Pickup Truck Rear Camera Connection Mod

Looking for an easier way to unplug and plug the rear camera connection on your pickup truck? Thomas Wilson provides us with a solution to this problem.

Soon after purchasing a 2015 Chevy 2500 I wanted to remove the tailgate and load my camper. What had been a 5 minute job on a previous truck turned into a 45 minute dirty and frustrating ordeal. The problem was trying to unplug the backup camera. GM placed the connection on a cross member frame just above the spare tire. I simply couldn’t get a grip on the plug to remove it. The GM plug has a slot that had to be slid back, then I had to compress the sides in order to extract plug. After a lot of struggling, I finally lowered the spare tire thus providing sufficient access to the connection.

So, my approach from that point forward has been to lower the spare, unplug the camera, and raise the spare. Still a considerable amount of time—at least 15 minutes—plus I still had to crawl under truck to accomplish the plug and unplug step. In addition, I had to remember to do all of this before packing the backseat, the spare tire hand crank is under rear seat on the driver’s side.

I knew there had to be easier way. So I located an audio/video business in Greensboro, NC that specializes in audio/video work for cars and boats. After providing a brief description of my problem, they had a solution. They cut the camera cable near where it enters tailgate and added a short extension with a plug on each end. The additional length of cable sits neatly behind my bumper until needed. Now all I need to do is simply pull the cable from behind bumper, unplug the camera, and remove the tailgate without getting dirty or crawling under truck. A dummy plug into truck side to keep it dry and protected. Once again, the task only takes 5 minutes. The cost to have this modification done was $128.00.