Ok so heres the car the computer is being installed into..
ADMINISTRATOR: IMAGE DELETED
This is the area where the screen will be installed, the great thing about the 4th generation maximas is that they actually have 3 dins, 2 will take up the screen on the top and then 1 will take up my alpine HU which will be moved down where the second compartment is
Here's the screen fitted onto the dash area. I didnt really want to bondo and make it look factory honestly. Mainly because I want to be able to take it out and have it still like new and also because my alpine sticks out a little anyways and now it just looks a bit more uniform i think. Maybe over the summer I'll bondo and flush install it but as for now I'm way too busy with classes. it actually doesnt look too bad, right?
Heres the back view:
The thing is I had to dremel the bezel a bit in order to help make it fit better so the bezel itself is pretty much mutilated if I take off the screen.. luckily theres plenty of bezels around for dirt cheap so I'm gonna hopefully pick one up off ebay or something. My dad did an awesome job helping here with the dremel work.
This is what I been looking at lately when driving the past few days while I was too lazy to put my dash back in..
the 80 gb 3.5" drive that will hold all the media, still a little worried on if this will juice out too much from the battery or not. Hopefully it should be fine. I found these little wings to put on the drive to help spread the heat away from the drive.
the aluminum sheets that are being used to build the case..
the motherboard with processor and memory, at first I used acrylic so thats why this picture still has the acrylic board affixed to it.
and of course the case right now, made of aluminum with aluminum tape for the corners and edges..
open view...
since heat rises, and also because of size situations, I decided to put the hard drive closest to the top and attached it to the door of the case with clamps and this way most of the heat will travel out the aluminum top. I also put some fishing wire to act as a stop for the case lid so it doesnt fly open and slam on the floor whenever I open the lid up. the 2.5" drive is actually also gonna go here which will probably be hanging off the 3.5", in other words right below it.
the inside view...
over here you can sort of see that the cpu fan is pointed inward. What I would like to do in a few days when I get a chance is turn that fan around and put a hole on the side of the case so that all heat from the cpu is blown directly out of the case. I might use a tube and just direct the air flow right out so that the case can still remain pretty much sealed.. if that makes sense.
Thats it for now, this project is going a lot faster then I thought it would. So far the project probably only took 4 hours, but it was over the span of 2 weeks because of exams and other school crap. I guess it helped that I planned everything out in advance. the windows and everything is already installed with a customized windows install I'm about to change the winlogin to minlogin right befor I go to sleep and see how much faster thatll make the windows. As of right now I have IGuidance, frodoplayer, and Delorme. I like using frodoplayer instead of winamp mainly because winamp has such small letters with just about any skin I tried so far. Also I love frodo's interface for everything with the brightlife skin so frodoplayer it is!
More updates tomorrow hopefully!
any comments? suggestions?