Dashcam hardwire

[Joel]

Thanks, that makes me a little more confident in removing it!

 

[KJD]

Thanks, that makes me a little more confident in removing it!

The manual makes it seem easier than it actually is (VOE).

The upper clip is captive (I think to keep the trim in place if the curtain airbag goes off).

The trim will pop out about an inch and then get held in place but the clip is in a slot in the trim from which you can pull it upwards and out with a trim tool or similar. You can then extract it from the A-pillar for re-fitting. The lower clip comes out fine.

I’ve had mine off several times in the never-ending saga of my windscreen replacement.
(I’ll bore you all with that story if and when it reaches a conclusion. I’m currently waiting for Autoglass to schedule a fourth attempt).

While they were off I filled the unused tweeter hole with some handily same-coloured foam.

 

[virtualmacho]

While they were off I filled the unused tweeter hole with some handily same-coloured foam.

Was there unconnected wiring in place for the tweeter?

 

[KJD]

Was there unconnected wiring in place for the tweeter?

Nothing visible.

 

[Joel]

Well this is frustrating, I can't even get the passenger footrest off! I've undone and removed the clips but the bottom won't budge, seems it's being held in by a bump on the left and then a bump on the right at the bottom, pretty sure it shouldn't be this hard 😔

 

[Joel]

Well this is frustrating, I can't even get the passenger footrest off! I've undone and removed the clips but the bottom won't budge, seems it's being held in by a bump on the left and then a bump on the right at the bottom, pretty sure it shouldn't be this hard 😔

The carpet didn't seem to be fitted correctly and was making it hard to get the board out, bit of pushing and the carpet tucked under properly

 

[Joel]

Ok so I fitted my dash cam today, some parts were easier than others I found out.

First up, trying to get the toeboard off to get to the fusebox. For some reason this proved very difficult in my car. Likewise, getting it back on also proved very difficult. Probably the hardest bit of trim I had to remove throughout the entire process, which is surprising since it's "user serviceable" right? Did others get theirs on/off easily?

Seems there's a lip it clips underneath on the bottom side which I think was causing me issues, as well as some ill fitted carpetry.

Once I'd got into the fusebox area, I realised my battery was never going to fit!

So switch to plan B, I had to put it under the passenger seat. This was fine, routing the cables to the back of the car was easy, managed to tuck them under the central console. I did hit an issue though, when trying to move the passenger seat back, the battery didn't actually fit underneath and scraped against something underneath, oops.

In the end, the battery ended up velcro'd vertically behind the seat, will have to be cautious with taller passengers and make sure they don't crush it!

For fuse tapping, I ended up using the spare fuse 52. This is rated at 10amp in the Volvo XC40 and while it only has the positive connection, if you set the fuse tap correctly you can leverage that to power your cam/battery. A simple multimeter test proved it was a switched fuse which is what's needed for the Cellink Neo 8+ I've installed, which has a maximum draw of 9A.
The wiring ended up looking like below by the time I'd finished. Though the fuse cover did fit nicely on, it has gaps where the two cables are coming out at the bottom.

The rest of the process was actually relatively straight forward, the A pillar and other trim bits came of more easily than I had expected, though the plastic cover behind the mirror was a little fiddly to put back.

Since I have a two channel dash cam, I had to wire a cable up to the back. To avoid interfering with the airbag, I ran the cable all the way around the airbag and then up the inside of it and under the door seal, should be well out of the way looking at the path the airbag takes up into the roof.

For those of you wondering about the retained clip inside the A pillar, I tried to capture what that looks like here. This picture is looking down towards the dash. Pop some pliers in there and pull the metal piece up a couple of cms and it comes out.

In the end, all that's visible really are the two cameras, though the front is masked by the mirror in my normal seating position, and the rear is so small you don't really notice it in the mirror anyway.

The only other takeaway I have from this experience is that today was a terrible day to do this, in 25 degree heat, in the sun, the car became a greenhouse and I was sweating by the time I finished. I'd recommend finding a slightly cooler day for anyone planning to do their own install 😅

 

[kitkat]

Excellent tutorial @Joel ! Do you think a smaller battery would have fit there?

 

[Joel]

Excellent tutorial @Joel ! Do you think a smaller battery would have fit there?

Possibly, though it would have to be quite a bit smaller. The back wall is full of cabling so the only place you can really attach to is the top of the fusebox, which not only isn't level, but it's also not that deep. It really is quite cramped down there to be honest.

 

[kitkat]

Possibly, though it would have to be quite a bit smaller. The back wall is full of cabling so the only place you can really attach to is the top of the fusebox, which not only isn't level, but it's also not that deep. It really is quite cramped down there to be honest.

Got it thank you, I think I’d maybe remove some rear cabin paneling and see if it would fit out of sight there.

 

[jamesbxxx]

@Joel Can you describe how the shroud unclips from around the rear view mirror?

 

[Joel]

You need to remove the small inner piece first, this has tabs down the side and then two at the bottom, so it kind of levers at the bottom (I've pull from the top).

Then there's a clip on each of the four corners of the rest of the shroud, mine came off fairly easily if memory serves, can't remember exactly though which way you pull the clips and the service manual just says disengage

 

[kitkat]

To help visualize Joel’s instructions:

 

[jamesbxxx]

To help visualize Joel’s instructions:

View attachment 30297

Brilliant! Out of interest, where is this page copied from?

 

[squish]

Brilliant! Out of interest, where is this page copied from?

@kitkat I too am curious - where are you getting those pages from? Is there a service manual available somewhere for download?

 

[DF_Toronto]

Pretty serious install - isn‘t the USB port in the mirror for a dash cam? Does it not work?

Is the purpose of this install to have it running while the car is parked and switched off?

 

[kitkat]

Pretty serious install - isn‘t the USB port in the mirror for a dash cam? Does it not work?

Is the purpose of this install to have it running while the car is parked and switched off?

Correct, many want parking mode recording.

 

[Joel]

isn‘t the USB port in the mirror for a dash cam?

And not all dash cams can run off of 5v power from a USB as well

 

[somer82]

Hi all, first post here. I have been an active reader and gleaned a lot of useful info from the members of this forum who are fantastic, and it's my turn to contribute... about my experience in routing a cable to mount an LFP battery (for parking mode purposes) in the boot (or trunk, depending where you live). For your records, I am in a right-hand drive car.

The LFP battery is an IT's Cell BI-750 (this was a surplus one that I had lying around, they don't make them anymore). The dashcam I'm using is a Thinkware U1000 rear & front. LFP is the better choice in my opinion, as opposed to Li-Ion, as they are far less likely to catch fire if things go wrong - I think that is A Good Thing.

I installed this a couple of months ago, and used the rear fusebox (behind the left seat) to do all the fuse and power connections - I put the battery behind the left seat (i.e. the passenger seat in a right-hand drive). The original installation was routed by running the 2 cables (power, rear camera) across the headliner to the left, down the left A-pillar (being careful to route behind the airbag), down the side of the dash (as per Joel's post up until this point - thank you!), along the door sill, up some trim and then into the rear fusebox. The connections to the fuse box were made with the LFP battery, and the dashcam power cable came out from the rear fuse box panel and connected to the LFP battery. The rear camera cable continued on its journey from the rear fuse box, up the rear trim, and then across the gap between the headliner and the rear glass and to the middle of the rear glass where the camera is installed.

I know the above is very descriptive and images would have helped, but I didn't take any when I was installing. I'm providing the above for context, as this post is about the more difficult part (to me) which was routing the cable for the LFP battery to the boot.

The mess of wires behind the seat and the fact that there really isn't enough room behind the seat for the battery (it can be crushed by the seat) motivated me to install the battery elsewhere. There were two alternatives on battery placement that made sense to me 1) the glove box or 2) the boot. I didn't necessarily want to take up most of the glove box with a battery, so yesterday I took on the task of mounting the battery in the boot.

As I already had the cables routed to the rear fuse box, I needed only to run a cable from the boot to the rear fuse box. I needed a cable with 4 conductors: the dashcam to LFP battery connection takes 3 wires (Ground-ACC-12vConstant) and I needed a separate ACC conductor from the LFP battery in the boot to the rear fuse box (this is so the LFP battery knows when the car is parked, which then relays this on to the dashcam via the dashcam ACC wire). This is the only wire that is tapped into the fuse box. The + / - 12 V wires to power the LFP battery are wired directly to the battery (this has the benefit of enabling quicker charging with my particular LFP battery).

I ordered a 4-conductor cable to make this job as neat as possible. I figured the easiest way to route this would be to remove the rear wheel liner which gives you access to the area near the rear fuse box AND the vehicle battery in the boot. I used approximately 2 metres of cabling to route from the boot to the rear fuse box.

Removing the wheel liner was quite simple - remove the wheel, then there are about a dozen phillips-slotted plastic screw clips to remove. There are also 4x T25 torx bolts - 3 around the air inlet at the front of the wheel arch, and one up on the outer side to the rear. There were also 3 'push-style' plastic clips securing the lining to the rear air vent - just use a flathead screwdriver to pull these out. BONUS info: one of the plastic clips is not actually attached to the body - it is located near the top towards the rear of the wheel arch at the edge (see picture) - don't remove this one, otherwise you'll need to catch the retaining washer which is simply there to keep this clip this in place to cover up the hole - don't say I didn't warn ya! Lotus must have planned for an attachment point here, but then decided it wasn't needed.

Looking at it one would think the lining is 2 pieces, but it is stapled together and comes out as one piece. Once the innards of the car are exposed, you can easily get to the 2 locations you need to drill for the cable.

In the area near the rear fuse box, there is an aluminium plate - I could also see this plate from within the fuse box access panel from within the car. I was able to work out the placing of the hole so I would drill well away from any other cables. I installed a grommet to protect the cable from shorts.

Then at the rear, there is a plastic panel near the battery. After checking for the best spot I drilled a hole - I wish I had drilled 5mm to the right as the thick plastic on the side prevented me from installing the grommet properly.

TAKE EXTREME CAUTION not to drill into any cables - these locations are very close to thick high-current cables - I can only imagine the damage to these won't be cheap to fix. I spent a fair amount of time checking and re-checking the drilling points to ensure no cables were in the way behind or in front of the panels I was drilling. You can look into the back of the aluminium plate from the rear fuse box access, and you can also see where the cables are routed near the battery if you stick your head in the boot and use a flashlight. Needless to say, I drilled slowly and cautiously.

Once you have the holes drilled, it is quite simple to route the cables and make the necessary connections to the LFP battery in the boot, and the rear fuse box for the ACC wire. In the rear fuse box, I connected the 3 conductors to the already-routed dashcam cable, and the remaining conductor (LFP-ACC wire) was wired to the 'spare' fuse #19 (I used a voltmeter to check and this one was a convenient one for ACC purposes and as a bonus I didn't have to tap off any existing circuits. In my installation, this wire only tells the LFP battery whether the ignition is on or not, and does not carry much current, so I used a low-amperage fuse. Depending on your setup, this may or may not be the case.

I like that, apart from the wires in the boot, no other wires are visible in the cabin. I used Velcro tape to fix the LFP battery to the boot liner.

In hindsight, there are things I would have done differently had I planned it properly:
1) I would have run a single 4-conductor cable from the boot to the left side of the dash, as the rear fuse box is very tricky to work in. I would have still opened the rear fuse box to route cables etc... but it would have been easier to make the connections to the dashcam cable on the left side of the dash rather than in the rear fuse box.
2) It would have made more sense to tap into ACC in the footwell fuse box if I had done 1) above. Mind you, I can not open my footwell fuse box - the carpet is hard up against it! I tried!
3) Given the conductors, at most, need to only supply about 5 watts to the dashcam (charging the LFP battery is the thing that takes the most current, and this is wired directly to the battery), I would have sourced a thinner conductor to make the cabling easier (smaller holes, smaller grommets, etc..).

NOTE: for left-hand drive vehicles, assuming an identical setup with LFP battery, etc.., the way I have done it, using the rear fuse box for ACC, would be the easiest location to tap because it is still on the left side, whereas the footwell fusebox is on the right

 

[somer82]

... and this is the finished result. I briefly entertained velcro-ing the LFP on top of the car battery (there is enough room), but the metal outer case so close to the (+) and (-) terminals of the car battery didn't seem like A Good Idea. I could clean up the cables a little, but I sure do like that there are no visible cables in the cabin.

I hope this info is useful to someone out there!