Heritage Grill Camera Swap - Observations

[Taco Ji]

Been watching this thread a great deal myself. Wanting to also do an upgrade and this after all the hard work that the original poster and others have done, I think it might be possible.
I would like to stay with OEM but also like the raptor lights. There is not an OEM option that has raptor lights, is there?

No there is not. I’m like you. I prefer OEM but I like the raptor lights also.

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[Baltimore]

Been watching this thread a great deal myself. Wanting to also do an upgrade and this after all the hard work that the original poster and others have done, I think it might be possible.
I would like to stay with OEM but also like the raptor lights. There is not an OEM option that has raptor lights, is there?

No.
You'd be retrofitting (at least one person did) or going aftermarket.
That one person found a light string shaped for the hex pattern of the grille

 

[VBFD Taco]

I'm going to stop by the dealership later to make sure that if I do the swap, I'll still pass state inspection. Virginia has some stupid laws. Not 100% sure I can have more lights (the lightbar) on the front. Heck, the raptor lights could be an issue.

 

[exia]

Using the Rave bracket, toyota service techs had to put the camera at +162 to get the lines perfectly lined up. However, if you attempt a system calibration at this point, it will fail and disable all of your 360 degree cameras and forward/reverse guidelines.

When bringing this to Rave's attention, they went radio silent on it.

Now I have to either restore the original grille to have them recalibrate, or I have to remount the camera with a proper "grill type 2" camera bracket so that they can change the grille configuration and bring it back within engineering tolerance for the system to fully reactivate. They are estimating this at half a day of shop time, so $$$

which leaves me hunting hard to determine whether the heritage grille and the limited grille use the same bracket (but upside down), or if there's a different bracket that would be required entirely...

... very frustrated at the moment

How much did they charge for the first time calibration? I don't want to do this myself.

 

[JayTech]

So I did this a couple months ago now but I bought the TRD Pro grille from my work, ordered the Rave bracket, and installed it myself. I was stubborn and did not want to have to completely flip my camera image so I was able to get the camera to fit inside the bracket without it being upside down. I did not modify the bracket and was able to get it to slide in and was even able to get the screws in(though it took a little bit of wiggling around). Only had to make a very small adjustment to the front camera and based off the image it looks near perfect for alignment with all the other cameras. About a month later I stayed late at work to bring my truck into the shop and borrowed a laptop from a tech to access GTS and used the targets to check calibration and everything was pretty much spot on. So while the Rave bracket is intended to have the camera installed upside down, you can technically install the camera facing the correct orientation.

 

[Baltimore]

How much did they charge for the first time calibration? I don't want to do this myself.

They ended up not charging since they broke it. They told me to replace the camera with the proper camera bracket and come back and I would have to pay for it as a non-warranty service.

I instead looked up the technical instructions and did it myself against my original camera and all systems worked perfectly when I followed the tech instructions. Why they didn't know how, I cannot answer.

 

[rijc99]

I’m finding Toyota techs, parts, service dept, etc aren’t as knowledgeable as we imagine

 

[exia]

They ended up not charging since they broke it. They told me to replace the camera with the proper camera bracket and come back and I would have to pay for it as a non-warranty service.

I instead looked up the technical instructions and did it myself against my original camera and all systems worked perfectly when I followed the tech instructions. Why they didn't know how, I cannot answer.

I appreciate the reply. I’ll have to take a look at those tech instructions.

 

[Baltimore]

I appreciate the reply. I’ll have to take a look at those tech instructions.

No problem.
If you only want to nudge your front camera, many have success going to a parking area with a lot of painted lines and then accessing the service menu.
If you feel that your 360 bird's eye view is a little off, or want to make sure you can dial all the cameras into ideal position, then you want to do the entire setup and procedure.
Or if anything disables your 360 view or parking lines, the full procedure will reset things.

The most tedious and time consuming part is the setup of the marks on the ground. The process of calibration is very straightforward after that.

I swear I posted some photos from doing it on another post (likely the calibration one of I had to guess).

Needed:
patience & 3ish hours so you never feel rushed
A tape measure that's at least 25ft long, ideally one that has metric (all measurements are in mm)
A plumb bob
About 2 rolls of 2" wide painters tape (the various marks you will make on the ground are 89mm/8cm wide at all times) - it burns up a lot of tape.
About 150ft or so of throwaway string & something to weigh down each end (14 weights of memory is correct - you'll end up with 3 lines front/back and 4 lines left/right)
Knife or scissors to cut string & tape

For me, moving slowly and methodically solo, it took about 2h for the setup on a large flat area. About 30ish minutes to dial all the cameras in, and about 25 min to clean it all up and put everything away.

In a just, there are 4 positions you drop a plumb bob from the truck to mark the ground (front center, rear center, leading edge of each rear bumper at the rear wheel wells). This create your first string "cross". Then all other measurements are references from those starting points. Getting the extract size of the tape lines and crosses is important because you then play a "game" of sorts where you adjust the cameras but you are equally needing to make sure certain lines you made for inside the 'boxes' on the screen (it'll make sense when you see it). Your marks have to fall within the boxes to a difference or it fails (as my local dealership was unable to understand).

Each camera can be moved six ways: forward, backward, left, right, up, down. Up and down are actual zoom out/in. Even if you haven't adjusted lift you might end up using this to get the images to stitch together better.

I was worried about it all the first time but I figured my dealership had already broken/disabled things so what really do I have to lose? Having now done it, I would say: don't fear it. It's very straight forward. Just don't rush it and take the time to do the layout properly. You'll be rewarded accordingly.

 

[JayTech]

I’m finding Toyota techs, parts, service dept, etc aren’t as knowledgeable as we imagine

Some are, some aren't. There are those that care about their work so they put the effort in to be informed and learn as much as they can, and then there are those that are just there to make a paycheque and put in no effort. But this holds true to the entire industry not just Toyota.

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