Thread: 2002 Mitsubishi Magna VR-X - 15.4" ultrabright LCD, fabricating...

cheers Brum. Your not only Aussie but your a fellow Queenslander

hey biggy, have you tried the leds behind the screen yet? I noticed you were speculating as to how much light you'll wind up with, are you aware that around 90% of the light is lost thru the lcd & diffusers & polarizers? your screen won't be 4,000 nits, the nit brightness is measured at several points of the lcd from the front & then averaged for a rated nit brightness. just a little fyi

have you checked the viewing angles of that lcd? how does it look from both sides at the installed angle?

Yeah I figured it was a visible measurement not ccfl brightness. I dont exactly know what im going to run into behind the lcd, could you explain what ill have to do? From the rear all I can see is some plactic framwork which will have to be removed, that ribbon pcb and a cloudy white sheet... whats behind that sheet?

Also I have a question, the ribbon pcb ill be folding back.. on each side of this there are cooper strips going to a chassis screw which im pretty sure are just earthings. So im just going to add a wire so it can be extended up, you see any prob with that? Also how did you fix that ribbon PCB in your setup?

Im not sure on the angle of the lcd, ill check that when I boot it up next.

got any pictures of the rear of the lcd?

the white framework is what holds all the sheets togeather in the lcd, you need to remove it from the lcd, cut out the whole center & then reinstall or use a glass pane the same thickness if possible to hold it all togeather. the rearmost paper sheet is a reflector & should be removed.

once you put it back togeather you'll see if it needs anything to hold it togeather so the sheets don't sag out of the rear. you'll want to avoid dust inside at all costs, it won't hurt it, but any dust will be visable & magnified.

every lcd is different & you won't know how much extra diffusion you'll need to add until you put it in front of your light source, depending on led spread, projection angles & spacing you'll see if there are hot spots, basicly you might be able to see each & every individual led as a bright spot, if that's the case try to focus it as best as possible by moving the leds back or forward depending, if it's really bad you might want to think about adding more leds in between the ones you have, once you do the best you can there, then you'll probably have to add some more diffusion to even the light out across the panel, problem there is the more diffusion the less light you have left. a sanded freznel lens can be used or even an opaque piece of paper, but the more the difuser helps the more light it'll block too

an lcd with good enough diffusion will suck up the bulk of the light you provide, which is why you need it to be extremely bright to wind up with enough left over to still give a bright lcd, I hope what you got there is enough, especially as the lcd gets larger you need more & more light.

the circiut board I just folded it 90deg back & attached it to the side of the box, I originally thought I could have that board be inside the box but there was no way to attach it & it worked out better being outside for me. you need to be careful where the ribbon enters the lcd itself & not have that touch the box or anything, I had to modify that edge of my box to allow this, I made my box depth dependant on the depth of that board so it didn't hang over the rear of the box.

viewing angles, you have to be careful when in portrait mode, most lcds have much wider viewing angles left & right than up & down, when you turn the lcd sideways, up & down become left & right... some lcds have horrible up or down viewing angles & this could be an issue, my first lcd was ok from the drivers perspective, but sucked from the passengers side, I replaced it with a really good lcd that had 160deg viewing angles all around, now it's perfect.

good luck man, until you've done this, you don't really know what you've got to work with or what kind of results to expect, hope it works out well for you, be careful, the lcd mod itself is what gets most guys

Thanks for the detailed answer Turbo. My LEDs are not as bright as your 1w luxeons but I have many more tehn you so im hoping they will be enough, I also remember reading that your setup could be turned up so bright as to wash out the colour.. Im hoping my LCD will ok at full brightness at full sunshine. We will have to wait and see.

For the ribbon PCB what if I make kind of a sleeved slot on the inside of the box about 5-10mm thick out of the 2mm alloy, line the inside with rubber and slide it in and out when removing. Only problem I see with this is the board will be floating around with the car movements and might damage the ribbon cables over time. I might be able to get a snug fit I dont know, im going to have to wait till its apart and see what I can do. Might be up to 4 weeks before im pulling the lcd apart, there is just no space in my house right now to safely do it.

Several more layers of 300g mat. Its pretty darn strong now.





Went to a wrecking yard and pulled off the first dash panel I came across. It was a fuse box panel. There were four pull-on-off clips on the back that seamed to be the right size. Cut one off and tested, perfect fit. I have 4 and only need 2 so I have 2 spares to stuff up



The first problem of this screen, the LED alloy casing doesn't quite fit through the dash walls, but is very close. I think it will fit however on an angle and when that air con duct is removed. With the dash bezel attached it might be even harder to maneuver. Im going to go ahead with mounting anyway and sort this out at the end, ill work out a way, I always do.

nice job on your car!

edit:
Above post was changed and therefore what was posted in this post means nothing...

Looking good Biggy, can't wait to see some pictures of the LCD taken apart. Good luck on the move.

pulafets- try changing your refresh rate to a higher setting if the other stated ideas don't work.