Ford 2020 F150 Rear Window Defroster & Tint

[DashCamOnBoard]

If you're installing front & rear dashcams on an F150, will the defroster wires and window tint on the rear window be a problem? I would want to remove the tint but don't know if that would damage the defroster wires.

And if you have the kind with the sliding rear window that opens, will that cause problems mounting a dashcam?

 

[kamkar]

Not really.

The defroster lines you can avoid by getting the lens right up against the glass, i do that in my little 5 door hatchback mounting rear camera off metal frame on hatch.
Not quite sure how close to the glass different mounting options let you go, but if you have the lines in the footage its just a aesthetic thing.
The sliding window i assume you can get around in 2 ways.
1: mount off the glass wit the wire coming from the same side the glass slide to, this way when open you have some wires dangling but when closes it should be tight
2: mount off the headliner or other features back there, my rear camera are off the rear hatch and using a neodynoum magnet as spacer and "mount" so easy to move around / take off.
And due to the shape of my rear hatch it let me slide the camera to within a mm of the glass so i dont have defroster lines in the frame.

Tint of course block some of the light, but in all cameras you can tweak the EV setting for that camera to compensate.
Some brands also offer a waterproof rear camera unit, that way you could place the camera all the way out back, but then you have to keep the lens clean as a good deal of crud accumulate back there ( at least on the truck i owned back in the day )
A camera in the back cabin glass will also have a lot of the bed in the frame, this could be good if you use parking mode and someone take something from the bed of your car.
But otherwise it do make plate capture ( which you should not focus super much on ) a bit problematic as directly behind you you can not see the plate on the car there, and further back you start to get near the distance where it is also impossible to do due to the nature of the wide angle lenses on dashcams.
In perfect conditions you can only read a place from 4-5 car lengths from the camera, so if we say your bed is 1 car, and the "shade" behind the truck another car length then you just have 2-3 car lengths left of sweet spot.
And due to the American license plates design/size you can probably scratch one more car length just to be on the safe side.

BUT ! plate capture is just a thing if you experience a hit and run, in which case you should see the plate and call it out for the microphone to record, this would also be a very good idea if you do that at night as dashcams cant really do plates at night as no one drive at crawl speed.

 

[DashCamOnBoard]

So you've got the rear cam mounted on the bottom. My plan was to mount it on top, especially since the truck bed will block some of the view. My concern is that the heat from the defroster wires could damage the camera or mess up the adhesive that holds the camera. And I'd like to remove the tint, but am concerned if that would damage the defroster wires in the process.

 

[kamkar]

No the camera are at the top of the rear window, in general dashcams are best mounted as high as possible on their respective location.
In this picture i have another rear camera mounted beside the old one, this one are a newer and smaller camera so it is actually mounted on the glass, and also filming above the top defroster line. ( pic taken from inside the car with rear hatch closed )

The defroster wires will have no effect on the camera itself, if anything it might have a little say on the mounting sticky pad, but i doubt to a degree it will fall off.
If / when i get a new car i will have the rear and rear side windows blacked out too, but i will also cut peep holes for the cameras, and when you mount right up against the glass you dont need to cut a hole much larger than the lens.
If your tint is after market i assume it would peel right off, but i am guessing here, so you better find proof of that online.
If anything i would be more worried if defroster lines might get broken by "covering" it with a camera mount, but i do think today's defrosters are better than the old school foil ones stuck to the glass, new ones i think are much better secured maybe even baked in / onto the glass.

Once i had my rear camera mounted off the headliner, i also did that with my L side camera.

What i did was fold over a piece of sheet metal so it in turn could slide over the headliner sort of like a paper clip, i then used a bit more sheet metal to space the camera out, and then used the same magnet to make it all "snap" together.
This was nice in that instead of taking out the little spring loaded memory card in the car, i could just pull out the USB plug and take the whole camera ( camera / metal spacer /magnet ) with me when i wanted to lift footage off the camera.

There was also another truck guy with sort of the same question a little while ago, there also looked to be some form of structure around / above his sliding window that you might be able to mount off instead of the glass.

Aloha from Hawaii!

Newbie here and certainly hope I can get some installation tips. Can anyone suggest a mounting method for the rear facing camera on my 2020 Ford Ranger SuperCab? I am leaning towards a BlackVue DR900S 2 channel system. The rear window has a sliding center section which slides to the right of...

dashcamtalk.com

 

[SawMaster]

For a sliding window you want to mount on the lrame instead of the glass. How you do this will vary some according to which cam you choose- might take a little DIY ingenuity or an aftermarket mount. Defrost wires shouldn't be an issue for mounting and you can usually arrange the mount to have them out of the most wanted view. Rarely mounting at or on a defroster grid can affect digital radio reception, again depends on the cam and how it's mounted as well as where the radio antenna is; sometimes it's a grid within the defrost grid.

On the tint, I'd say just leave it. It will have an adverse effect on night-time vids but you rarely get much detail from their at night anyway, as headlights tend to wash-out the image. Vehicle position and signal lighting will still be seen and that's usually all you'll need. May be some loss daytime, but not bad save for with the darkest tints. This also retains the vehicles originality when time comes to sell or trade it. If you really want the clear shot anyway, as long as your cuts are 1mm+ away from the wire you should be OK.

Phil

 

[Wastedagen]

Hi, I had limo black put on my leon

And this is what it looks like from the rear dash cam.

Daytime

Low Light

Night Time.

[emoji1303]

Sent from my RVL-AL09 using Tapatalk

 

[Gary E]

2014 Ford Raptor - Garmin rear window mounting. The sliding center window goes toward the left (drivers side), so no issues. Camera is positioned between the defroster wires, so they do not show in videos.

 

[kamkar]

Are those sliding windows electric nowadays ?

 

[Gary E]

Have been for years. Otherwise how would you reach it.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah i figured so, there are no such smart thing as a sliding window on my friends 1958 Apache stepside, and his 1985 ram charger, well it is just one big box on wheels.
Too bad those 2 will just go to scrap when he die, at least the Apache are quite fixable, and the ram charger while a mess it do have a "new" refurbished motor in it with less than 1000 miles on it.
I simply dont get why he dont sell them off ASAP, he will never be in a place to fix either of them, and he or me are not getting any younger.
Last time the Apache saw fresh air when he moved the car from his dead parents house to his new place. the Chevy have looked like that since the late 90ties, and he took it apart after a few weeks.