Help with DIY Dashcam Installation
 

I'm wondering if anyone here has installed a dashcam in their 991 themselves and can offer tips on how to take things apart without breaking anything.

I installed my own in my 981 Boxster so I'm familiar with how to get the thing out with the lights and homelink buttons, but other than that it's all new territory for me.

In my Boxster I ran the wire behind the windshield header and then down the A-pillar on the passenger side to the fuse box to right of the passenger floor.

For my 991, I've got a rear camera as well so I also need to run a wire, likely under the headliner, to the rear windshield.

It seems to me that the critical things I need to do are removing or just lowering the headliner and removing the passenger A-pillar trim. Does anyone have diagrams or pictures or anything showing how this is done? Has anyone got advice on how this stuff comes apart without breaking anything? Are there hidden screws I need to be aware of? What just pulls off and at what angle or whatever?

Any help is appreciated.

No need to take anything apart. The running of wires to the back is essentially the same as running wires in the front. Since you have experience with the front, the rear is the same, more or less. Nothing to remove.

Front - run wire along head liner. Use a trim tool to tuck wires in. Run down A pillar - I did not remove A pillar, just used a trim tool to pull it out far enough to hid the wire in there. Then run the wire inside the side weather stripping along the dash edge to the fuse box on passenger side.

Back - I ran wire along the headliner, but on the opposite side (driver side). Hid wire in the A pillar, but then up the weather stripping along the top of the driver side door, then followed the weather stripping down the door to the sill. Then ran the wire through the back speaker panel crevices by the bottom the the rear seat and through the crevices of the back of the rear inside deck behind the rear seats. From there I ran the wire along the crevice of the rear window. Again, use trim tool to stuff the wire in the crevice.

I took nothing apart using this method and have had no issues with drooping wires over the past 3 years. Good luck and hope this helps.

Interesting. So you didn't run the wire along the roof for the rear camera? You came down the driver's a-pillar and then back up and over the door in the weather stripping?

I suspect this will make more sense once I get in there and look at it. I just figured straight back from the front camera to the rear camera would be the way to go, maybe around the perimeter of the headliner.

Nope. There really in so place to hide the wire along the roof line to the back without taking the headliner apart, which is why I didn't do it. Hiding the wire in the weather stripping is the way to go in my opinion, less hassle and no worries about taking things apart and breaking clips, etc.

Thanks!

If anyone else has actually taken down the headliner and has insight on how to do that without breaking anything please chime in. :) In the meantime, lacking further information, sometime this week I hope to tackle this project and will probably follow your route.

Safe is good. I expect anything I accidentally break is probably very expensive to replace. :D

Good luck. Drop me a line if you need clarification or run into any snags. Happy to help if I can.

Thanks man! Much appreciated. When I get to it, if I run into a snag, I'll stop and post here for clarification with pictures. :)

I don't have experience with the headliner, but here is a thread talking about the A Pillar and the two variations we've discovered for that just in case you decide to remove it rather than tuck it in:
https://rennlist.com/forums/991/1048...r-removal.html

I've PMed you with some info on headliner removal. Removal looks like a pretty big thing, but it might reveal enough info for you to figure out how to loosen the edge enough to slip it into an edge.

Or just go with the good suggestions Porsche_nuts has given you with is much less invasive and easier to pull later when it comes time to move on to the next 911.

Much appreciated!! :) Both the PM and the link!

If you have the motivation and time, this would be a perfect time to take some photos along the way and create a DIY for those that follow.

I'll definitely do that. :)

Ok... I did it! Got the cameras set up and they seem to be working. I also took a bunch of pics that will hopefully be useful for others. It might take a few weeks to piece together, but I WILL write up a DIY for this, even though in the end it was fairly simple.

Firstly, my a-pillars have airbags in them and used the weird post and slider clip from the other thread. I owe a MASSIVE thank-you for that one as, knowing what I was dealing with, it was actually really easy to take off. The only catch there was that to actually take it out you need to disconnect the very bottom of it from the carpeted trim piece. You can't just pull it up and out.

It's also easy to tell which one you've got because the top part pulls away about an inch or so very easily so you can look down and see the clip. When you push it down with a plastic trim tool, it them comes away easily. I had asked for some details in the other thread but in the end I didn't need them. When putting it back on, you need to remember to put the clip back in the "closed" position and then, once everything is all lined up right, you just push a little and it snaps in.

Taking out the carpeted trim piece around the fuse box just involves a bit of wrestling. You pull it away from the side at the front of it, which is held on by two strong velcro squares. One of them popped off of mine, but wasn't broken, so don't be alarmed if a piece falls out. Then you worked it out and backwards as there's a big post in a a hole that goes from back to front. I actually managed to dislodge some piece of the electronics above the fuse box and had no idea I'd done so. This caused an issue when putting that piece back on as the piece I dislodged seemed to just be dangling around loose there and I didn't realize right away that it had a proper position and didn't just get mashed randomly behind the trim. :)

The last pieces that I manipulated were the door sill, which I only pulled up the back end of a little, and the thing that covers the rear-seating area. I have no idea what that looks like if you've got back seats but in the GT3 there's a carpeted cover and it seems to just be held down by velcro. I pulled up the edge to get under it because it made the job easier.

Running the wires was done pretty much exactly as @Porsche_nuts described. He didn't remove the a-pillar. That's about the only difference. For the power wire, I taped it to the structure behind the a-pillar and ran it to behind the fuse panel and then out the access door. Some day I'll tap it into a fuse there, but for now it runs across the floor to the 12v outlet on the passenger side of the center console. I have WeatherTech floor liners so it's under the floor liner and well secured. I did the same thing in my Boxster for years without issue.

For the rear... once I get the pictures together you'll see exactly how I routed it but to be fair, the route reveals itself as you go. I did mine on the passenger side simply because I mounted my camera on the passenger side of the rear view mirror so that was the obvious direction to go. There were a couple cross roads decisions as I came down the back side of the door's weather stripping but the route forward was always pretty obvious. The only piece of useful advice I'm going to have there is that there seems to be lots of room behind the trim on the side of the rear window near the top where you can stuff your excess wire in. Once I got to that area and realized there was storage room, I then mounted the camera and ran the wire back from it and then just looped it back and forth and kept stuffing it behind that side trim.

I used a nylon trim tool that was basically like a large tapered popsicle stick. The company I bought my dash cam from included it in the box and I was happy for it. The dash cam itself came with a trim tool too but it was a different shape and was made of harder plastic so I didn't use it and was happy for the softer one.

I used that trim tool pretty much all along my wire run to stuff the wires under the headliner and to help lift the weather stripping back over the a-pillar and the sill trim. It was especially useful in stuffing the wires in as I ran the back one.

Finally... yes, you CAN get into the back seat area of a car with LWB's. It takes a bit of going, but I never resorted to trying to remove them. :D

Thanks again, guys, for all the help on this! Between the advice on how to run the wires and the information about removing the trim, you guys gave me everything I needed!

I'm glad you solved it and shared an excellent write-up! I'm looking forward to the followup when you have a chance.

I'm glad your install went well! :) Just this past weekend I finished installing my front camera in my 991.2 following advice from @marsh and @StormRune. I wired mine into the front passenger 12V outlet.

Do you have any photos or advice you can share regarding how you ran the last wiring section to the rear window?

After reading other posts with photos of the airbags in the A-pillars, for my front camera I tried my best to run the wiring along the back of the pillar, rather than over or in front of it, since I wanted to avoid interfering with airbag deployment.

But for the rear, my concern is the airbags in the C-pillar. I'm planning to attach the rear camera on the passenger side of the rear window like you did (upper corner behind the right rear seat), but I'm not sure how to get the cable there without it overlapping the C-pillar in some way.

I peeked under the C-pillar and saw these airbags:
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...fb7d8c09c4.jpg

It looks like even if I were to tuck the wire underneath and along the C-pillar seam to reach the rear window, it would still end up in front of the airbag. I guess technically I could run it along the rear cargo area all the way to the back of the car and then back up along the window to avoid the C-pillar, but that seems like a really roundabout way (and after a quick trial-measure I'm not sure my wire is even long enough to do that).

Speaking of rear airbags, since you don't have back seats I wonder if your C-pillars have them?