Reverse Camera Install

Since I have the Pioneer AVA 2300DVD already installed and I figured I would add a reverse camera.  I purchased a reverse camera from Amazon for about $15.  You can get it on amazon here: Universal License Plate Vehicle Back Camera.

The camera is designed to be mounted on a licence plate.  I don't want it to get stolen or disappear so I decided to mount it inside the vehicle.  I cut off about a half inch from each side of the camera mounting bracket to make it fit.

The reverse signal in the rear is located in the drivers side pillar behind the tail gate.

You can see that the red with purple stripe and black wires on the connector match up to the red and black wires supplied with the camera.  I used heat shrink butt connectors to prevent any short circuit later down the road.  

Now for the tricky part!  Getting the power, and RCA wires through the wire boot for the tail gate.  I wrapped all the wires with electrical tape and a zip tie.  I fed the zip tie through the rubber boot.  Once the zip tie is through the boot I sprayed some spray silicone inside the boot to aid in passing the wires through.

You can see in this picture the zip tie wire mess i used to pass the power and RCA through the tailgate boot.

I then ran the RCA down the drivers side of the vehicle all the way to the head unit.  I had to buy a 3' RCA extension from Radio Shack because the RCA that comes with the camera was about 12" too short.  

I then went to Home Depot and got a piece of 1.5" angle aluminum to make a bracket for the camera.  I finished the bracket with Duplicolor Spray Bed Liner.

Here is what the camera looks like when its all setup.

Xterra Under Seat Subwoofer

I wanted to find a solution for getting a sub woofer into my Xterra with out sacrificing cargo space.   I found some plans for an under seat sub on a Frontier forum.  I converted his drawing into a simple Google Sketch Up file, and built it.  The under seat area seems to be the same between the Frontier and Xterra.

Here are the drawings I came up with based on the above URL:

I used 7/16" birch ply and carefully cut out the pieces on the table saw.  It was rather tricky coming up with a cut list.  The overall height of the box cannot be any bigger than the above listed height (even a 1/4" would make it too big!)

Once all of the pieces were cut out, I used wood glue and brad nails to hold it together.  Once the wood glue dried I sealed the box up with silicone.

Here is a picture of the finished box:

A picture of it installed (excuse the install mess):

It sounded great for what it was.  I felt that it lacked low end bass.  Before bolting the seat down make sure you do something to sound deaden the underside.  I didn't and the seat rattled on certain notes.