I'm posting this here in hopes that this might be some arcane Pathy issue that I don't understand. Here's my setup:
'01 Pathy 2WD Auto (if this matters)
Pioneer-P3300BT head unit (touchscreen, DVD, all the bells 'n whistles)
Off-brand backup camera (but aren't they all?)
I had the head unit installed by our local Car Toys, so I'm (reasonably) sure that everything is hooked up properly.
The original camera crapped out on me, so I bought the same unit online and wired it in myself. This new camera worked reasonably well for a while, but it had a bad picture I could never rectify (Car Toys said it was the camera unit itself).
Tired of this craptacular image, I decided to switch it out for a different brand of camera. I wired this third camera in just the way the old one was hooked up, and it worked PERFECTLY - beautiful image, the whole nine yards. Things were happy for several months.
Then, it started acting up on me - I'd go into reverse, and the camera would work intermittently - sometimes coming on, sometimes not, sometimes coming on midway through backing out of the garage. Note that the head unit has the option of having the backup camera on all the time - when I have it switched like that (for driving with a trailer, for example), the camera stays on steadily, no problems - which leads me to believe it's not an issue with the camera itself.
I thought it might have been something to do with how Car Toys had hooked it up initially. Here's basically what they told me:
Since the camera works fine in "always on" mode, it's not the camera or its connections to the backup lights (otherwise it would flicker on and off), nor is it the head unit. He told me that there's something in the transmission that is slowly going out, that is causing it to go out the way it is. Now, my backup lights work fine (checked them in a store window when the camera was being wonky - they are solid, and they're where the camera gets its power from, to my understanding, when the car goes into reverse).
Does anybody have any understanding of the Pathfinder transmission that might explain what is going on here? I'm kind of at wit's end with this.
