Hi, this is my 4th car PC so I thought I'd go a bit mental with it... I particularly wanted to have motorised flappy bits and multiple screens, so rather than doing the obvious and fitting a 7" screen in the double din I bought a 9" widescreen and then started looking for ways to fit it in
I decided that what I wanted was to fit a mini-itx board in the dash, lose the head unit and fit the 9" in the centre of the dash behind a fake oem head unit.
Work started with a wooden frame and spray foam on a spare dash from a scrapper
Rubbing down... I will be covering the dash in alcantara, so to simplify the lines I have filled in the dished part in front of the passenger
Building up the lower part
Fibreglassed and rubbed down
Top view, primer applied to check for smoothness
This project has been going for a while with a lot of changes on the way, here is a previous front panel idea that didn't make it..
The motherboard section is going to be dressed up with lights and shiny stuff, to view this I wanted a lifting lid. here it is made of MDF and containing a 10" fan under a speaker grille, taped over in preparation for fibreglassing a smooth surround.
Fibreglass tissue and resin
An old T-shirt stretched over...
Lid goes up...
...Lid goes down
2 metres of alcantara, a pot of glue....
Lots of swearing...
And I'll come back to finish this bit off later!
Motherboard tray layout, I've bought an arduino now to handle my motors and actuators, so the velleman will probably not be used..
I had to lower part of the mobo tray to accomodate the taller heatsinks on the atom 330 that will replace the epia when finished.
Voltmeter fitted behind the smoked acrylic panel, the air vents will be reconnected and functional
The fake head unit, check out the part ejected CD!, buttons from an old hi-fi amp and smoked acrylic panel that will show a custom boot-up screen from the monitor underneath. This will be motorised to lift up and show the screen.
Lower switch/ connector panel in progress, the din sized hole is for the aircon controls
Connectors sunk in and smoothed, first coats of black..
Quick test fit, note one switch fitted from behind so only the cap shows.. Griffin powermate in the middle with a recycled black knob.
Painted and with the connectors fitted, I've provided the phono sockets for the kids to plug ipods etc into (if they insist)
Ths is a slow build, I started planning it 2 years ago, and only really got it moving last spring after I built a workshop in my garden, but I'm hoping I can get it together for this summer and start using the thing!
Steve
Linear Mode
