2005 Volkswagen GTI - Page 3

lossol · 09-02-2005, 12:16 PM

Dont you wanna try to stuff an 8 inch lilly into that double din spot? I would like to see what that looks like before I attempt it on my tdi. (that i havnt got yet, but soon will) comments?

kwik18t · 09-03-2005, 08:12 PM

You stated that there was some support for the Lilliput screen inside the MKIV chasis. Where did you find any bezels I am looking for one for my system and can't find anything. Thanks

kbyrd · 09-03-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by kwik18t

You stated that there was some support for the Lilliput screen inside the MKIV chasis. Where did you find any bezels I am looking for one for my system and can't find anything. Thanks

There are a couple of possibilities:
1) Buy the TMZ chassis and bezel which was originally made for an Subaru WRX, modify it a bit, and you'll have a few small gaps. Make this new bezel, and you should be set.

2) Wait for R32 JUhl, to finish his faceplate. Read the thread. It's not ready yet.

kbyrd · 09-04-2005, 11:04 PM

Looked under the front seats, I could probably make it work, but not easily and not without worrying a rear passenger would kick it. The glove box was a bust too, I don't want to cram this thing anywhere that tight for my first install. So, off to the hatch.

Went to Fry's on Saturday and bought one of everything that looked roughly like a project case, including a toolbox. My wife had the "stealth toolbox" idea, find a big, wide toolbox, mount the car PC in it, stick it in the hatch, and secure it down somehow. But I couldn't find a toolbox that didn't look like *** at Fry's and I couldn't find a toolbox at all in Home Depot! So, I ended up with a roughly 10"x9"x3.5" black plastic project box. It fits perfectly in the middle of the spare tire hub. I had to relocate the tire jack and assocciated tools, but that's no problem. I can even use the nylon tiedown VW supplied to secure the ghetto case. I like the stealth aspect. I'll mount some 1/4" plywood inside to the top and bottom (the project box has mounting risers), then mount the motherboard, hdd and psu to the plywood.

I also ordered my Lilliput 7" screen and M1-ATX from the mp3car.com store. (Hey those new double-underlined links to the store are nifty!) I opted for the 619GL-70NP, not the 629. Finally, I bought some 8ga wire, a fuse holder and fuse, and some battery connectors. I bought all wire and such at a local car audio shop. I think it was more expensive than it should have been, but I enjoyed the conversation with an installer there. He was interested in my project and wants to see it when it's done. He sounded like he might help if I run into trouble or maybe with dash work if I need it.

I was going to order the tmz bezel, but I PM'd Judo GTI with a question (did he buy the whole kit or just the bezel? How much modification is required). I'll do that soon.

Tommorow, I might run the power wire and maybe the VGA and USB cables.

Viscouse · 09-05-2005, 09:43 AM

We're on the same wavelength on a lot of things dude.
I had some angst about where to put the box too. I was torn between the passenger seat & hatch. Check out my thoughts here.

I decided againt the hatch because it'll end up being inside a box basically, and won't get any benefit of airflow. Fresh air won't come in to cool it, it'll just circulate it's own heated air. I think I'm going under the seat, and tell people to watch where the hell they put their damn feet, or Nav goes out & we'll all end up lost behind some ax-murdering family's house.

I'm not happy with the decision yet though. Just some things to think about.

kbyrd · 09-05-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Viscouse

We're on the same wavelength on a lot of things dude.
I had some angst about where to put the box too. I was torn between the passenger seat & hatch. Check out my thoughts here.

The I was worried about airflow too, but there are some vents in the back of my hatch to the outside, Once I'm up and running I'll monitor it for a day or so if it gets hot, I'll cut the spare cover back a tiny bit. I did pull up the cover and feel the metal around the tire after having the car sitting/driving in the sun all day, it's by far the coolest area in the car.

On the progress front, I got my ghetto case together. I have a new appreciation for mini-itx case designers. Thanks to this thread for last minute information on shrinking my IDE cable down to about 4 inches.

While I was looking around in the hatch, I found (again) a cigarette lighter outlet back there. It's got constant power and the VW manual says it's good to 120w . I searched these forums for "vw 120w" and found this warning. I'm going to do it anyway and see how it goes. Even if my 90w PSU is only 66% efficient I'll be good. I know those cigarette lighter connections are crap and such, but I'd like to try it out.

A couple of things I feel I need are a multimeter and a soldering iron.I feel like I know next to nothing about actually testing and building circuits, electronics, etc. Can anyone give me advice on what to look for? Should be cheap unless cheap for these types of tools means it's pretty much worthless. For the multimeter, I'll probably only be working with circuits and wires using DC around 3-12V, say no more than 100 amps? The reason this came up is that I'd like to test the output at the cigarette lighter and see what the voltage drop is. But, I'd also like to make the PC->Monsoon hack. myself.

kbyrd · 09-07-2005, 06:59 PM

Just bought a multimeter from Amazon. It was surprisingly difficult. The initial difficulty was that I don't know what the **** I'm talking about when it comes to multimeters. But, thanks to Antimatter and others I got a little education. The rest of the difficulty was trying to find a cheap multimeter that went up to 20A DC. I'm shopping Amazon because I've got Amazon points there, enough to buy a multimeter. The few I was looking at had little to no spec information. Worse, they didn't really have much in the way of model numbers. So, I did a little googling and compared some product sites and ended up with this It's a Velleman DVM890F. It's on it's way.

At some point today BugByte and R32 Juhl informed me that I need shielded audio cable to run from the 1/8" jack of my soundcard to the monsoon amp. Yet another thing on the list to buy.

I also contacted a VW dealer who sponsors the NorCal vwvortex forum (Boardwalk VW), they're mod-friendly so I thought they would be easy to deal with when explaining what I want (the monsoon-amp plug the provides audio in to the amp). Waiting for a response.

Matthew230 · 09-07-2005, 07:04 PM

Do you have a cd changer ?

kbyrd · 09-07-2005, 11:47 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Matthew230

Do you have a cd changer ?

No, why?

Matthew230 · 09-08-2005, 09:20 AM

It would make it quite easy to connect the PC to the monsoon if you had a cd changer.

kbyrd · 09-08-2005, 10:04 AM

I don't understand how, the CD Changer runs to the head unit, doesn't it? If I'm getting rid of my headunit, how does that help? In any case, please tell me/us if it doesn't help me it'll help someone else.

kbyrd · 09-09-2005, 11:54 PM

I got my TMZ bezel and chassis in the mail today. I paypal'd them the money on Monday I think and I was expecting an email notifying me when it shipped. I haven't heard a thing and was starting to worry. It shows up today! It's well made. I couldn't buy just the bezel, so I forked over for the whole thing. I'll see how it fits in my double DIN hole later, maybe Sunday. I'm hoping it's close enough I can fasten it to the in-dash radio cage.

On an entirely different topic, bought my wife an Acura RSX today. I wonder where I'll put the LCD? She really likes things stock, so I'm not sure whether this car will ever see a carPC.

Matthew230 · 09-11-2005, 06:16 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by kbyrd

I don't understand how, the CD Changer runs to the head unit, doesn't it? If I'm getting rid of my headunit, how does that help? In any case, please tell me/us if it doesn't help me it'll help someone else.

Oh, ok. I didn' read the bit about removing your HU.

kbyrd · 09-14-2005, 09:52 PM

The lilliput screen and m1-atx arrived today from the mp3car.com store (fast shipping)! Last night, I plugged it in, booted up the via M10K and my wife said "wow, that look great! Much better than I expected." So, now I've got all the major components. I am still waiting on the multimeter, but at least I thought I could proceed re-installing Windows (previously the M10K was running Linux)...

...and then it happened. This morning, I was testing things out, unscrewing my BIOS settings (I selected "Panel" instead of "CRT"), when I saw a faint spark at the hard disk right at the IDE->laptop adapter. I knew it when I saw it, but hoped anyway. Nope, no boot. I can't feel the drive spin up at all. Damn.

So, today I went and bought ("rented") a 2.5" disk from Fry's. If it works, I know I need to call Samsung to replace my drive. Surprise! It doesn't spin up either. I don't have the time to troubleshoot it entirely right now, but I suspect the IDE->laptop adapter is shot. If that's the case, I blew an $8 part and I don't have to wait for a new drive to be shipped!

edit from the next morning:
It's the IDE -> laptop adapter. I can see the broken trace on it where the power from the molex connecter feeds the 2.5" drive. Nice. So, I bought another adapter. The new drive and new adapter work fine (BIOS detects the driver). When I plug the old drive into the new adapter, I get the same spark at power on. I blew the laptop adapter in the same exact way!

Hmm, the laptop side of the adapter isn't directional. Mayber I've got the pins reversed? Or, my original laptop drive is mounted in my ghetto case in a funny way somehow and it's shorting out. Great. I hope my original drive is still good.

kbyrd · 09-18-2005, 11:28 AM

I solved my hard drive shorting problems. It turns out I shouldn't be a dumb ***. I'm mounting my everything in a plastic project box. The motherboard, m1atx and hdd are mounted to 3/8" hardboard (some sort of pressboard). Previously, I was using metal washers and the foam that came with the motherboard and hard drive as a standoff. That is, I placed the M10K on the pink foam it came packages with, put small metal washers underneath it, placed that on the hardboard, predilled some pilot holes, and put some #6 machine screws thru the top of the motherboard mounting holes. Great. It head nice and tight. I did the same on the hdd. What I forgot was that the foam was more squishy and the mounting holes were smaller so I used #4 screws. Fine, except the washers were #6 sized. They moved a bit after mounting and they probably caused the short described in my previous post. Luckily, the drive was fine after taking it out of my home made electric chair of a case. I was just burning out the ide->2.5" adaptors. Why did I use metal washers for standoffs? I'm impatient and Home Depot's selection of small screw/washer/parts is lame.

I ask around work on Friday for a "non-metal motherboard standoff" explaining that I'm not mounting to a regular metal case and that the standard hardware won't work. I get quite a few responses, several suggesting Palo Alto Hardware. That did the trick. My impression of local (non-Home Depot/Lowe's) hardware stores is forever changed. I remember them as small, lame, can order what you want if you already know what it's called, but don't stock much because it's too expensive and they're too small. Not the case here. They have a back wall of fasteners that puts Home Depot to shame. Sure, I couldn't buy 100 boxes of wood screws there all at once, but they had bins full of nylon/rubber/metal/brass screws/bolts/bushings/washers/standoffs in a variety of sizes. The people working there were great too. I bought #4 and #6 1/4" nylon standoffs. Just to be clear, it's an ACE Hardware place. But it felt local.

So, re-mounted everything up and it looks great. It looks almost as if I know what I'm doing. I (re-)installed WinXP, banishing Linux for now. Spent a lot of time waiting for XP to do the various auto-update dances it needs to do. Copying my music library now. The multimeter came on Friday, I need to check the voltage at the hatch's outlet while off, cranking, and idling.

I don't think I'll install today. I've got non-carPC plans already. But, I can at least play with the screen fit and find a path for VGA and USB cables so I know how long I need to buy.

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