darag2358

Will be posting pics at some point.

Components so far:
Jetway J7F2WE2G VIA 2ghz C7 motherboard
M1-ATX PSU
40gb Toshiba 2.5" SATA HD
1GB RAM
Panasonic USB Slot load DVD/CD-RW combo
Lilliput 619 7" LCD touchscreen
Holux GPSlim GPS receiver (bluetooth)
Pioneer GM-X404 4ch AMP

Status 7/15/07 - preparing case for install.
Case is being fab'd from a double-din stock radio that I got on eBay for $20 shipped. It is identical to the one in the car. Didn't really want to mess with the original one in my car, since I may want to replace it at some point. Plus, I may find that doing it this way may not work out.

I completely gutted the radio down to the bare casing. It fits the motherboard almost perfectly with about 2mm to spare on the width. I haven't checked yet, but it looks tall enough to even support a full size pci card. The mb is about 1 1/2 inches longer than the radio so it will stick out the back, but hopefully that won't be a problem. I pulled the stock radio today to see what it looks like back there. There are a couple of hard plastic air ducts that I may need to change over to something flexible in order to get a few more inches back there. I might even be able to tap in to that for cooling/air circulation. Anyway, back to the case, the PSU should be able to mount on the side, opposite of the pci slot, and the hard drive will likely mount on the underside of the case roof. The only other issue to work out is that because I am mounting the mb on brass standoffs screwed in to the bottom of the case, the nuts stick out of the bottom, which is going to cause a problem because the case is a tight fit in the hole of the dash. I may need to dremel some tracks to clear the nuts, or figure out another way of mounting the board.

Also, someone had an idea of taking the faceplate of a stock radio and using it as a decoy to throw off thieves looking through the window. Somehow place it as a cover over the LCD when you leave the car. Don't know if anyone has actually tried that yet, but I took the plastic face plate off the donor radio (cassette no less, even less desireable for a thief), removed all the buttons and lcd display, and shaved everything down as shallow in depth as I could get it. It's only a few mm deep now - the width of the outside part of the bezel. I took the cassette door flap off and plan to just glue it in place in the front, otherwise that piece would have extended too far back to be useable for this. It should look good enough to fool someone. I also took apart the little lcd display and got it down to the single piece of glass (which I slightly cracked but not bad), glued on a piece of very thin black cardboard on the backside to black it out, and will glue the glass back in place. All in all it looks like it will work. Not sure how it will be mounted though. Velcro? In any case, the computer's LCD/Touchscreen will need to be slightly recessed those few mm so that in place the faceplate will be fairly flush.

That's where I'm at. Just ordered a wiring harness adapter and the USB DVD combo drive.

MP3Car.com