Mo's automobiles.

[Godson]

I run with a Garmin 66w and it has been more than sufficient for it's purchased purpose.

It has also saved me a lot of time, hassle, and money.

[George]

I've been wanting one (or two) also. I dropped by a local car accessory store a while back but all their dashcams were more expensive than I thought they'd be and had to be hard-wired into the car, according to the man behind the counter. I want a no-frills version that just plugs into the lighter power outlet on the dashboard so I could move it between cars, remove it from sight when leaving the vehicle, take it on a trip to use in a rental car, etc. My current car is the first I've had with a power outlet for the rear seat passengers and I thought that would make adding a second camera for the rear window very easy.

There's a list of Best Cam Recommendations at https://www.reddit.com/r/Dashcam/, but I haven't really educated myself on what's available.

Since I started writing this post, I remembered my favorite electronics store, www.microcenter.com, and just checked their site. They sell dashcams, which I did not know, and they have a store in my area. I'll have to drop by sometime soon and take a look. They have a store in Dallas, also.

[George]

I run with a Garmin 66w

Here's a Garmin 67w at microcenter: https://www.microcenter.com/product/...gb-memory-card

The viewing screen on the back seems like a good idea. I've read anecdotes online in which people claim to have shown police officers their dashcam video at the scene of an accident. Apparently you can do that with a smart-phone and a camera that uploads to "the cloud", but it seems simpler to have a screen on the camera itself.

I've also read comments such as "never volunteer that you have a dashcam until the other party is done lying to the police."

[Yw-slayer]

I'll write more about this later as my post got lost. But in the meantime feast your eyes on the idiocy of drivers here. Updated pretty much daily.

https://youtu.be/-fLmhxhH4fU

In fairness to the dude above, it's pretty boring here nowadays.

[Yw-slayer]

OK, as you have probably guessed, many people here have dashcams. This is not because of insurance fraud (which is rare, although it does happen, and remains hilarious when caught on dashcam). But rather because if you own a car here, it means you need it and hence drive a lot hence need to ensure that if it's someone's fault you have proof, and/or you can afford one and hence have enough money to spend on a dashcam (given that our petrol is also amongst the most expensive in the world). Also, in-car installs are the majority since (unlike in parts of Europe or the US) people won't bother smashing your window to steal your dashcam, or even your phone (unless perhaps it's clearly a latest-model iphone or similar). Our criminals generally spend their time and effort doing lower-risk and more profitable stuff, like organised crime.

The main high-end wired-in brands (especially for are Blackvue, Thinkware, and iRoad. They produce good stuff, especially the higher-end models. They don't have a screen but are more discreet. The older model Blackvue I had, the sensor went bust after 3-4 years of exposure to the blazing sun while parked outside on Sundays. But the later models of these brands seem better able to deal with heat. The video quality is good. No internal screen but usually you can connect via Wifi and download the video onto your phone, and/or pull out the SD card and play it on something. Obviously one arguable disadvantage of the wired-in brands is that they are exposed to heat on the dash etc. unlike the plug-in models.

If I'm going to drive abroad, I always take a burner plug-in camera with me. The first was a random Transcend which I picked with a screen and dual-camera - front and inside of car. I chose it because I was more concerned about insurance fraud/robbery while abroad (here, only 2 of our cars have front/rear latter being external). I also thought it would be fun to do timelapses of internal journeys. It lasted me a good 3-4 years of trips before it conked out, which was fine for something like USD100. I bought a cheap-ass no-name model from a shop with similar stuff and it conked out within 2 hours of my first using it in Ibiza, so I got a friend to bring a random-ass (forward-facing only) HP model to her when she joined us, which was fine. I have never tried the Garmin models as they just can't compete with the huge number of options here, but with the Garmin branding at least there's going to be some level of quality.

So, in summary, with dashcams I think you do get what you pay for in terms of sensors, longevity, etc.

I'd add that if you're going to get one installed, make sure the installer knows what he/she is doing. A poor installation could cause friction with other wires that could lead to minor, or even major, problems. I wouldn't skimp for the sake of saving a bit of dosh as I suspect it'll eventually come back to bite you in terms of time or hassle.

[neanderthal]

For a long time the Cuda didn't have a choke on the carb, so I had to hold it at like 2k RPM for what seemed like 5-10 minutes on winter mornings before it would idle. Winter being about 35F at its coldest once the sun was up; I have no idea how that would have gone in a real winter!

Mo, Bavsound may have a plug and play upgrade for your car. I recall something about modern BMW speakers having unique impedance or wiring harnesses or something. I would have done it to my 3-series but it has the base base audio which is a much harder upgrade path for some reason. Luckily the sound quality is actually pretty reasonable and I'm happy enough with it as is. I'm not as finicky as I used to be with car audio (a blessing!). Home audio quest still curses me.

Edit - oh yeah, the modern touches have their perks. I get in any other car now on the highway and I'm thinking: how do you even have a conversation right now? Still, no replacing the earlier more connected driving experience when that's what you want. (90s and earlier).

I've been watching youtube videos about upgrading BMW sound systems and ran across a guy who got them from aliexpress. Worth a shot to see if you can upgrade yours as the price is much less dear.

The cut outs might already be there, possibly even the wiring. Some of the kits come with factory grilles too.Take a look.