Dash cam installation in Earlwood

How a dash cam is fitted decides whether it is any use. Powered from the lighter socket you get a cable hanging across the dash, no socket left for a charger, and a camera that dies the moment the ignition goes off, which is exactly when the car is most likely to be hit.

Hardwiring takes power from the fuse box instead. We use the correct fuse tap and an inline fuse, run the cable up the A-pillar and behind the headlining, and tuck it out of sight. Done properly, the only visible part is the camera itself.

Pillar trim is not just clipped on. On a modern car it is part of the curtain airbag’s path, and it has to be released the right way and reseated properly. That is careful trim work we do constantly on detailing jobs, and it is the part a rushed installer gets wrong.

Hardwiring is also what makes parking mode possible at all, because the camera needs a permanent live feed to monitor the car while the ignition is off.

Parking mode is the reason most people hardwire. It lets the camera watch the car while it is parked and unattended, which is where a great deal of damage actually happens: shopping centre car parks, street parking, workplaces and apartment garages.

The obvious worry is the battery, and it is a fair one. A camera drawing power for days will flatten a car that only does short trips. The answer is a low-voltage cutoff, which powers the camera down once the battery drops to a set threshold and leaves enough charge to start the engine.

In Australian conditions that threshold usually wants to sit around 12.2 to 12.3 volts. We set it with your driving pattern in mind, because a car that does twenty minutes a day needs a more conservative setting than one that commutes an hour.

Resolution matters less than people assume past a point. What decides whether footage is useful in a claim is whether a number plate is legible, and that depends on frame rate, lens quality and how the camera handles glare far more than on the headline megapixel figure.

Sydney conditions are unkind to cheap sensors. Low winter sun straight down an east-west street, and the jump from bright daylight into a dark car park, are exactly the moments a poor camera blows out and loses the plate.

Position matters too. Behind the mirror, high on the glass, inside the swept area of the wipers. Mounted low on the dash it films the bonnet and a lot of sky reflection.

Bring the camera and we will fit it, and most of the time it is fine. Three things are worth checking before you buy: that it uses a capacitor rather than a lithium battery, that a hardwire kit exists for it, and that parking mode is a real feature with a voltage cutoff rather than a line on the box.

A camera with only a cigarette lead can still be hardwired with the right adaptor, but if it has no parking mode there is nothing a hardwire can add beyond tidiness.

If you have not bought one yet, say so when you call. We will tell you what to look for so the installation does everything it can.

A rear camera looks through the rear window, and if that window carries a dark tint the camera struggles at night. The picture goes grainy and plates get harder to read.

If we are tinting the car at the same time, we can leave a small clear window in the film where the rear camera sits, which is standard practice and invisible from outside. On a car that is already tinted, a rear camera that mounts on the outside of the tailgate avoids the glass entirely.

Factory privacy glass is lighter than it looks and most rear cameras cope with it. It is aftermarket film in a dark shade that causes the trouble, so tell us what is on the glass when you book.