Rear View and Backup Camera and Display
When you look out a rear view mirror mounted on the windshield of a GT40, you don’t see much. The rear bulkhead window is 5.5” tall. Over half of that is taken up with the rear spoiler. Another part of the remaining space could be filled with the filters for the eight-stack fuel injection. In other words, the rear view mirror is limiting to say the least. Those of you that are already driving probably know this; but I’m not driving yet.
I wanted a rear view and backup camera with a good display. I searched high and wide to find a good solution. The first problem is the display. If it is a normal display, the aspect ratio is 4:3. If it is high definition it is 16:9. The problem with both of these is that when you get the display large enough to see (most are not), they are too tall to use as a replacement for a thin “mirror”. There are a few displays that use a 25:8 aspect ratio that looks more like a traditional mirror than a TV screen. Hence, it doesn’t intrude too far down in the field of view of the windscreen for a given width. I really only found one that was acceptable, the Tview RV808C. It has the 25:8 ratio but its screen is 8.8 inches wide with controls on the side making it an overall width of 10.6 inches. In my opinion, this is too wide but at least it is not correspondingly too tall (the mirror is 8” wide). There seems to be a huge push for OEMs to use rear view camera and displays that are of the proper aspect ratio and size, but we will have to wait until they become more available.
The second problem is the camera. Evidently most cameras are intended as a ‘backup” camera and hence have a wide field of view. I really want a “rear view” camera with a narrow field of view. I wanted a high definition color camera with a 90 degree FOV. Further I wanted one that could fit in a 1” diameter space. The best I could find was the BOYO VTL200C. It has a 130 degree FOV (too wide but much less than most) and reverses the image (to make it act like a mirror). That’s the good news. The bad news is that it is out of production. Not will willing to give up so easily, I called about 10 suppliers until I found one in stock. Sonic Electronix had over 40 in stock. I am not finished with the installation details yet, but I wanted to give this update in case someone wanted to buy this camera before they were totally unavailable.
This BOYO is a license plate frame camera. The camera itself is mounted in a cylinder.
I modified the bracket that holds the camera to fit in the circular shape of the top of the rear window. This required tapering the bracket and removal of some of the sides of the bracket..
I drilled a 0.75” hole in the top of the rear clip and mounted the camera behind it.
As I said, I am not finished with the installation, but this shows what I am planning.
High-Level Brake Lights
I wanted high-level brake lights so I mounted a LED strip in the rear clip just above the rear window next to the camera. I found the LED strip on Ali Express. Even with mounting these lights as high as physically possible, they are probably lower than regular brake lights on some cars and pickups…
I have a real glass rear window and I hope it does not cause any problems with the camera looking through it or the brake lights reflecting on it.
-Bob Woods