Heritage Grill Camera Swap - Observations

[Taco Ji]

Just to be clear, you install the OEM pro or Trailhunter grills? Or some aftermarket grills?

Reason I ask is because there are tons of people who installed the aftermarket grills with the camera bracket already provided with no issues.

Sponsored

 

[Gurvy522]

Just to be clear, you install the OEM pro or Trailhunter grills? Or some aftermarket grills?

Reason I ask is because there are tons of people who installed the aftermarket grills with the camera bracket already provided with no issues.

Strictly for OE. The China knockoffs come with their own brackets that retain OR camera orientation. I am not sure how the angle is, and whether any calibration is necessary.

Also, no one has provided feedback to me on whether calibration was needed on the type 1 bracket I have posted here. I think there are a few dozen members I am aware of that run it.

I personally run the type 2 bracket (that I made) and it needed minimum calibration after changing the grille type.

 

[Taco Ji]

I want to swap the grills to heritage style but don’t want to mess with the re-calibration of the cameras. I guess I need to stick with the Chinese stuff lol

 

[Gurvy522]

I want to swap the grills to heritage style but don’t want to mess with the re-calibration of the cameras. I guess I need to stick with the Chinese stuff lol

If you end up lifting your truck ever, changing the tires to larger ones, unless you're ok with it being slightly off, you'll still want to recalibrate.

Personally I think the knockoffs look cheesy. They are so close in cost to the real ones. Just buy OE, use a 3D bracket, you can use mine for free if you've got a printer.

 

[MHG]

Thanks for one of the better explanations. So the answer to my original questions seems to be:

the bracket is required because the OEM bracket is different (flipped) on the Pro/TH for some unknown reason and your OEM won’t fit in the correct orientation.

The calibration seems unavoidable since there are variations such as lift/no-lift and slight variations due to 3D printing

I guess it does raise one more question, can the OEM bracket be drilled to make it fit in its original orientation and thus minimal calibration? I guess I’ll find out when I am staring at it.

Thanks for all the good info.

 

[Gurvy522]

Thanks for one of the better explanations. So the answer to my original questions seems to be:

the bracket is required because the OEM bracket is different (flipped) on the Pro/TH for some unknown reason and your OEM won’t fit in the correct orientation.

The calibration seems unavoidable since there are variations such as lift/no-lift and slight variations due to 3D printing

I guess it does raise one more question, can the OEM bracket be drilled to make it fit in its original orientation and thus minimal calibration? I guess I’ll find out when I am staring at it.

Thanks for all the good info.

I don't think so. I mean the holes are actually roughly in the same location, it's the cutouts that allow the camera to fit right side up or flipped, depending on which version of the bracket you have.

But even if you could modify the OE bracket, just seems like a big waste of money. The angle would still probably end up being off, because it's not just the orientation, but about a 2 degree delta as well.

Long story short - I think the best way to describe this situation is that no matter what, recalibration is necessary if you want a "perfect" 360 view. And even then, loading down your bed will cause it to be skewed at times.

So take it with a grain of salt, you could install a 3D printed bracket with the OE heritage grille and be perfectly happy. Or you can be OCD and start calibrating.

 

[rijc99]

Even putting all dogs springs required adjustmesnts to the camera angles and vehicle height setting

 

[Baltimore]

Thanks for one of the better explanations. So the answer to my original questions seems to be:

the bracket is required because the OEM bracket is different (flipped) on the Pro/TH for some unknown reason and your OEM won’t fit in the correct orientation.

The calibration seems unavoidable since there are variations such as lift/no-lift and slight variations due to 3D printing

I guess it does raise one more question, can the OEM bracket be drilled to make it fit in its original orientation and thus minimal calibration? I guess I’ll find out when I am staring at it.

Thanks for all the good info.

Id be willing to wager you'd spend more time messing around with the bracket and mounting/remounting than if just did the calibration procedure.

It seriously takes 3h or less with focus, the space, and having everything on hand that you need at the start.

I and a few others have made some lengthy/detailed posts about it.
Prep/setup = up to 2h
Calibration itself = sub 30min
Clean up = sub 30min


Some have even gambled and just gone to an area with a lot of parking stripe cross hatching, parked at an angle, and used it as a proxy (though I wouldn't advise, bc if you get an out of tolerance error, you'll be forced to do it properly)

 

[MHG]

Id be willing to wager you'd spend more time messing around with the bracket and mounting/remounting than if just did the calibration procedure.

It seriously takes 3h or less with focus, the space, and having everything on hand that you need at the start.

I and a few others have made some lengthy/detailed posts about it.
Prep/setup = up to 2h
Calibration itself = sub 30min
Clean up = sub 30min


Some have even gambled and just gone to an area with a lot of parking stripe cross hatching, parked at an angle, and used it as a proxy (though I wouldn't advise, bc if you get an out of tolerance error, you'll be forced to do it properly)

Thanks for the info. I actually have no intention on attempting to avoid calibration. In fact I would think that you would need to recalibrate even if you swapped out the camera on a stock truck.

My questions were geared towards the “why” the bracket needs to be replaced… I would never have thought they would use a different bracket between the different trim levels unless they needed to physically account for some other vehicle difference like lift height. But the explanation seems to be that they decided to use a different bracket between trim levels and also decided to screw you up one step further by inverting the camera on the higher end vehicle for no known reason.

I’ll 3D print the bracket. $30 for the race seems to be a bit high for a 3D printed part that probably prints in an hour and used 50 cents of ABS filament.

 

[Gurvy522]

Thanks for the info. I actually have no intention on attempting to avoid calibration. In fact I would think that you would need to recalibrate even if you swapped out the camera on a stock truck.

My questions were geared towards the “why” the bracket needs to be replaced… I would never have thought they would use a different bracket between the different trim levels unless they needed to physically account for some other vehicle difference like lift height. But the explanation seems to be that they decided to use a different bracket between trim levels and also decided to screw you up one step further by inverting the camera on the higher end vehicle for no known reason.

I’ll 3D print the bracket. $30 for the race seems to be a bit high for a 3D printed part that probably prints in an hour and used 50 cents of ABS filament.

Yeah, any high heat filament works great. ABS or ASA are both good options.

 

[Baltimore]

Thanks for the info. I actually have no intention on attempting to avoid calibration. In fact I would think that you would need to recalibrate even if you swapped out the camera on a stock truck.

My questions were geared towards the “why” the bracket needs to be replaced… I would never have thought they would use a different bracket between the different trim levels unless they needed to physically account for some other vehicle difference like lift height. But the explanation seems to be that they decided to use a different bracket between trim levels and also decided to screw you up one step further by inverting the camera on the higher end vehicle for no known reason.

I’ll 3D print the bracket. $30 for the race seems to be a bit high for a 3D printed part that probably prints in an hour and used 50 cents of ABS filament.

The way Toyota designed the bracket it has opposing corner 'alignment' holes. Those holes are done in such a way that the only way to line up the mounting screws is a specific orientation. On the non-heritage grilles, this places the bracket in a specific orientation and sets its 'default' install angle. On the heritage grilles (TH, PRO) the camera position is a little lower on the grille. For whatever reason, Toyota decided this needed a different bracket / reversed bracket. The only way to fit the OEM mount from a non-heritage grille is to rotate it 180 degrees to be upside down. It also appears to make the camera shoot too far up/forward rather than forward/down.

Rave, Gurvy, and possibly a few others took the dimensions of the original non-Heritage bracket and reversed their alignment pins so that it could be used on the heritage grilles while maintaining orientation. If you use Rave's, they didn't appear to make an attempt at correcting the camera angle and therefore after installing it, most folks have to do an upward camera angle calibration in the range of +158 to +160 to get the image to align to the side forward facing camera images of the surround. I've not seen any post calling out whether folks using Gurvy's file have had to make adjustments, or that he was able to dial in the mounting angle more precisely.

I originally got the RAVE bracket because it was the only option at the time (well, Gurvy was working through his experiments but I don't have a 3d printer to use any of the files). On a whim of generally being lazy, when I had the truck in at the dealership for the TSB on the trailer sensor I asked if they would adjust the camera angle to line things up. Well, they kept the truck for an extra day and ended up screwing things up more than they were. They threw the entire system out of calibration, which then disables all surround view and prediction lines, giving you only basic backup and forward camera views. They claimed when talking to corporate that the only way to fix it was to replace the camera with the heritage unit so they could update the computer with the correct camera expectation. I was livid was an understatement. I worked with Fred Anderson Toyota to properly identify the correct camera (you cannot buy just the mount, it is camera+mount) and ordered that (~$150 on discount sale). But then I ran into a double issue of sorts - the time to pull the front off and replace the camera & the trust in the dealership for the settings change, which led me to hunt for a Tactrix cable and rent the GTS+ software. However the cables are out of stock everywhere and Tactrix has been holding off on their new cable for months. So I said "what do I really have to lose at this point?" and decided to perform the ENTIRE calibration process per the Toyota technical documentation. Low and behold, not only did I get the entire system up and running, but I was able to dial in the overlay view even more precise than I feel it came from factory. "Out of calibration" = dealership tech and head tech didn't know what the F they were actually doing. Since I still couldn't get my hands on a cable and had the system working again, I gave up on the thought of finishing the swap to also activate MTS features and coordinated to return the camera unit to Fred Anderson and take the restocking fee hit.

Now, did I pull out digital calibration and measurement devices to perform a comparison of the two different OEM brackets while I had them? no. simply put didn't have the time or interest in taking the investigation that far. So it could be a bunch, it could be very minor - dunno.

The calibration process takes up to 2 rolls of 2" tape, or take the time to rip/cut a bunch of cheap plywood down to the needed width, and then chop cut them to the specific lengths (I'd likely take the extra time to do this route if needing to do it again so that I just have easy templates that I'm plopping down and not having to measure out the tape to all the specific dimensions as I apply it).

 

[Taco Ji]

So OP, from what I gathered in this thread when swapping the grills from the standard to heritage whether it’s OEM ( pro or TH) or aftermarket the camera needs be calibrated.

I’m just curious to the thousands of people out in the wild that has done the aftermarket grill swap has calibrated their cameras after install? Because all of the YouTube tutorials on how to remove the front bumper and swapping the grills has no mentions of the calibration part required.

Lastly, can we all calibrate the cameras ourselves? If so can you direct me to some resources? Or do we need to have the dealer do this?

I was planning to purchase aftermarket grills and install it in the next coming weeks.

Thanks.

Sponsored