Thread: 94 Accord Wagon CarPC Worklog *updated April 12*

Hey, nice to see another Accord on here. I have a 95 sedan, and was thinking of possibly putting in a bigger screen, but I just cannot see how it is possible to put in a screen that large in our centre console/dash ? Are you replacing the whole dash so it can fit? I can't wait to see some pictures.. will be really interesting

Reserved...

Some more progress pictures.

I have cut out the opening for the monitor to fit in, I am still waiting very anxiously for my dynatron plastic stuff in the mail...

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So today was the day that I visited Plastic World at Sheppard and Allen Rd in Toronto. I picked up 3 sheets of scrap Plexiglas to use for my carputer build for $7.00 plus $3.99 for the cement.

I must say the gentleman there was EXTREMELY helpful and knowledgeable... I highly recommend dealing with this place and will do in the future.

There are a lot of pictures as I am trying to document each step of the fabrication process as well as possible.

I didn't run into any major problems at this step other than not being able to score and break the Plexiglas in a straight line.

For the smaller bits located in later pictures I ended up just using a hand saw to cut it.

I was able to score the Plexiglas and then snap it into the following pieces in order to make a faux box in which to mount my laptop internals into...

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This is WELD-ON #16 Clear Solvent Cement, perfect for joining Plexiglas, acrylic etc. It is a thicker consistency rather than just using liquid epoxy.
It was recommended to use this product by the guys at Plastic World because it is perfect for welding two or more pieces of plastic together that are not perfectly perpendicular to each other (or perfectly square) as in my case with the poor attempt at cutting the Plexiglas.

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Below is a close up shot of the cement in action, it flows viscously into the spaces created from a non-perfect cut, melting the plastics together and then forming a solid joint within a minute.

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Almost done...

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AND THE BOX IS DONE!!! I was so excited... I still am just talking about it.

This was my first attempt at cutting and welding plastic together and it was so easy... I youtube'd some videos on using Weld-On #16 and found some useful tutorials... I'll try and dig up the links and post them here.

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So I dropped in the laptop guts and started to mock up the fittings...
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There will be ample room in this case for cooling, which i will document in later posts once it is completed

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This is the back of the LCD screen from my VAIO laptop, I had to modify the housing to make the wire come out where the board is so that I have enough play to hook it into the motherboard without extending the wires.

You can see here that I dremeled out a hole before actually measuring anything and had to abandon it in favor of one with easier access

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And the proprietary connector...

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Just a quick mock up of the case and how the motherboard will be mounted.

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Dremeled out a hole for the single USB port that will power my 7 port hub I got off of trusty ole eBay

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A closer shot... This Plexiglas stuff is really hard to work with, it can be so brittle yet a dremel will melt it causing it to warm when trying to cut straight... I haven't yet figured out what tool would be best to create holes like this...

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Here is the hole that the LCD cable will pass through... I started it with a drill bit then played around with the dremel... not the cleanest, I will fix it up later...

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The next two pictures show how the USB will line up with the opening, The motherboard has it on a ribbon cable that I will have to bend up and mount to the Plexiglas in a weird manner... I will be experimenting with different screws in which to mount them with... see below...

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Here is the monitor connector beside my drawing of where it will actually be...

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These are the feet that will be glued to the bottom of my case that the motherboard will sit on and be screwed to... I didn't want any metal to be exposed therefore I glued three 1/8 thick sections of Plexiglas together, I must now find screws small enough to actually hold the motherboard into these "feet"

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The box was made to fit snugly into the factory DIN space allocated for any stereo. I will be bolting it into the metal brackets you see on the left and right side with rubber grommets to dampen any harsh road conditions...

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Here is a back shot of the LCD in place... There is little room between the LCD and the computer case, which is intentional as this setup requires the LCD to be close to the motherboard as I didn't want to extend any LCD ribbon cables...

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So that was my day today...

tomorrow I will be mounting the "feet" and motherboard to the case, I will be mocking up the top lid of the case and fabricating the cooling system...

My Dynatron arrived in the mail a few days ago but I cannot start to mold the LCD into the center console until my case is completed...

Stay tuned for more updates...

I am also working on a piece to contribute to the WIKI under the plastic fabrication section... I am hoping that I can document some good pictures and write some instructions... We will see how dirty my hands become when attempting this as that will affect how many pictures I can take (don't wanna ruin my borrowed camera... THANKS SIS!)

Hey, how have you been going with this? Interested to see how it turns up as I'm thinking about moving my screen from down below in the centre console to higher up. It's only a 7" though, so not as big as yours, but still would be better having the screen in a more friendly location.

Well, I had finished molding the lcd into the center console, but when i went to mock up everything and power up the computer, NO POWER... ARGH!!!

so basically this whole setup is trashed because I have tried to test every connector and ribbon cable and I just give up. Finding another VAIO laptop (VGN-TX51P) might be near to impossible since they were $2500+ in 2004 so if anyone is interested in purchasing this LCD already pre-molded into a 94-97 center console, PM me...

Anyways, I caved and ordered a lilliput touchscreen from mp3car store... I should have it by sunday and will hopefully have the system up and running by the next sunday (pending cold weather)

I was so tempted to get the 10 inch model and fab it up but that would leave 2 inches of space below it for my add-ons, which is not enough space...

Going back to the fabrication... I thought my use of dynatron turned out pretty well, its too bad I have to abandon it... This stuff is so much easier to work with than bondo or fiberglass

some pics (sorry for crappy blackberry quality)


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Damn man that sucks about the laptop. Maybe it's a good thing as that screen might not have been as readable as a Lilliput (which is pretty bad in itself) in sunlight? Anyway it sucks with our car how the centre console and heater controls are separated like they are, because otherwise could put the screen in between them so it's higher up.

Good luck with the install

So I got my Lilliput touch 629GL screen from mp3car.com store and I realized at once how small it is... I don't think I like it too much, I'm kinda regretting not buying the 10.4 inch one now...

Anyways, I sat in my garage today playing around with the screen and thinking of ideas of how to mount it. I didn't want to open the case and mold it into my center console so I came up with something ingenious (in my opinion )

I also wanted to recess the screen a bit and add some sort of cover to attempt to shade the screen from the sun...

After spending about 20 minutes ripping my beautiful 11.1 inch Sony LCD out of my center console I immediately began to cut and shape some ABS plastic to form the pictures below.

Since the Sony laptop crapped out on me I had to find a different setup. Luckly my girlfriend was kind enough to donate her ****ty Acer Aspire One 8GB SSD netbook. So far I have been loading software (Ride Runner, VLC, Winamp, etc) on it and it doesn't lag how it did when she used it for word processing, youtube, music, internet, skype, peer-to-peer (you can see why it kept freezing) The netbook will have a home in my glovebox... more pictures to come when I move on to that part of the project...

ONTO THE PICS

There are quite a few so you can get an idea of what I did today, and yes this was all done today from 3pm to 9pm... I gave up going to the gym because I was so into it...

Comments? I'd love to hear em...

I am working with Ride Runner and it appears to be an interesting program to skin (which I will be embarking upon in the winter months...)

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