Advice on where others have mounted a Viofo in a BMW 3 series?

IAmATeaf

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Dash Cam
Viofo A119 v3
I recently purchased a Viofo V3 and had a quick look at where to mount it on my 3 series. Was too dark and way too cold so I abandoned it but in the time that I spent I couldn't find a good place to mount it so that it would be discreet. I'm in the UK, my car has a bulky rear view mirror and a black plastic cover behind it. No way to mount it on my drivers side so the passenger side was the only option. I wanted to mount it as close to the central cover and as high up as I could but putting the cam close to the cover resulted in the cover being seen in the view. The only way I could see was to mount it further over towards the passenger area or much lower which means that it can easily be seen from the front.

I think it's the wedge shape and the fact that the camera lens when mounted sits away from the windscreen which result in the cover being seen.

Any hints/tips from the experts here would be greatly appreciated.
 
Yoooou should probably provide a pic of your windscreen layout, or a link to a picture of it.
BMW are only for the rich or assumed rich people here, so not familiar with those as i have never know a person owning a BMW.
 
LOL at the "for the rich" comment, far from rich me :)

This is the best I can find which shows both the front and inside/back view. Looking at the front I was trying to mount the Viofo in the shaded area next to the central area as high up as I can but as I said that means that the inside cover appears in the top right of the video. The only way I could see to get rid of this was to move the cam either over to the right or further down.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323828006877
 
you also just have to pay for the one car, buying a car in Denmark mean buy 1 car but pay for 2 or maybe even 3 cars
My little Suxuki i assume sold for under 6K in the UK but i paid around 13 K for mine, and it is a small car, a gas "hog" like a BMW would be even more expensive to buy and in the annual taxes.
 
This is an issue with any cars with rain sensors or collision avoidance, my viofo had to come down quite low (on a ford fiesta), it was hidden by my wing mirror when driving and also met MOT requirements.
I lost a tiny bit of visibility on the right hand side though as well.

IMG_20190713_162346607.jpg

Mini 0906 was even worse, had to go further to the left and required a wedge to counteract the curve of the windscreen.
 
Yeah. i have seen some people mount on the sensor housing itself, but in most cases you are forced to go off to the side of it, which are also not a big problem with the wide angle lenses on dashcams.
 
I’ll have another go over the weekend, this time during the day so that I can clearly see what I am doing.
 
If you mount on the sensor housing plastic, then be prepared that you might have to buy some other 2 sided tape when it fall off, the tape that comt with the dashcams do best on the even syrface of glass and less good on the surface of car plastic trim.
But that new 3M tape you can find locally just fine if it happen to fall off.
But the sensor housing might not be a good idea if the surface are curved, cuz then you only have part of the mounting tape engaged.
 
The sensor housing is in 2 half’s clipped together and quite flimsy so mounting the cam on it would be a no go as it would vibrate when driving. It will have to be on the windscreen, just need to figure out where really, maybe as it’s new I’m not used to it but when I picked suitable spots it just looked so obvious that it was there.
 
I think you would want to install as much as you can on the dotted area on top of the windscreen, the thing that hide cables you don't need up there so the footprint are smaller + partly obscured by the dotted area.

I assume you would want to install on the driver side of the sensor housing, and so close to it as you can get without having it in the footage.
This probably mean that if you want to take the memory card out you will have to slide the camera of the mount to do that, i do that too with all but 1 camera, due to me having so many next to each other in that space ( 4 cameras some time, and i have room for 5 if need be )
 
Drivers side I don’t think is possible as i wouldn’t be able to then set the rear view mirror properly. So I was looking to mount it on the passenger side.
 
Fitted it today, drivers side was a no no as it would just stick out so it ended up on the passenger side as high and as close to the rear view mirror as I could get it. From the front it looks Ok as the camera lens lines up with the sensors in the centre of the windscreen. Bonus point of mounting it there is I can remove the SD cars without needing to unclip or remove the cam.

Will test it out over the next few days.
 
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