Thread: 1998 Cadillac Deville Concours

After about 6 months of planning, strategizing, reading, and researching on this forum, I have finally begun my installation. I put my first car stereo in my dad's pickup truck when i was 12, which was 25 years ago. Countless cars later, and an underlying urge to totally have cool electroincs in my ride, i have finally found the one that is deserving of a CarPC, a 1998 Cadillac Concours DeVille with 300HP Northstar, 65k miles, and totally mint inside and out. of course, there is also that Caddy ride...sweet. The last pic shows what I am attempting to do with the TS in the dash, via photoshop.

I think the most important start to a project of this magnitude is the planning stages. Thinking through potential problems and overcoming them with desired results. Like I said, I have been collecting drawings and ideas floating around in my head for a long time, and am just now getting started.

Also, I would like to do this so I can return the car back to factory stock if need be. Lastly, I work in the highest car-theft city in the US. Thankfully, only 2 days a week, but still...I'd like it to look from the outside like just another nice car, no goodies inside.

The computer, part 1:

One major problem I found dissapointing was a good PC solution for radio, but I understand there are some in the works.

One major problem with this car (which I found out in a caddy forum) is removal of the factory head unit, which is exactly what i want to do. Evidently, things like retained accessory power and door chimes are routed though the head unit and factory steering wheel controls , and if removed, the car don't know what to do. So, the first hurdle was, how do I get the best of both worlds? Especially retaining the steering wheel controls.

Natural answer was to relocate the headunit (trunk), and since I will be fabricating a custom carpeted PC case, I incorporated that into the design.
Next question, how do I get 100% of the data from the factory harness in the dash to the plug in the back of the stereo in the trunk? I would need to run an extension cable, pin for pin, from point A to point B. The problem is most of the Metra and other units only give you the speaker, power/acc and ground wires, which leaves out half the pins. (32 pin plug, 23 wires needed).

So, thanks to a $12.00 CD-ROM for http://1ezwire.com I found the pin selections, and started thinking about the harness. Not to sidetrack, but I did contact installer.com, and although the folks there were very very helpful, I was told there were no real options, and no one would build me ONE custom relocation harness...now if I wanted 100 of them...

I would up going to a local stereo shop, bought 2 male harnesses and pulled enough wires from one and put them in the other, matching pin for pin. I also bought the factory 32 pin female harness, which comes with about 27 pins wired. Now, all I need to do is extend it wire for wire, about 20 ft (read: s**tloads of splicing) and voila, a relocation harness for 15 bucks in parts and about the same in wire.

Another interesting thing about this car (and many others too, more than you think), it is wired from the assembly plant with a 10 pin disc changer plug in the trunk. There are a few adapters that let you convert this to an RCA audio in, I found the one by PAC (Aux-Box and GM-10 cable) http://www.pac-audio.com/ was an easier set up than the PIE hardware http://www.logjamelectronics.com/piegm10aux.html. The PAC stuff was plug and play, the PIE wasn't.

Now, with this rig in the trunk, the PC and factory stereo in the trunk, and the option of being able to run sound from an 1/8 inch jack to a pair of RCA's...you guessed it, EVERYTHING runs through the factory amplified sound system, just like that, with a couple of plugs.

This solution gives me:

Factory AM/FM Radio

An auxillary input source (or sources with a splitter) into the factory system for the PC sound card out jack.

All the bells and whistles that are wired into the car and Class2 data bus.

The ability to adjust the volume and radio station presets from the steering wheel, without seeing the headunit.

The next problem this creates is how do I switch between AM, FM, and "CD-Changer" if the radio is in the trunk? I pulled apart a scrap radio I got on e-bay, and it is simply a board mounted mini push button switch. I think this can be de-soldered and relocated with a length of wire back into the cabin, but that is going to take a little experimenting.

So far, I have all the parts for the PC:

Converted desktop MOBO with AMD 2500+ processor
512 megs of RAM
2.5" 60 GIG Toshiba Laptop Drive
Promate 7" TS kit (more details on that REAL soon!)
Thin USB keyboard
DSATX Power Supply (the best purchase I ever made)
USB / Firewire / Serial / Ports and 5 PCI slots
RoadRunner Front End
Delorme Streets and Trips with USB GPS for rear window
Wireless card

So, I have the parts to get started, a little here, a little there, and connectors everywhere (the guy and Radio Shack is going to be the godfather to my next kid:

Yesterday, I ran an actual test in the car, with the DSATX and all the stuff just laying in the trunk,and it works!! Wooo hoooooooooooo!!!

Now, little by little, it will find a permamnet home in the Cadillac.

Off to play, stay tuned!