Am I blind? Trouble finding reverse trigger wire in 1st Gen

Hey all, I'm successfully made Crutchfield throw up their hands in frustration so turning to you lot.

I'm working on hooking up a new head unit with a dash cam. The head unit is a Pioneer DMH-W2770NEX and the back up camera was purchased here.

I paid for Crutchfield to do the custom wiring harness (awesome service) and was left with the work of 1) installing the new tailgate camera handle and running the wires accordingly and 2) hooking up the three loose wires left as part of the harness.

Here's where things go wrong. I get the camera installed and run the harness to the cab. I connect the red wire at cab end from camera harness to the 'reverse trigger input' loose wire for the Pioneer unit. At the camera end, I tap the reverse light. What happens? The camera works when in reverse and manually toggling to it, but does not automatically come on when going to reverse.

Multimeter comes out and I get the following readings. Positive at camera end with ground to hitch is 12.3 volts. Positive at head unit end, at top to Pioneer reverse input, is 23.5 volts (grounded to door hinge).

Makes no sense, right? Where did I go wrong? The alternative method of hooking up would be to tape off the positive at camera end and then tap to the vehicle's reverse trigger wire behind the driver kick panel, but I'm having a hell of a time finding the appropriate wire back there. The purple tapped wire is from hooking this up to the red/black originally but then cutting when I switched to tapping at camera end.



Edit: Note that the kick panel has no eight pin plug. Either it's well hidden or these Reg Cabs are different.

 

Oh for crying out loud. Don't use scotch-locks, those things mangle wires. Use Posi-taps! Thankfully it doesn't even look like it's fully piercing the wire - which may also be your issue.

Check this thread - see how @ZAR did his. Maybe it helps? https://www.tundras.com/threads/2006-access-cab-stereo-speakers-backup-cam-info.81510/

 

Haha, thanks shifty. I knew it was a me problem. I’ll switch to posi-taps tomorrow!

 

It may not be a "you" problem. But yeah, don't use Scotchlocks if you can avoid them. They mangle wire casings, introduce oxygen and humidity to the copper allowing it to degrade/tarnish/corrode, and a lot of times they'll actually slice through strands of the copper wire, leaving you with less throughput. Worst invention ever. It's an ends to a means, but 5-10 years out, end up creating a wiring nightmare for the user.

Seriously though, read that thread - hopefully it should help. If not, I'm sure we can help you find your issue.

 

Great thread, thanks for linking me to it. I have a feeling I'll be in business once swapping to a better tap connector. Otherwise I've done most everything the same, though I ran the RCA cable up the engine bay and through the firewall (already had a cable for exterior lights coming through here).

Now I just need to pray I never want to replace the speakers themselves. Sounds like a real headache

 

Speakers weren't bad for me. Crutchfield gives you adapters with your purchase. Hardest part is maybe clearing out the old connector to make room for the new.

 

Can confirm that the culprit was the bad tap of the camera bundle positive to the reverse trigger! Shoutout to Posi-taps. Everything working great, now just need USPS to finally deliver the OEM factory radio mount brackets.