A139 installation in 2018 BMW 3-series touring F31

Julian23

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Dash Cam
Viofo A139
I finally decided to get a dashcam and went with the A139 and the HK3-C.
Since this has been quite an interesting install, I chose to post it here. Maybe others can profit from it.
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To not obstruct my view I mounted the A139 on the right side of the rearview mirror in the dotted area, leaving some space at the top for the cables.
To make the cables invisible I removed the trim of the a-pillar and put the cables behind the trim and the airbag to not interfere with it.
I ran the cable down towards the underside of the glovebox and tucked the cables in the door seal.
Underneath the glovebox I placed the HK3-C and connected it to ground. This spot allows me to change the cutoff voltage without having to remove any trims or screws.
To make my way to the fusebox in the trunk I removed the trim on the front door sill. To avoid any rattling I placed the cables from the Hardwire-Kit and the rear camera slightly under the carpet.
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Since there was enough space under the rear panel, I didn't have to remove the trim.
From the rear door sill I ran the rear camera cable up to the C-pillar next to the door seal.

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The cable for the Hardwire-Kit doesn't has to go up the c-pillar.
Above the rear panel I had to remove the c-pillar trim. To do this I removed the screw behind the airbag cover.
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Sadly I didn't take any picture how I routed the cable to the headliner after I removed the trim.
The small rear cam cable can be nicely hidden underneath the window trim at the headliner.
My generation of 3-series allows me to open only the rear window of the trunk. Since I didn't want to risk hitting the rear camera while loading stuff into the car I got myself a 3d printed part to mount the camera to the fabric headliner. The mount simply slides onto the headliner.
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Now the only thing left to do is to connect the HK3-C to the battery and ACC.
I was able to pull the cable from the rear seat to the fusebox in the trunk through a gap.
The acc was connected with a fusetap to the fusebox. Batt was connected directly to the battery. This avoids getting warnings on the iDrive system from current draw.

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This is the final result how the camera looks mounted with all the cables connected.

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So far I am very happy with it. I have no rattling from the cables.
 
Batt was connected directly to the battery. This avoids getting warnings on the iDrive system from current draw.
Good info to know (y)
One of the advantages of using the HK3, which draws zero power from the ACC input.

Just to confirm, do you mean that you bypassed the fuse box and actually connected BATT to the battery itself?
 
Good info to know (y)
One of the advantages of using the HK3, which draws zero power from the ACC input.

Just to confirm, do you mean that you bypassed the fuse box and actually connected BATT to the battery itself?
Yes exactly.
ACC from the fusebox as shown in the picture above.
BATT directly from the battery with a 3 amp fuse before any control module can sense the draw from the dashcam.
See the following picture:
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Interesting way around it. Like the rear bracket to get around the opening tailgate glass.
I have a thread on the hardwire section of connecting the A139 in my 4 Gran Coupe. I mostly used the BMW advised dash cam powers except I decided to use a semi permanent for the Acc rather than one that switches with ignition.
One note about the battery monitoring, the drain readings are monitored by the IBS on the negative terminal so you would need to bypass that for the car to not see the drain.
 
One note about the battery monitoring, the drain readings are monitored by the IBS on the negative terminal so you would need to bypass that for the car to not see the drain.
So you can take the power from wherever you like, just need to return it to the battery negative instead of chassis ground?
 
So you can take the power from wherever you like, just need to return it to the battery negative instead of chassis ground?
In theory yes although I haven’t tried it. Mine uses chassis ground and it’s fine on a 1 or 3 hour parking mode, I set it to 24 hours to see how long it would do once and it did then store a couple of dtc’s for high drain and load resets to try and stop it but no dash warnings. I don’t know if the eventual cut off was the car or just the HWK.
 
From my research that I did prior to installing the dashcam and hardwire kit, I only read about people having trouble when they connected the BATT within the fusebox. Otherwise there were no complaints that I found.
For me it's working without any errors on the iDrive system. If anythings shows up on the iDrive, I will report it here
 
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