake of increasing reports of cars catching fire all of a sudden - is it really surprising? To me, not really. I have been to several workshops for electrical issues or installation of electric components, and each one did wiring in exactly the manner as I described above - splicing open any live wire without bothering where it comes from, or where it leads to.

Sorry for the long post with the heavy use of images. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share your experiences.

Stay safe everyone! Have a good week ahead!

Great job and sharing 👍

Frankly, I oso dunno what is done when I leave the car for cam installation. 

I only saw all the old wires pulled out and new ones went in thru A pillars here there to somewhere and whola! It's all fixed. 

😁😅 These days I prayed more too. 

Thanks for sharing.

I am born with 2 left hands and horrible with DIYs is very mildly put. Ppl can stick a sticker aligned swee swee. Mine confirmed, chopped and confirmed sure out of line. Mind you, it's like only 2cm long. No place to put face. 

Yada-ing. Your finished product is so neat and tidy. 👍

Stay safe 

Cheers 

[Comage]

3 hours ago, ER-3682 said:

That is the reason,why some Major AD Void Warranty if 3rd Party Camera is fitted..1st know case is PML.

You know.. This piqued my interest - does original dashcams installed for BMWs by PML truly follow the usage of fuse taps with zero wire splicing?