What have you done to your 1st gen Tundra today?

But I'm sure you can still put the transmission in L

 

That’s just first gear though.

 

I see 4lo.


I dont see any 2wd.

 

4 lo and 4h by lever and 2wd was when 4wd button isn’t depressed.

 

So I think it’s 4wd (AWD) when 4wd button is depressed and you can still select 4hi/4lo in the AWD mode then you can lock the center diff and go 4hi/lo like a traditional 4wd instead of the weird part time AWD?….I hope everyone is just as confused as I am now

 

But AWD (center diff button) won’t engage in 4-lo. Although I’d be tempted to click off the AWD button while shifting into 4-lo and see which mode takes precedence.

 

Sheeeeeit we bout to find out in the near future…..for science!

 

Hell, room for a hot tub in there plus 'stuff'.

 

What else do you need? Reverse should match first but in reverse

 

It's just 2wd or AWD or 4hi or 4lo, what's not to get?

 

Either Hi or N with the 4wd button off should be 2wd I would think. Probably N

 

4wd lo in first gear (L) is a lower gear ratio than 4wd hi in first gear (L). Better control.

 

Reverse is geared between 1st & 2nd, but spins backwards.

 

Preaching to the choir, but you're talking about AWD, which is probably not even on par with 4hi

Plus ya still have 4lo so just use it lol

There is a 2lo mod for some Toyotas though... And a grey wire mod that lets OEM elockers work in any situation, instead of only 4lo (obviously factory elocked prerunners don't follow any of that stuff)

 

I need that carport

 

AC in recirc is bad, mmmkay?

 

why? Grandpa never turned his ac off, and always left it on recirc. 20 years straight.

 

Yep, I almost always have recirc on too.

 

It's great if you're stuck in traffic and want to cut down on outside emissions permeating your cab (since we have no filter), or if you need to cool down the cabin faster, but leaving it in recirc is also a good way to get all kinds of fun, nasty stuff growing in your car unless you cut it off towards the end of your trip and let some outside air circulate in. There's a lot of other gibberish I've heard or read over the years about it raising CO2 levels in the cab and trapping humidity/moisture, and generating more slime molds, but I've never been able to decipher if that's just noise or what.

I know in our last three cars, in our high-heat-high-humidity environment, if you leave recirc on all the time, you end up with sour smells in the cabin FAST. I dunno what bacteria/mold/mildew/whatever grows in there from keeping it in recirc all the time, but it happens without fail over here if you run recirc constantly. YMMV.

 

Gotcha. Getting the cab cooler is the main reason I use it, especially being in high heat. My truck is in an insulated garage and I park with the windows cracked at least. No matter what, my A/C and stuff pretty much always smells like dust from the terrain I drive in.

I use the windshield vents often to cool that down a little, which uses fresh air instead of recirced air. If I put a hand up to a face vent, I can feel there's a small amount of air still going towards those vents.

I'd actually like to modify my vents at the center console to block air going to the rear of the cabin. No one rides back there, and water jugs block the open air under the seats where the foot vents blow.

 

You know I’ve never thought of that, probably why the tundra has them pirates of the carribean vibes hahaha but at least once a day I’m stuck in bumper to bumper on the 95, usually southbound at about 3-4 in the afternoon need to get my butt back to riding the train

 

Just did this little mod to my center console, because why not?

 

Got my backup cam installed. Finally. I bought the damn thing, along with the subs I haven't installed yet, in December 2019, a couple months before lockdown started. My camera is the Boyo 707VT17LTJ, bought it at Crutchfield.

Needless to say, installing a camera isn't that bad, so I'm outlining (in the most overly-redundant way possible) most of what your average person needs to know about backup camera installs, in one area, as a means to help others with what is truly a menial task, but a lot of people find really intimidating.

Update 28 April 2025: Look, apparently something I'd said below was confusing as shit, so I'm adding some additional basic-reader-friendly-notes, between a couple of cool truck emojis - feel free to skip to the second muddin' truck emoji below if you don't need or want basic, fundamental info about installing backup cameras in vehicles.



First things first: YOU DO NOT NEED TO FIND OR USE YOUR TRUCK'S FACTORY REVERSE TRIGGER/REVERSE SIGNAL WIRE TO INSTALL A BACKUP CAMERA. Period. End of discussion.

If you've been told you need to use athe reverse trigger wire in your kick panel, in your dash, or elsewhere, please get that nonsensical nugget of misinformation out of your head now, before starting. I'll explain why...

You legitimately only need three things to make a backup camera work:

1. You need a video signal cable going from your camera up to your head unit
2. You need a 12v+ source that activates when you put the truck in reverse
3. You need to provide power to your camera

At the most basic level, nearly all of us have something that covers #2 and #3 in that list sitting 2-3 feet from where most people install their camera: YOUR REVERSE LIGHTS.

Think about this for a second. What happens when you shift into reverse?

• Your reverse lights get 12v+ and promptly turn on
• Your reverse gearshift indicator in the dash switches to "R"
• Your transmission engages reverse gearing
• The vehicle goes backwards once your foot comes off the brake
• Your vehicle energizes its reverse signal/reverse trigger wire with 12V+ (if equipped w/one, though some OEM applications do use a 5V+ trigger)

Two of those things should stand out because they're effectively doing the same thing, at the same time. Wanna guess which ones? If you guessed "The first bullet point and the last bullet point", you're a winner, go buy a lottery ticket. Oh, and share the wealth if you win, eh?

That begs the question: Why would you ever want/need to tap into the OEM reverse signal/reverse trigger wire that's aaaaaaaallllll the way up at the front of the truck, if you have a reverse-activated 12v+ power source 2-3ft away, inside the tail light housing, which you can use instead? Why waste extra wires and splicing, when everything you need is nearby?

But wait ... if the 12V+ power source is at the rear of the truck, how the hell do you send that signal to your radio at the other end of the car without extra wires?

Thankfully, your camera manufacturer has probably already done the hard work for you. Truth is, virtually all modern backup cameras have an embedded trigger wire bundled in with the video signal wire to help you with that task, it's often red in color, and will probably be a little straggler off the video cable like this, though I'll show you some other variations in a sec:

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That handy-dandy little red wire lead is your ticket to painlessly sending trigger voltage up to your head unit's reverse trigger wire, essentially negating you using an OEM reverse trigger wire as long as you attach the camera's power wire to your reverse light power.

The reality is, 80-90% of wired backup cameras on the market today include that lead, although there are a few styles, see A/B/C variations below. Whichever of those you have, all you do is wire it up as-shown in each image, and no OEM trigger wire is needed, whatsoever. Granted, some cameras may have extra "loop wires" near the camera that let you change its behavior by cutting the loop, but fundamentally, you only need to connect a couple of wires as-shown to get your basic backup cam functionality working.

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with the B/C options above, it's just like what I showed/said before: As long as you attach the red pigtail to the reverse light power, it's going to auto-trigger your head unit into backup-camp mode once the reverse lights kick on.

With the A option above, typically (always read the manual!), the power wire on the camera end will be twisted together with the trigger wire then connected to the reverse light power, then you just need to connect the other end of the wire to your radio's reverse trigger input.

Generally speaking, referencing the above types (A/B/C), install should be as easy as:

• Attach the red wire(s) at the camera end of things properly (i.e. use a Posi-Tap, because T-taps/Scotchloks/QuickTaps are reserved for absolute fucking assholes) to the positive wire of your reverse lights
• Give the camera a proper ground, which can also be the ground for your reverse lights if you like (don't be an animal, use a Posi-Tap)
• Plug the "To radio" yellow RCA end into the "Backup camera" port of your radio
• Tie the "To radio reverse trigger" red wire to your "Reverse trigger" on your radio

Literally. That's all there is to get your camera to turn on while in reverse, when it turns on it'll start feeding video over the RCA, and b/c that little red wire is getting 12v at the same time as your camera, it's going to fire off 12v to your radio's reverse trigger wire, telling it to wake the hell up and show that video feed!

Not only is this the most efficient, easiest way to install a backup camera, it also ensures your camera only gets voltage when you need it. There's an argument to be made here on hardware longevity - do you REALLY want your camera to be on all the time, or any time you have the truck going? Naw. Your hardware is probably going to last far longer if you're only turning it on when you need it.

"But shifty! What if I want to see my backup camera all the time, like, even when I'm driving down the road?!"

Look. I know some people want "anytime backup camera". I get it. Whether you can do it or not is partially dependant on the radio. Your radio may, for example, require you to have a e-brake bypass installed - which is totally not safe and I cannot recommend you do that, for your own safety and my legal liability - to be able to access the menus that would let you see your reverse camera's signal. If your radio did let you, you still would not need to use your vehicle's OEM reverse signal wire. You'd need to find a way to do one of the following:

• Setup a 12v+ dash switch or trigger that'll feed power to your camera and the reverse trigger wire of your head unit 12v+ simultaneously
• Constantly power your camera, ideally with an ACC or ON 12v+ (not constant power! you'll drain your battery) and setup a 12v+ switch (example from Boyo Cameras here) to give power to the head unit's reverse trigger wire, thus telling it to jump to backup mode

DISCLAIMER: YOU SHOULD NEVER, EVER DO EITHER OF THOSE THINGS BECAUSE IT IS DANGEROUS AND PUTS YOUR LIFE AND THE LIVES OF OTHERS AT RISK IF YOU'RE DICKING AROUND WITH YOUR HEAD UNIT, WATCHING VIDEO WHILE DRIVING!! If you choose to setup anytime rearview, that's on you, it's your stupid life choice, I told you NEVER, EVER do something so stupid and irresponsible. I will not be held liable for your outrageous carelessness and stupidity.

The main takeaway here is this: Obviously, even if your power is on 24/7, the only way your head unit should show video is if (A) the head unit supports showing backup camera feed at any time or (B) its reverse trigger wire is getting a 12v+ input. But again, it'd be really foolish taking your eyes off the road to watch videos on your head unit screen, so just ... don't do it.

Hopefully that makes sense, thanks for joining my TED talk. Stay tuned for more info showing a real-world install of a backup camera.




One example of a camera installation, followed by some troubleshooting if shit goes sideways...

First off, I need to tell you, fine reader, cab types are different. I'm going to show you some of my holes below (huzzah huzzah), know that the holes in your floorboard may not match perfectly with the holes of my 2006 Access Cab floorboard. If you have an AC like me, you may find them in the same place! But if you have a regular or double cab truck, they may not. The point is not where my holes are (mind your own holes, pal!), it's to show you (1) our cabs have holes in the floor, (2) those holes are capped with either plastic or rubber grommets, and (3) there's a myriad of safe, water-tight ways to pass your backup camera's video signal wire from the rear of the truck up to the dash and have it look OEM+ af.

On my end, @daveeasa's DIR harness made this a snap because it came with a waterproof tee fed off the reverse lights with ground/power leads to turn on the camera when reverse lights are on. I don't know if Dave is still making the DIR harness at the time you're going to be reading this, he may be retired already (what an old fart! ), but it's a genius idea, I didn't need to run a wire to my frame for my camera to get a good ground or Positap into my driver's side reverse light to feed it power! The DIR harness also disables the tag lights when reverse is engaged so you don't get extra glare from the nearby tag lights if you go with a license-plate mounted camera.

​

Essentially, with my Boyo camera, this was my configuration, with the blue stars being my only crimp points - there was no need to find any special wires or crap, this camera comes with a reverse trigger, and by teeing power/gnd off the reverse lights, simply throwing the vehicle in reverse powers up the camera with the lights, and the camera's reverse trigger tells my head unit to come on + display camera feed:

​

Note the three tees (blue / white / green) on the camera diagram above. It's confusing seeing those as a straight line, so I'm embellishing on that a bit in this next image. Every decent camera should have those, essentially tiny 22awg(ish) wire loops as shown here, often with labels. You can cut those loops to change properties of the camera. I would ignore those during your install, but ... say your image is reverse of what you expect after install, you could cut find and cut the "reverse image on/off" (white loop in this example, yours may be diff't) to reverse the image being sent to the head unit. You may or may not actually need to do this, many quality head units have an option to reverse the backup image, but it's worth noting you can change the camera functions by cutting those loops AFTER install, to modify the way the camera functions, from the iR/LED light functions, to the camera image output position, or to turn on/off parking guides, but note: Many head units automatically add parking lines! I don't recommend EVER cutting the parking lines loop wire on your camera unless you're 100% sure your head unit isn't adding lines in first! My Alpine auto-adds lines in.

​

I ended up using my Valorbe files (thinking about you, @Professional Hand Model) to notch my license plate frame so I can run this down thru the hole directly behind the plate, along with the tag light harness.

​

Before buttoning anything up, I test wired things outside the truck just to confirm all is working as expected. Safety first, of course, so I applied the e-brake, tossed the truck in reverse while it wasn't running and, "Hey! We've got reverse camera!" I made sure the picture was alright, before taking time to wire anything or button anything up. The cones pissed me off, it turns out that's an Alpine thing you can turn off in the menus, or adjust to fit the lined on the camera.

​

Looked good enough for me, just needing some minor tweaks. So I pulled my sill plates and started looking for places to pop thru - and there are plenty. At least in the AC trucks, I found three different places to pop through. Gist is this, and I'll repost this in another thread for later: The floor on the drivers side has several 1.5" - 3" plastic and rubber caps in it. If the cap is plastic, it doesn't pass thru to the outside. If the cap is rubber, it has access to outside nearby underneath.

The three easiest pass-thru areas I found were:

Halfway between the driver's seat bolts, on the ridge the seat is mounted (this is where the OEM harness passes out), here:

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In the middle of the rear floorboard, here:

​

And finally, there's one in the middle of the driver's floorboard which was my target, here (the two off to the left ... the large plug is plastic, a no-go, the smaller is rubber and takes a janky path outside):

​

As you can see, and the main reason I chose this for my exit is because it literally drops you right on top of the framerail, whereas the others are slightly or heavily off-center of the framerails on my '06 AC:

​

I wanted a more OEM+ appearance so I popped out the rubber plug, used a 1/2" punch to punch out the center of the plug, and ran my 1/2" loom through it, with it protruding at the end, and taped the end to keep it from pulling out. Here's some pics to shoe what I did, and how the end result looks. It lays down nicely on the carpet and you can't tell anything is there.

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The hardest part is making sure you're smart about pre-routing things from underneath and tying off to something to keep stuff from moving.

My camera has a breakaway on it, which means I can separate the camera and its 36" pigtail from the yellow RCA/red reverse trigger lead for the video part, which is what I'm showing above. The yellow RCA goes to the back of the head unit, the red goes to the radio's reverse trigger wire (orange/white on my Alpine harness) - this is what tells the head unit "hey, dummy, the car's in reverse and I'm on, turn on!"

I followed OEM to electrical tape around the loom (w/wire inside) for about 10 feet before going any farther. Then pre-routed things, zip tied to the harness exiting under the driver's seat, and continued to trace and zip-tie to that back to the driver's corner. I then loomed the pigtail coming off the camera, and got both routed to the rear corner to finish the job.

This is what the end result looked like back there. Obviously, I had a little extra, but I couldn't crop anything because the trying to splice the tiny ass wires in this harness would've taken too long. So it's taped and zipped nearly up into the corner, and I tagged into Dave's power over there. Got sloppy with my taping on that, but I was getting eaten by mosquitos and ready to be done. This specific camera came with a green lead on the camera pigtail which is used to turn on its integrated LEDs (you can see those LEDs on the license plate pic above), and that got crimped in with the camera power, so the camera and LEDs come on at the same time.

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Turned off the bullshit cones, buttoned the dash back up, and admired my work. Not the best picture in the world with the sun blasting at it, but hell if it doesn't work. I'm hoping the camera lead is semi-universal, maybe I can upgrade to something better later. (Troubleshooting info on the other side of this last picture!)

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Some troubleshooting info!

I can't recommend enough you test the camera BEFORE you fully button everything back up. Let's be real: Most cameras only require making 4-5 connections to function, meaning the tedious part of install isn't so much "how do I wire this", it's "how do I safely get the signal wire up to the dash"?

In the event things aren't working, where would I start with troubleshooting?

• Make sure the camera didn't come with a protective sticker over the lens that may be blocking it from seeing anything.
• Double-check to make sure you plugged your video signal cable into the correct port on your stereo; many cameras these days support multiple cameras, and may have multiple RCA tails you can plug into. Check this first, to make sure you're plugging into the "reverse camera" RCA on the stereo end
• Verify you correctly hooked up the reverse trigger wire for the camera to the correct reverse trigger wire of the camera (this may require breaking down and RTFM, you know, checking the instructions for your camera?
• Verify the camera ground is good, this is especially important if you grounded to the body or frame of the truck, and if you did exactly that, make sure you're making bare-metal-to-bare-metal contact, you're not mating a ground wire to painted metal...
• And finally, verify power to the camera, let's get into that now!

Power-wise, and this is specifically geared towards folks who are tapping off the reverse lights to get power, I'd check:

• With the e-brake on, truck off, and shifted into reverse, do the reverse lights turn on? If not, maybe you forgot to remove the negative battery cable before install and managed to blow a fuse?
• If the reverse lights **DO** turn on, and you're tapping both +/- off the reverse light wiring, is it possible you reversed the +/- wires? A voltmeter/DMM to check for voltage with the e-brake on and truck in reverse may answer that question rapidly....
• ... Or maybe you tapped into the wrong colored wires? Tail/brake/running/blinker light colors can vary from year to year and cab to cab. Wouldn't it be funny if the camera turned on every time you tapped on the brakes? (Yes, I've seen it before)
• Or maybe your Posi-tap connection is bad? Did you tug-test your Posi-Tap(s) after installing them, and confirm they're fully twisted down tight, so it pierces into the wire fully?
• If your camera has dedicated LEDs around the lens, you may be able to check if those are lighting up while the e-brake still on and truck is in reverse.
• If all else fails, and you're 100% positive the RCA is connected to the correct port on the head unit, you're 100% positive the camera's reverse trigger is connected to the correct colored wire on your head unit, and you happen to have access to a smaller 9v or 12v battery (the kind of 12v you find on motorcycles, electric lawn mowers, in house alarm boxes, and in computer battery backup UPS units) with a confirmed voltage reading, i.e. the battery is 100% good, then ...
  • Try attaching the (+) wire to the battery - which may include the camera's (+) wire and its trigger wire together on the positive side of the battery, then attach the negative (-) last
  • Do you get a picture on the head unit while NOT in reverse?
    • If yes, you probably need to use the powers of logical deduction to understand why it works with external power, but not on the truck's power (hint: It's probably installer error)
    • As an added bit of data, test again with it in reverse. Does it work?
    • If it doesn't work in either above case, do you have an external TV/screen/monitor that accepts the camera's RCA? If yes, try plugging the camera's video RCA into that external TV/monitor to see if any video shows up on it.
    • If it works on an external screen, but not the radio screen, there's a strong chance the issue is either the radio's video input or its reverse triggering or possibly the radio has a setting to turn off the backup camera feature (yes, it's a thing on some radios)
    • If it doesn't work on the head unit nor an external screen, there's a solid chance your camera is DOA.

Hopefully this helps demystify this process a little bit.

 

Mine is still in it's box in the basement. Bought mine June of 2020, so I've got 7 @shifty` months to install it.
But I finally cut the hedges. Oh - damn, just realized I forgot the little hedge that is starting to block my view as I enter the street. Dang.

 

Getting some stuff ready for the move today and straightened up the garage, which led me to finally installing my freshly repainted brush guard back on the tundra

really need to quit goofing off and get around to the grill mod for the truck otherwise I’ll be dragging another project across country

 

Put the tundra In Storage.. it’s time for a frame swap on my 98 Tacoma

 

body shop hasn't had the time for the Tundra yet - correct?

 

I finished my Bussmann auxiliary fuse panel this afternoon. Bought a sunglasses holder switch panel from B40Built on Instagram. I bought his tailgate bushings at the same time and both have very nice build quality.





I also snagged some 285/70/17 Falkens from a guy at work the other day. I mounted them on Saturday and they look tuff. They also ride and handle well for a big, heavy tire.