BUILD IDAFC21's 2014 BMW M235i

Alright here we go!

Pic of the stock housing, for posterity, along w/ the lane sensing/speed sign reading camera that was already in my car, yet for some reason that system has never been active in my car

Housing off, stock wiring

New piggyback harness clipped in

And new housing/camera all clipped together!! If I had only gotten the front cam, I would have been done now

But now the REAL fun begins. Opening my path down front side

Sill popped off. Not pictured: me popping all those clips out of the body so I could reattach them to the sill for reinstallation later

Rear seat and side bolster removed

Routed down the A pillar and ready to go rearwards

Into the floor. Man there's a lotta wires in this car

Conveniently up through the cable routing thingamajig

And up to the rear window

It was at THIS point where I decided it MIGHT be a good idea to power everything on and make sure it all worked Plus I wanted to look at what the rear cam was seeing so I could 1. Make sure I didn't stick it upside down (even tho there was a sticker on it w/ an arrow pointing up) and 2. Just make sure I got the positioning right before I stuck it in. I tried to stick it in between the defroster lines. We'll see how well that adhesive actually holds up to being blasted by an AZ summer

Even tho it looks like it sticks out, you honestly don't even notice it when you're looking in the rear view mirror

And a shot from the outside

And now for some vids! It's actually pretty good IMO. Front cam is 4k, rear is only 1080, but still very nice really. And both have nice wide angles so you see whats happening across the entire road. No issues reading plates or street signs either. UNFORTUNATELY this system does not have GPS, so no speed displayed in my vids. Shucks. The front and rear cam record independently so you get a file for each. Also I purposely drove w/ the windows down and sunroof open to test for wind interference (windows were up on the freeway tho) Didn't really seem too bad.










So there it is!!! Glad I've finally gotten it done. I'm really happy w/ it right now, so we'll see how it holds up in the long term.


Couple other notes that maybe seasoned dash cam users can chime in on. I can set it to record 1 minute vids or 3 minute....... I've got it set to 3 minute vids right now Also, is there any genuinely useful reason I should keep sound enabled in these vids? The only thing I can see happening w/ that is that if something does happen, everyone will get to hear me berate whoever slammed into me, and also get to hear whatever shitty music I was probably listening to at the time. Plus when I'm just in the car by myself, I tend to say some AWFUL things I would rather just have the sound off.

She home!!!! Finally got a text about 1:30 today that everything was done, so I immediately shut everything down at work and told my boss I was taking the rest of the day off Thankfully traffic still wasnt that bad yet so I was actually able to enjoy the drive back home. And enjoy i did.

Of course its windy as hell today, so its already all dusted up, and there's a decent chance we could get some rain tomorrow and/or wednesday, but, thats what I did ALL this for, so bring it on I guess The cars never gonna be more protected than it is right now.

So thats phase 2 finally done. There is still a phase 3 to come in my plans, but Imma just drive the car for awhile before I initiate that And once I do get it going, phase 3 shouldn't take the car off the road for very long this time. Right now I am happy, and the GTO will get a well deserved rest. Which is probably good cuz it's almost time for some new rear tires on that thing. The treads still decent but they're just ooooollld now and I can feel the rubber is getting hard, so its only a matter of time for those thing.

Phase 1 is complete!! Just got the car back today after having my front and rear bumpers, hood, roof, roof rails, and even my door handles repainted, due to the arizona sun fucking all the clear coat off my RED car thats outside most of the time. Also had them install my black grills, the "NEW" retro roundels, and black badges. I. fucking. love. this.

(thats not a blemish, could be some dust or a reflection of a cloud or something)

I don't really have any good pics of what the car looked like, but you can see what my front bumper looked like a few posts up when I put my mirror caps on. The rear bumper looked pretty much the same, and my plastic roof rails and also the tops of my door handles also looked like this. My roof wasnt that bad but it was starting to oxidize pretty good, and my hood wasn't really that bad, but I could tell it was on its way as well, so I just wanted it all done, and I wanted it done right.

So glad I finally got this done. NEXT step, I wanna get front of the car PPF'd, as well as my rear bumper just because I don't want this ever happening again, and I am also thinking about doing some sort of black vinyl on the roof, and my spoiler, and then everything needs to be ceramic coated. I sent in a quote request to a place that can do all of that today, but they never got back to me today. But either way, my paint guy said I need to wait 30 days before I can do any ppf or ceramic, which I'm not happy about but I guess it is what it is. He said I could hand wash it, and at least put on some basic spray wax, which I'll have to look into since all my shit is ceramic based. And for now I'll just be using my foam gun (the one that uses the garden hose, NOT tcg's pressure washer) to clean the car. Honesty I don't even wanna drive it right now hopefully it dont get too fucked up before I can get it in for PPF

Also, I made my last payment on it last month. I really do love this car. Got no plans of selling it any time soon.