Thread: Scion xB '06, in-dash Atom 330, Lilliput 889GL; details, pictures, links. Index: pg 1

Originally Posted by dMand

Thanks again gizmo!

Aaah, my pops served in Nam. No wonder why I couldn't figure out where I'd seen it, because it was on his uniform.

Nevertheless, I just wanted to share that I served four years in the U. S. Army, with the 101st Aiborne Division on active duty, and was a member of the coalition forces to Liberate Kuwait. I spent eleven months there. I also served six years with the U.S. Air Force during Operation Enduring Freedom back in 2002, and was stationed in Iraq for 14 months.

So, from one proud serviceman to another, with much respect, I salute you rdholtz, for your dedicated service to our country.

Thank you

Welcome Home, dMand. And please tell your Pops I said, "Welcome Home", too. Thanks to both of you for your service.

I don't think I've met many people who served in both Kuwait and Iraq, especially in different branches, though I know a good number who've served in both Iraq and Afghanistan on different tours.

I salute both of you, too. Thanks again for serving.

Mount Up!, Part 2

Back in post #319, I talked about building the rest of Josh's touchscreen mount. Josh decided to drive down with me from Atlanta and help finish it, so we drove both Scion xBs south 600 miles on New Year's Eve. Then we spent the first two days of 2009 finishing the mount, getting black texture paint on it, and installing the system. We have a great time working together -- no matter what we work on, we have fun. And this project was really fun.

Two considerations in the design of this LCD panel mount were (1) minimizing the intrusion on the passenger space, and (2) supporting its weight. The screen is simply huge -- it's an Elo 17-inch touchscreen -- and it's quite heavy; the only plastic on it is the frame that supports the touchscreen.

The display covers the entire center section of the dash, including the head unit and the climate controls, so we had to devise a way to let it move for easy access to those controls.

We originally considered mounting it to the dash and lifting it up to use the controls, but there were a couple of problems. Lifting a panel that heavy would be awkward while driving, and finding solid mounting points was nearly impossible in a dash that's mostly plastic. While the dash is very sound as normally used, it isn't designed to support the extra weight of this big monitor.

I noodled the design for a week, and came to the conclusion that a floor mount was the best bet. I pulled back the carpeting in my car and investigated all the mounting points I could find. I settled on three -- two on the right side and one on the left.

For materials, I chose 1-1/4-inch square LCS (low-carbon steel) tubing with 1/8-inch walls, mostly because it was already in the shop. It fits the design criteria nicely: strong enough to handle the stresses, and small enough to be relatively unobtrusive. Is it heavy? Sure. We do our best not to underbuild; better to make it heavy and strong than to make it light and weak.

To the 1-1/4-inch square LCS tubing, we added parts for the front bracket made from 1-1/4-inch LCS angle iron -- also 1/8 inch thick -- plus 1/8-inch LCS plate for the front bracket and the panel mounting plate.

Aluminum would have been lighter, but we didn't have any handy. If I ever build another one of these, that's probably the way I'd go, but the hinge and the panel plate would still be steel, so it would save only a few pounds at most.

The system pivots right at the bottom of the screen with a friction hinge system, so the driver can swing it down, make adjustments to the head unit or climate controls, and swing it back up. It will stay in place wherever it's placed. The hinge is a standard extra-heavy duty door hinge; we removed the pin and drilled it out slightly to accept a threaded rod. Those who have repaired bikes would recognize the new hinge pin: it was once a bicycle axle -- with nuts and lock nuts -- that just happened to be perfect for this application. The nuts and lock nuts let us adjust the hinge tension as necessary.

Pictures are on the way as soon as I get them off the camera.

Originally Posted by rdholtz

Mount Up!, Part 2

Back in post #319, I talked about building the rest of Josh's touchscreen mount. Josh decided to drive down with me from Atlanta and help finish it, so we drove both Scion xBs south 600 miles on New Year's Eve. Then we spent the first two days of 2009 finishing the mount, getting black texture paint on it, and installing the system. We have a great time working together -- no matter what we work on, we have fun. And this project was really fun.

Two considerations in the design of this LCD panel mount were (1) minimizing the intrusion on the passenger space, and (2) supporting its weight. The screen is simply huge -- it's an Elo 17-inch touchscreen -- and it's quite heavy; the only plastic on it is the frame that supports the touchscreen.

The display covers the entire center section of the dash, including the head unit and the climate controls, so we had to devise a way to let it move for easy access to those controls.

We originally considered mounting it to the dash and lifting it up to use the controls, but there were a couple of problems. Lifting a panel that heavy would be awkward while driving, and finding solid mounting points was nearly impossible in a dash that's mostly plastic. While the dash is very sound as normally used, it isn't designed to support the extra weight of this big monitor.

I noodled the design for a week, and came to the conclusion that a floor mount was the best bet. I pulled back the carpeting in my car and investigated all the mounting points I could find. I settled on three -- two on the right side and one on the left.

For materials, I chose 1-1/4-inch square LCS (low-carbon steel) tubing with 1/8-inch walls, mostly because it was already in the shop. It fits the design criteria nicely: strong enough to handle the stresses, and small enough to be relatively unobtrusive. Is it heavy? Sure. We do our best not to underbuild; better to make it heavy and strong than to make it light and weak.

To the 1-1/4-inch square LCS tubing, we added parts for the front bracket made from 1-1/4-inch LCS angle iron -- also 1/8 inch thick -- plus 1/8-inch LCS plate for the front bracket and the panel mounting plate.

Aluminum would have been lighter, but we didn't have any handy. If I ever build another one of these, that's probably the way I'd go, but the hinge and the panel plate would still be steel, so it would save only a few pounds at most.

The system pivots right at the bottom of the screen with a friction hinge system, so the driver can swing it down, make adjustments to the head unit or climate controls, and swing it back up. It will stay in place wherever it's placed. The hinge is a standard extra-heavy duty door hinge; we removed the pin and drilled it out slightly to accept a threaded rod. Those who have repaired bikes would recognize the new hinge pin: it was once a bicycle axle -- with nuts and lock nuts -- that just happened to be perfect for this application. The nuts and lock nuts let us adjust the hinge tension as necessary.

Pictures are on the way as soon as I get them off the camera.

Stout tilt hinges can also be found on old desktop LCD panels.

As you probably know I'm also using a monitor equivalent in size, so I'm looking forward to seeing the new fabricated mount. Best Wishes

Mount Up!, Part 3 -- EDITED

Originally Posted by dMand

Stout tilt hinges can also be found on old desktop LCD panels.

As you probably know I'm also using a monitor equivalent in size, so I'm looking forward to seeing the new fabricated mount. Best Wishes

Good call; on the last mount we did -- a system that was mounted into the cubbyhole on the dash -- we used that type of hinge because it came on the Elo 15" touchscreen monitor. We reconfigured it a little to get the angles right. That's the system that was stolen.

We considered using a similar system for this project, and we considered using hinges from a dead laptop, too. In the end, the standard hinge and bicycle axle were just about perfect for this new mount, and the axle was on hand in the parts bin. I apologize; I forgot to get a picture of the bicycle axle/hinge pin.

Here's the main part of the mount after sandblasting and prior to painting:

Click images to enlarge.

The rear of the base leg -- on the left in the first image and the right in the second image -- was cut at a 45-degree angle (to let us get the seat mount bolt in), and then fishmouthed at the bottom (meaning I cut a V shape out of each side) and bent in to meet the rest of the tube. That produced the correct angle up to match the angle of the seat mounting point. We TIG-welded it and drilled it for the OEM mounting bolt.

The front of the base leg -- at the top of the first image and the bottom of the second image -- has a bracket made to match the shape of the floor hump. The 1/8-inch plate bracket is TIG-welded onto the base leg, and has angle-iron mounting feet welded on for fastening to the floor.
NOTE: there's still weld bead on the feet; we ground that flat, re-sanblasted, and painted it.
ANOTHER NOTE: If I had it to do over again, I'd just cut the plate larger and bend those angles into place, eliminating the separate feet that we welded on.

The top of the vertical bar -- bottom right of the first image and top left of the second image -- has half of the 5-1/2-inch hinge TIG-welded to it. You can see in the image on the left that we fishmouthed that end of the bar, then slotted it so the hinge is welded into the fishmouth. We cut the lower corners of the hinge away to make it prettier in shape because some of it is visible below the screen.

The other half of the hinge is TIG-welded to the bottom of the 5-inch by 9-inch plate that fastens to the back of the monitor. That plate is drilled to match the standard four mounting holes that are in a 100mm square at the center of the panel. Because we like overkill, we also drilled to match the inner mounting points, spaced at 75mm, and two more existing points at the very bottom of the panel.

We had to get longer metric screws to fit those mount points; the ones we had on hand were too long, and we band-sawed them off to the right length and touched up the threads on the belt sander. The panel is solidly mounted; with ten hex-head machine screws in it, it's not going to move. I apologize once again: I forgot to take a picture of that plate, too.

Here's the crossbrace before paint (nope, we didn't sandblast the aluminum):

Click image to enlarge.

The crossbrace maintains lateral stability. It's an aluminum shelf bracket we found in the scrap pile, made of 5/8-inch diameter aluminum tubing with 3/32-inch walls. It fastens to the forward face of the upright leg near the top, and bolts to an OEM mounting point on the left side of the console. This is the only part made of aluminum; it's fine in this use because it will only bear axial loads, not bending loads.

We had to do some modifications to the shelf mount to turn it into a crossbrace. Both ends of the brace were already flattened, but one was at the wrong angle; we bent it further and TIG-welded the resulting crack. The ends weren't positioned in the right rotation relative to each other, so I cut it off a few inches from the lower end -- an area that would be hidden -- and twisted them to the right orientation; Josh TIG-welded them together. Then we took the brace to the big combination disk and belt sander and ground the welds smooth. You can see a little of the circumferential weld at the lower end. I didn't grind it any further because I knew it would be hidden behind the modesty panel that extends from the dash down to the hump.

Here are two shots of the finished installation from the passenger side:

Click images to enlarge.

In the right picture, you can see a little of the hinge, and you can see how the taper on the top of the vertical bar looks. We set the hinge so, when the screen is pulled down to its lowest point of travel, the lower edge of the screen rests against the leg at a clean 90-degree angle.

You can also see that we put the front of the mount under the carpet, so that part of it is hidden, and passenger feet don't bump into any harsh bracket corners. The base leg front bracket is bolted in two places, one at an OEM point (using a longer metric bolt) and the other through a hole we drilled in the side of the tunnel using a 5/16 x 3/4-inch bolt with the head inside and a washer and Nylok nut on the underside. The mount bolts onto the seat mount at the back, using the standard seat bolt.

If you look closely in the right picture, you can see the crossbrace attached to the mount's vertical bar with a 1/4-20 (1/4-inch diameter, 20 threads per inch) countersunk Phillips-head machine screw going into a hole we drilled and tapped in the bar. The countersink makes the fastener disappear from view; you can see the fastener in the hole in the image of the crossbrace). The brace extends through a hole in the modesty panel to an OEM mounting point on the left side of the hump; we used a longer metric fastener to bolt it down.

Here's how it looks, installed, from the left side:

Click image to enlarge.

Yep, that screen is huge. Yep, that mount is almost invisible in that picture.

Josh headed back to Atlanta on the 3rd. Before he left, we discovered his carPC is acting up, apparently a motherboard failure; it hadn't been run since his monitor was stolen months ago. We were still able to test the monitor -- but not the touchscreen -- by hooking it to the external monitor port of Josh's laptop. The monitor showed a nice, clean image.

Josh says that road testing -- 600 miles back to his house -- shows the mount holds the monitor rock-solid stable. That means we got what we wanted.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about any of this. We're going to do a post-production review to see what we might do differently next time.

dMand, did you just add the Airborne logo to your Avatar? Looks good. I'm proud to be in the ranks with you.

wow, great fabrication skills, & it looks terrific! appears very sturdy as well; I doubt it will go anywhere this time around.

as an added precaution with bolts or screws; any phillips or slotted screw heads should be filled/sealed with JBweld.

On larger bolts, it is best to stay away from hex heads. Whenever possible, use round allen or torx bit heads, then JBweld the heads too! If you can source tamper proof torx hardware, that would be ideal!

It may cost a little bit to perform, but it's best to do it now while you can. My previous 15" monitor was stolen by being unscrewed, they had access to the phillip heads and took their time to undo them. But, had I done the procedure above, the chances for the monitor to have been ripped off, would be drastically reduced.


"dMand, did you just add the Airborne logo to your Avatar? Looks good. I'm proud to be in the ranks with you."

I feel the same, I added the Airborne logo after I seen your Vietnam ribbon. It helps others among the ranks to identify, and relate to our experiences.

And I thought I was the only one bending iron to mount my screen. Just make sure you put several coats of paint on it when you're done. Mine was showing spots of rust within the first 6 months. I eventually ended up taking it out sandblasting it again, rustproofing, and then painted with 4 coats of Rustoleum. (It didn't help that it was in a convertible.)


On the military tip, I took my silver oak leaves and sat down after getting my NATO medal for Kosovo and Kosovo Campaign Medal with 2 bronze stars. Good on you all for making it home safe!

Originally Posted by dMand

wow, great fabrication skills, & it looks terrific! appears very sturdy as well; I doubt it will go anywhere this time around.

Well, the fabrication skills are a two-man effort. Like I said, Josh and I are a great team. We've done some pretty tough -- and sometimes unpleasant -- jobs, and we've always worked well together. No clash of egos; just good fun and good results.

Originally Posted by dMand

As an added precaution with bolts or screws; any phillips or slotted screw heads should be filled/sealed with JBweld.

On larger bolts, it is best to stay away from hex heads. Whenever possible, use round allen or torx bit heads, then JBweld the heads too! If you can source tamper proof torx hardware, that would be ideal!

It may cost a little bit to perform, but it's best to do it now while you can. My previous 15" monitor was stolen by being unscrewed, they had access to the phillip heads and took their time to undo them. But, had I done the procedure above, the chances for the monitor to have been ripped off, would be drastically reduced.

I wish we'd thought of that while we were building it. We used small hex-head metric screws to attach the monitor to the mount plate. While there are 10 of them, it still means they're readily removable.I think replacing them with tamper-proof fasteners is a great idea. I'm less excited about JBWelding the Phillips heads because we'd have a terrible time doing any maintenance that required removal.

The hinge pin nuts are also hex, and not at all tamper-proof. Perhaps we could cast some lock nuts with a pattern from an old tamper-proof lug nut wrench, and use the wrench to loosen them for adjustment. We'll work on that. Thanks for a good tip.

We did set this up so that, when Josh leaves the car, he can pull the monitor down and flip a black cloth over it, so a casual look will just show a standard dash. Using a windshield sunblock when parked means thieves can't see in the windshield at all, and the tinted windows mean they have limited visibility through the side windows.

Originally Posted by GizmoQ

And I thought I was the only one bending iron to mount my screen. Just make sure you put several coats of paint on it when you're done. Mine was showing spots of rust within the first 6 months. I eventually ended up taking it out sandblasting it again, rustproofing, and then painted with 4 coats of Rustoleum. (It didn't help that it was in a convertible.)

We used two coats of Rust-O-Leum No-Rust primer and two coats of Rust-O-Leum Texture Paint. We really wanted epoxy, but it was only available in gloss black, so we opted for Texture Paint.

Originally Posted by dMand

I feel the same, I added the Airborne logo after I seen your Vietnam ribbon. It helps others among the ranks to identify, and relate to our experiences.

Yeah, it's an easy way to do a shoutout without making a big deal of it. "No brag, just fact."

Originally Posted by GizmoQ

I took my silver oak leaves and sat down after getting my NATO medal for Kosovo and Kosovo Campaign Medal with 2 bronze stars. Good on you all for making it home safe!

Welcome Home, GizmoQ. I noticed that you recognized the RVN servide ribbon on my avatar, and even capitalized the "N" in VietNam the way the Vietnamese do, so I figured you were ex-miltary or related to someone who served. Silver oak leaves would mean you retired as a Lt. Colonel?

Originally Posted by rdholtz

I noticed that you recognized the RVN servide ribbon on my avatar, and even capitalized the "N" in VietNam the way the Vietnamese do, so I figured you were ex-miltary or related to someone who served. Silver oak leaves ...

:Shack:

Mount Up!, Part 4 ** EDITED **

I've been writing about the steel mount Josh and I built for his Scion xB's 17-inch Elo touchscreen LCD panel. The discussion gets going in Post #333, and pictures are in Post #335. After some post-production thinking, I see some ways we could have built the mount differently, and they may help others who go this same route:

1. Aluminum would be a lot lighter. But it also takes a pretty hefty welder to TIG weld aluminum, and most people don't have easy access to one. (The steel version could be welded with a simple "buzz-box" home welder, since the walls are only 1/8-inch steel.)
   
   Only one change would be required to build this unit from aluminum: we'd have to bolt the steel hinge halves to aluminum mounting plates, rather than weld them in. The upside of that change is that we might make the holes slotted or a bit oversize for adjustability.
   
   
2. We could probably have gone with 1-inch LCS tubing and 1-inch LCS angle iron. With the 1-1/4-inch stock, it's so solid that Josh says it's probably acting as a frame-stiffener.
   
   
3. For those without welding capability, the whole job -- using either steel or aluminum -- might be done by bolting the parts together. For instance, the joint between the base leg and the vertical leg could be two angle brackets bolted onto the base leg -- one on each side of the vertical leg -- with a single bolt passing through them and the vertical leg. The hinge could mount to two angle brackets bolted to the vertical shaft, and the base leg bracket could be attached with two angle brackets. Tolerances on the holes would need to be held pretty tight to avoid wobble, but that just means taking care while aligning and drilling. I'd recommend Nylok nuts all the way through.
   
   If we had done it using fasteners, the only required welding on ours would have been the fish-mouthing, but the need for that is specific to the Scion xB. For a vehicle with a level seat mounting point, you could skip the fish-mouthing and just cut the tubing at an angle and drill the mounting hole. The fish-mouthing at the top could be eliminated.
   
   
4. For additional adjustability, I'd fabricate the monitor mounting plate so we could change the angle of the monitor a little for refining alignment; slotted holes in the attach plate would do that well.
   
   
5. There are lots of options for the hinge system. dMand pointed out that LCD panel hinges are excellent. We could have used laptop hinges, too. We used the heavy-duty hinge this time because we wanted real beef in the installation. Any of the options would probably be good.
   
   
6. On the stock hinge we used, I'd grind the plates back a little at the barrel so moving it didn't cause the plates to scrape the paint off the barrel. We didn't find that 'til we had it all installed and pulled the screen down for the first time. It peeled the finish coat off and left the gray primer showing. It'll require disassembly, grinding and repainting to fix that, and I'm wondering why I didn't think of it while we were building.

I'll have more comments as soon as I get them written up. ** Note: comments continue in Post #352. **