Weekend 1: Design
Design (made in Google sketch.. these are to scale and the computer models were used to size the MDF pieces):
Weekend 1: Computer chassis construction
Dremel circle cutter tool for 120mm fan holes:
Dowels + wood glue to attach MDF pieces:
Allow to dry and sand:
5 coats of primer:
5 coats of black paint on interior surfaces:
Dry:
Dremel metal cutoff tool to hack apart brand new computer case ($20 on craigslist):
Salvage motherboard plate from case, mount onto painted MDF board:
Install motherboard:
Connect all components using desktop power supply to install operating system & software:
Install into chassis:
3M spray on adhesive + trunk carpet:
This carpet + 3M adhesive is really easy to work with.. looks ugly now, but...
Cut some fan holes:
Make sure rear motherboard panel is removable, guard is in place to prevent 3M adhesive from making the rear panel permenant:
In the end, it looks good:
Front (before lexan/plexiglass cover):
Route mess of wires into carputer chassis:
Weekend 2: Dash fabrication
Obtain Xenarc 7" touchscreen LCD:
Remove from chassis:
OEM dash and LCD plastic case need to become one:
Also, DVD ROM drive needs to be integrated:
Epoxy to hold pieces in place, some Dynotron plastic bumper repair kit to fill in the gaps:
Alot of dynotron:
Sand, reapply dynotron to fill in bubbles:
Repeat above about 4-5 times. I was in a hurry, but if you want to do it right (version 2.0 for me), you will probably want to repeat about 10+ times to get a perfect surface.
Primer, sand, primer sand, primer sand, paint sand, paint:
Weekend 3: Installation
Stick everything in there.. when I originally did this I left a mess of wires and it was actually difficult squeezing my LCD into there:
I re-arranged the wires and did some cable management yesterday.. much better now:
This mess of wires was hard to fit under the door sill panel (1 insulated VGA, 1 USB, 2 RCA's, 1 microphone, 8 speaker level wires):
Route wires under rear seats:
Cut aluminum rectangle with jigsaw:
Bent into rough shape and rough holes drilled into it.. this is very rough, I used my fingers to measure:
Camera mounted in bracket:
Backup camera installed in GT emblem / keyhole: (Thanks hags1 for the idea and writeup)
Fin.
