2004 Infiniti G35 Coupe || My 2nd CarPC Worklog || **NO 56k**

So I bought a 2004 Infiniti G35 on August 29 2007. I Previously drove a 2001 Pontiac Sunfire with a very respectable CarPC setup. The Car computer worked perfectly, the install was a little rough around the edges.

For the Infiniti, I wanted to make everything look great. TurboCad's FX was my goal. I do not have his skill, but i feel patience and planning can be a decent substitute.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/work...o-oh-yeah.html

I will upload lots of pics, but I have no 'before' pictures at this point, but you know what a G35 looks like

My carry over parts from the old PC:
Via Epia m10000
Opus 150
320 WD Caviar
Panasonic SlimLine
Lilliput 8" TS 4:3
512 MB pc 2600

On Friday afternoon: 10/6/2007 I started exploring my center console for locations that I can stow my PC parts.

I hopped into the back seat and saw my rear ash tray
Which i promptly popped out and reached my hand in and felt a huge cavernous area.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af32bbbd12.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af32de4b74.jpg

To remove the ash tray push down on the shiny metal part as shown then the part comes out.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af32e22a96.jpg

Curiosity led me to take the center console lid off and see the space I had to work with.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af32e8a1a9.jpg
The box with the orange label is my airbag monitor, I need to be careful with that.


Here I have taken off the Shifter cover to expose some more space to work with.
The black box with the purple label on the plug is my G-meter/accelerometer, that tells the nanny Traction control when to come on. Nissan calls this VSC, I think
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af32ebb68d.jpg

The first cut is the deepest, I didn't think twice about these cuts, because if i put it all back together you would never notice. Anyway, you can compare this photo with the last to see that I just took out some of the ABS plastic to allow more room for motherboards and the like
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af32eeee9c.jpg

I spent almost an hour looking at different arrangements for the comppnents, apparently I didn't take many photos. Here are the only 2 photos I have of diffeent arrangements. First is an M10000 mini-ITX Mobo in the console. And the Slim-line DVD in the ashtray hole. I will likely mount the slot load dvd right there
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af660269bd.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af65fe1633.jpg

Now I moved on to finding the proper postion for my 8" monitor. To do this I used a card board cutout. My last Pc had a 1" 'hood' that extended past the monitor to help shield the light This picture is from my old install
http://home.cwru.edu/~abf/front.JPG

My goal for the new Pc is to have a hood that ranges between 1" and 2". My thought is that with the monitor so high in the dash I need to block as much light as i can. I hope to tint the windows very dark to help combat glare too.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af5968de13.jpg
I have to taper the hood, b/c as you can see, Part of my screen would be blocked by the hood. I want to flare our the hood by about 15-45 Degrees to allow a large viewing angle.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af596c4cc9.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af5970179e.jpg


Here is the space that i have to work with
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af59809f6e.jpg

So I apparently took no photos while Disassembling my dash to take out my 'cluster lid C', but i used the infiniti digital wheelz sliding housing instal manual to disassemble my car, the file can be forund here:
http://www.streetdeck.com/G35/G35ins...e%20MP3CAR.doc

Anyway, I got the dash piece out, and started planning (I Spent Saturday and sunday (10/6-10/7) planning). Here is the front and back of my Dash piece with nothing done yet
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c60ee1c.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af598751e6.jpg

My plan was to lower the opening by about 1/4". I did this by hand sanding, instead of with a dremmel, b/c i didn't want to make any mistakes. 3 hours of sanding while watching season 6 of Top Gear got me the 1/4 inch that i wanted to remove.
I did not want to widen the entire opening, because it was just about the perfect width for the viewable area of my monitor. I instead wanted to make grooves for the frame from my lilliput and mount it into the abs plastic from the infiniti.
Here is the resulting lilliput frame in the dash piece
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c6b41ea.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c67d342.jpg
I put it in the car to make sure that my heights and angles were good. I want the monitor to be on the very edge of viewability. I want it to sit as low and as completely vertical as possible. To mark my spots I used a white out pen on the frame of the lilly. Here are some pics from inside the car.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c722585.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c753e4e.jpg
I hot glued the frame into place, It was flexible enough for my to playing with the tilt of the monitor
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c6e56dd.jpg

On monday evening 10/8/2007, I made some wedges out of left over parts from the sunfire and bondoed them, to the console. I tried working with ABS plastic welding like TurboCAD, but i don't have that kind of skill. My practice with the ABS went very poorly, mostly b/c a lack of good tools.
The plastic was used to span the large gaps, to me it doesn't matter the exact position of the added parts b/c i will sand them to the shape and angle that I want. They turned out pretty good.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c7be50f.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c7889dc.jpg

In this close-up you can see the only imperfection in this bondo job. Again the goal of this was to bond the frame to the plastic, I will spend many more hours building up the hood and sanding it back down. There is a gap in that fuzzy picture, I promise
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...af9c7f192f.jpg

I retired for the night to spend 2 hour typing my work log

I got home from soccer practice on tuesday and resumed working on the top part of the hood. I mixed some fiberglass strands that I had left over from another project in with the bondo. I also put some plastic in there for an infrastructure type thing. I have made the hood VERY deep at this point, but i will likely sand it down by about 1/4" to 1/2" so that I can access the touch screen
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...c12e8438da.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...c12ea043e7.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...c12ea2db89.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...c12ea55434.jpg

My plan is to sand down some of the fiberglass strands, then use plain filler to fill all of the holes then begin shaping the hood. I'm thinking I might go with a sweeping round hood kind of like the way BMW makes their stock screens

The most important part just came in:

I got these as a shout out to my best resource for building a few CarPC
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...2ace77d968.jpg

Nice write up! Seems like this bezel will be One of his kind. Dont forget to keep us updated. take care!

Good stuff! I don't have the patience or the talent for bondo stuff, so I went with the MP3 car G35 screen housing.

Any questions on G35 installs, let me know

Dave

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caelric

Good stuff! I don't have the patience or the talent for bondo stuff, so I went with the MP3 car G35 screen housing.

Any questions on G35 installs, let me know

Dave

---

I have a 4:3 8" monitor so the housing was out of the question

A very good reason!

So I made a ton of progress since my last updates. In the last series of photos, You can see that I mixed in some fiberglass with the Evercoat Rage that I was using. For the next coats I didn't use a any fiberglass. I made a mold out of masking take and poured the bondo into the mold to make the nice rounded share you see here. I didn't stop to take pictures very frequently because I didn't see the progress. It is such a gradual evolution i din't realize how much the shape had changed without me adding pictures
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae1645f1.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae1ad993.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae1d0421.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae1f2eb5.jpg

My Viewable area on the monitor is 6&7/8" by 4&3/4". I tried to make the opening larger than that. Right now it is 7&1/8" by 4&7/8"

With that in mind I went to test fit it into my car to see how the viewing angles looked.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae22131b.jpg
This picture was taken using the optic viewfinder on my camera and not the LCD screen... What that means is that this is the view i will see while sitting up straight ( the camera was at my eye, not jsut floating around somewhere.

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae24418f.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae267008.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae2ae466.jpg
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8ae2d12de.jpg
I tried to take one from the passengers side
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8b7f4aad1.jpg

I also found that the faceplate wouldn't fit becuase i had too much material below the monitor, so you can see the faceplate hanging out in theis picture.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8b7f91375.jpg

From the back seat my eye view
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8b7fb4da4.jpg

Whole image:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/imag...a8b7fd8fa3.jpg

I didn't have enough space to plug the monitor in, I wanted to hook it up to my laptop to see how well the hood worked, and today would have been a prefect day for that.

I also plan to tint my rear window and back seat windows with 25% VLT
front side windows at 50% and my windshield at 85% VLT .. All with in the legal limits