Thread: 02 Nissan Sentra (Black Dragon) Journal.

As of right now, it's holding up, although I don't park out in the sun a lot. It's usually garaged at home, or in an underground parking structure at work. I did park it outside a few weekend back and the cabin temp reached 110 or higher and the computer still worked fine.

The monitor area is actually right above the air vents...the base is actually screwed into the hard plastic ducts it is sitting on, so if I do need to make some more air behind the monitor, I can just drill a hole in the duct. There is also a small vent in the back of the dome enclosure where the hinges are. Oh yea, and I painted the mold as well as the whole center area silverish so that it doesn't absorb as much heat when it's out in the sun. Damnit, I really need to get some pics up hehe.

Ok, so here is the area where the top "glove" compartment is located without it actually being there hehe. Basically this is how the monitor is mounted.



rear shot front outside the windshield.



here you can see the springs removed that made the door popup. Pretty easy, nothing but an e-clip to pop out, then u can remove the axle and pop out the springs.



Once I got the door to just flop down with the force of gravity, I put the compartment back in place, surrounding the monitor and used cardboard cutouts to simulate the side walls for measuring.



another shot outside, removed from the car.



since I was using the resin technique, I had to find ABS plastic to use for side walls. It took me forever to find something that was actually ABS and flat, and yea, I know I overpaid, but after 2 hours of shopping at multiple stores I went with this electrical box found at Fry's Electronics



Here's the basic shape for the side walls that I came up with. Hint, using masking tape around everything prevents melted dremel plastic from sticking to itself! Much more cleaner cuts.



Cleaner, sanded up shot.



Here's the first fitting attempt, not bad...



next I had to chop off the front lip, as that's where the button was located, so it looked weird with that gap (as you can see in the above gap), and it also hung forward just a hair too low and made the top of the screen unveiwable.



closeup after initial cut



after sanding

after all the pieced "fit" I had to actually make them stay, so I used Oatey's cement stuff (as recommended) along with abs shavings from a pipe to thicken it as my glue and formation compound.



After a lot more sanding then I had ever wanted to do, it came out to look like this. You can see the small vent in the back.





After a wash and dry, it was time to paint it, along with the other central peices to match.








I used duplicolor spray paint designed to be used with plastic. Because it was to be used with plastic, I just sprayed it directly on. It works out pretty good, but I have some spots now at the joints that don't look good. Mainly pinholes, which were ok, but then I found out I had air pockets under there and they bubbbled up in the heat. After the summer I will probably go back and sand it all down, use a bondo type material to fill the pinholes, and use a different type of paint, combined with some primer to make sure that even if there were airholes, it won't be able to bubble so easily.

Sorry I don't have any in car pics at the moment, I'll try to take some when I get my hands on a digital cam (gave mine away damnit hehe). The "hood" fits over the monitor quite tightly and there is no gaps on any of the sides. I think there is a 1.5 inch recess in it, so I hardly get sunlight on the monitor, unless it's around sunset/sunrise. I still need to get some darker tint. Basically, my monitor is unaltered and I can still remove it if needed and use it anywhere (although pulling them cables out would be a *****).

That ooks awesome! Do you have any pic with the screen in?

sweet! love the way it looks, nice step by step pictures

Nice write up & good job...I love having options

Wow, I like the way you did that. It looks like the whole center housing is a pop-up from the dash. I was looking for ideas for my 03 Sentra Spec-V, and this would certainly be a good candidate for screen mounting. I could paint it all yellow to match the putside of the car, PT Cruiser style

I might first try fabricating a completely new top piece with redesigned vents and a flush mounted screen, because it would allow better placement of my center speaker for the 5.1 setup, but failing that, I'll probably do something siilar to this.

thanks for the compliments!
RFMan- yea it's a hard dash to work with, I considered some kind of indash motorized screen, but then it'd cover up my center vents when it was up. I also pondered using the vent area for the mold, and redesigning them, but it looked like like a lot of custom work, and I don't have a whole lot of tools to work with here other then a drill, a dremel, and a lot of sandpaper hehe. Plus, I like my vents all straight forward at me, as it's too damn hot to have it otherwise (I didn't grow up here, so I'm definitely not used to this heat). If you do something different, I'd love to see how it comes out!