My first carpc- 1991 Celica GT4 Group A (CS)

tooch · 02-05-2007, 08:53 PM

Hey all, been lurking here a little while, but decided it was time to actually build a car PC, and I thought I'd start by documenting it here!

This is the car which will be receiving the treatment:

Here is the PC, it's an AMD Sempron 3300+, AMD all in-one mATX board, seagate 160gb SATA hdd, 512mb DDR, and waiting on my M2-ATX psu. I've modified the case that I picked up for free, ripped the old PSU out and put a fan in its place, cut a hole above the CPU and installed a grille, and the HDD is mounted on the other side to where it is in the pics here, has been mounted with rubber grommets underneath it to absorb some vibration.

The screen I'll be using is the typical ebay motorised touchscreen, I thought I'd have problems with clearance in the dash of this car, but if I remove the half DIN cup holder, and mount the screen in its lowest point, it should fit nicely.

So far I've built the PC, and have it running on my desk with a desktop PSU until my M2 arrives. Have installed RR, with LSXVOID2, and am very happy with the running. The CPU runs very cool, haven't tested GPS or DVD's with it yet, but it should be good as it only uses 62w max anyway. Hibernation and resume times are very fast so I'm happy with that so far.

Comments/critiques welcome

-Simon

DarquePervert · 02-05-2007, 09:52 PM

SOYP is for completed projects.
Moved to Worklogs.

tooch · 02-05-2007, 10:12 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by DarquePervert

SOYP is for completed projects.
Moved to Worklogs.

Thanks man, I realised as soon as I clicked post that I'd put it in the wrong section!

tooch · 02-06-2007, 06:55 PM

Ok so I re-thought it, the desktop HDD was going to be pushing the little M2-ATX a little too hard I think, so I've replaced it with an 80gb laptop drive for now. Performance wise it seems to run the same, if I run out of space later on I'll add a second laptop drive or get a bigger one.

tooch · 02-07-2007, 03:39 AM

I received my aux-in for my head unit which works well, my only gripe with this JVC head unit is the high noise floor it has at low volumes. It'll have to do until I can be bothered changing it.

I also test fitted the PC in my boot, with one of those black tie down straps. It's an absolutely perfect fit, and the tie down strap fits perfectly through a little vent slit in the side panel, and when strapped down it holds it really tight.

Postman · 02-07-2007, 11:19 PM

Daaaamn GT4 Celica! Very nice. That's a rare car. You must be in Europe. Impossible to find one in the US.

tooch · 02-07-2007, 11:50 PM

Thanks for the comment man

I'm actually in Australia, there were 150 of them delivered here back in 1991, only around 60-70 remain now

Postman · 02-08-2007, 11:51 AM

Actually in 91 I don't the US even got them anymore. I wanted one in the late 80's bad, but couldn't find one. Ended up with a Mazda GTX. Back then it was hard to find any good AWD performance cars!

Calipso · 02-08-2007, 12:56 PM

Like the rims and the car. Looking good.

tooch · 02-08-2007, 06:07 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Postman

Actually in 91 I don't the US even got them anymore. I wanted one in the late 80's bad, but couldn't find one. Ended up with a Mazda GTX. Back then it was hard to find any good AWD performance cars!

Ahh the old GTX, I strongly considered one of the early 90's models or the Mazda GTR, but this came up for a good price so I couldn't refuse

Calipso: Thanks for the comments

I received my M2-ATX last night, and wired it all up, and much to my relief it works, and works well! I'm going to leave it on most of today to 'burn-in' test it. It's an absolutely perfect fit in my case, I'm stoked!
I will probably start wiring up the car this weekend if I can be bothered stripping the interior out, then all I am waiting on is the screen.

Here's some new pics, notice the perfect fit for the M2, with the fan right behind it. Also notice the updated HDD and mounting. Excuse the crappy photo's, I don't have my camera at work

Postman · 02-08-2007, 06:14 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by tooch

Ahh the old GTX, I strongly considered one of the early 90's models or the Mazda GTR, but this came up for a good price so I couldn't refuse

]

We never even got the new ones, or the GTR. They only sold the GTX here for two years of low production (800 per year), and the Celica GT Four Alltrac was about the same (87-90 I think).

Good luck with the rest of the install. Look forward to it.

tooch · 02-11-2007, 02:54 AM

Ok so I've got everything here now except for the screen, which should be here early-mid week. In the meantime I've been making all my wiring adaptors which I'm going to be using, as I want to have plugs on everything, to make removal easy for indoor testing. This includes my power wiring, as well as my reset button and LED's that are going in the dash.

Firstly, this is the power connector I made.

Next I made up an adaptor to allow me to easily plug into a normal ATX power supply to test. It has the 3-pin connector like the car connection on one end, and a molex on the other. I also wired in a switch to the ignition wire.

I put a manual reset button, as well as power and HDD LED's in this little blank panel which is under my dash, not really visible. I was not too fussed that the switch doesn't fit well (there was already a hole in the panel from something else), as it's not really visible where it is.

Never fear, my good old friend hot glue to the rescue

From here, a flat cable like a phone cable, runs to the boot, and is terminated with a DB9 connector. This plugs into the PC at the back, and is wired into the front panel LED's and reset switch. There are extra wires for future expansion.

And just another shot of how well the M2-ATX fits in my case

So I'm basically ready to wire the car up. Was going to do it today, but I'm sick and too un-energetic

tooch · 02-13-2007, 06:17 PM

My screen arrived yesterday, I must say I'm pretty impressed with the picture quality for a generic 'yum-cha' unit. The build quality seems reasonable to me, and the unit has had the front LED's modded so they don't stay on when the ignition is off. Lets just hope that it holds up and doesn't die.

Started running the cables through the car, I found that there is plenty of room for USB cables and other smallish ones under the centre console. Tidied up the existing cables that I had under my rear seat, just need to run the VGA cable through (which is very thin which helps), and the USB for the touchscreen. Need to slightly modify the DIN brackets to screw the screen in, and re-locate my turbo timer. The good thing is though, from my quick checking and eyeballing measurements, the top of the screen JUST clears the bottom of the dash, so it won't be angled forwards all the time!

My BU-353 USB GPS should arrive today or tomorrow, so by this weekend it should all be in and running!

Wiredwrx · 02-13-2007, 06:34 PM

Sweet ride.

Michael

tooch · 02-14-2007, 08:12 PM

Ok so after battling 3.5 hours with weird wiring gremlins last night (which turned out to be a bad ground

), I finally have the screen installed!

It looks a little worse in real life as it sticks out further than that, but it's not too bad. Fits solidly and the screen clears the dash which is nice!

All my wiring has been run, apart from the multi-core cable for the front reset switch and LED's, tonight I just have to plug in all the cables and hook up the power to the distribution block, and it's ready to go!
Here are some boring and rubbish photo's of how I ran the wiring, straight under the centre console, along the trans tunnel to the back seat, it then goes under the seat through to the boot.

The GPS unit arrived yesterday, easy to set up and seems to get a decent lock fairly fast. Will see how it goes on the move tonight!