I am slowly creeping forwards on many projects around the house. A house, a bicycle, two cars, and three boats will add up to a lot of unfinished things to do.
One of these projects is to upgrade the audio on my Disco. As I do take it places outside my usual 25 mile diameter bubble, the need for GPS is great. The fact that the CD changer under the seat is also dying adds some impetus to getting a new system in that can "do it all". Hence a Sony AVx100C that I bought two years ago from Crutchfield when it went on sale due to being discontinued. This system integrates with the phone for audio files and GPS, so I do not need to worry about the maps getting out of date. But that is for another day
As the Sony can handle a rear view camera, and they are cheap, I shelled out the case to get one with good reviews. I already needed to replace the license plate light cover due to water getting inside, freezing, and cracking it badly. As I also went years without any working license plate lights, I doubt anybody would mind my only running with one light. As such, I bought a good used one and decided to mount the camera as close to the centre of the Landy as the cover would allow.
First step was to decide where to install it, once that was done, I took an old pill bottle, cut the bottom off, and hot glued it to the inside of the cover where the camera was going to go. With it all sealed up, I mixed up a small batch of epoxy and poured it into the bottle and let it sit overnight to harden. Sorry no pics, but it is a lot like watching paint dry, but slower. With the epoxy hardened up, I took the drill bit that came with the camera and drilled straight through the cover and the epoxy, forming a nice deep hole to insert said camera.
Before I did so, I took some sandpaper on a dowel and smoothed off the edges, rounding them off and making it look closer to stock. It was then just a matter of some semi-gloss black and it was done.
Today I installed it onto my Disco, inbetween dodging unforcasted thunderstorms that kept cropping up out of a clear blue sky. Have to love living near the oceam, all the hot air hits the cooler water and instant storm!
I could have just drilled a hole and used the camera's included flushmount end, but I wanted to both protect the camera and make it look closer to stock, hence the rounded off and smoothed hole I installed it in. Eventually I will get the radio and speakers installed, I am finishing up the dashboard modifications tonight so I can rip that all apart and stick a Double Din touch screen radio where the original 1.5 din landrover radio went. Then will come the speakers and subwoofer before I button everything up nice and neat.
More on that later!
