Thread: PSYKO's 97 S-10 Project. Lotsa pics.

I am a l33t Ebay ninja.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=270047415465
The seller is just on the other side of New Orleans, about 2 hours away from me, so I emailed him to see if I can just pick the monitor up in person sometime in the next couple days. The screen is listed as "new" so apparently he bought the screen for a project vehicle, but never installed it. Looks like I've solved the touchscreen issue, pretty much all I need now is a power supply and a few other misc. items. Also last night I did some work on the truck. Ran all the 1/0 power and ground wiring for the sound system, and included provisions to easily add a battery isolator and second battery to power the sound system, CarPC, and anything else that I might want to add (I have 2 extra 4 gauge power and ground connections on my distro blocks). I'll take some pics later on to post up, but for now it's about 7:40am and I haven't been to bed yet, so I think it's time to get some sleep.

Looks like you're off to a great start! Nice deal on the screen, TS can be expensive for some reason. Your GPS looks the same as mine (GM-307). If it's anything like the one I have, it can be very slow to get a lock (5 min sometimes!) and doesn't always get the best signal. Still works OK for the most part though. I just ordered a Holux GR213 for $50 so I'll see if that is any better. That sound deadening material looks good, what is it?

Thanks! The GPS is a GM-305; I bought it about 3 years ago and I've never had much trouble with it. With the receiver sitting on top of my dash, it usually gets a fix within 60-90 seconds. I'm planning on possibly upgrading later on tho, maybe to a waterproof magnetic mount receiver that I can mount on my roof for a better signal, but for now this one works fine for my needs. The sound deadener is a product called "Peel and Seal." It's actually a roofing material designed to patch leaky roofs, but it's very similar to commercial asphalt-based sound deadeners like BrownBread, FatMat and original Dynamat. It's pretty cheap too; about $7 a roll (I used 5 rolls for two layers of material on the back wall) and works very well IMO.

No worries! I think my GM-307 might have a dead battery or something, it seems to have to acquire the satellites every time it starts up, which takes ages. Nice find on the sound deadening, sound like a good alternative. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your progress...

Picked up my touchscreen tonight. This thing is sweet! At 800x600 it's perfectly clear, and the brightness seems good. Haven't seen it in direct sunlight yet tho. My only gripe is that it doesn't automatically turn on when power is applied. Ah well, it's not like having to hit one button will kill me. Here's a picture of the screen sitting on top of an ATX case with my USB mini keyboard next to it: (Trust me, the picture does no justice to the clarity of the screen)

Also, I've been playing around with Yahoo Widget Engine (formerly known as Konfabulator) on my laptop. I think I might incorporate some of the features onto the desktop of my TruckPC once I get it installed. Here's a screenshot from my laptop:

I have incorporated Widgets for a clock, wifi signal strength, email notification, hard drive space, battery capacity, memory usage, system uptime, and CPU usage, as well as a cool Winamp skin that I found. Obviously I won't be using everything on the TruckPC, but I'll probably be using several of them. I think the color scheme will go well with my truck. Here's a shot of my truck all lit up at night: (I eventually plan on getting a red undercar neon kit as well)

Too bad about the TS not turning on automatically. If you are handy with electronics you could easily rig up a circuit to turn it on with power up though. Also, what is the obscure antenna on your truck's roof?

Keep up the good work!

I've been considering designing a cap-resistor circuit to trigger a relay to turn on the screen, but it's kind of a low priority right now. I'd like to get everything else installed and working first. The antenna is a Predator 10K high-power CB antenna. It is in my opinion the best on the market, designed for very high power and maximum omnidirectional gain. You can read more about the antenna at www.predator10k.net. I know it's a bit excessive, and looks pretty strange on top of a small pickup, but this is one case where I'd rather sacrifice looks for performance.

I've determined something. In mid-summer of 1996, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at GM headquarters there was a meeting. One of the engineers in this meeting said "In about 10 years, there will be a guy named Jay that will own one of the 1997 S-10s we're designing. Lets **** him off." The plan was for me to pull the jumpseat out of the truck and bring it inside so I can dismantle it and turn it into a PC case. Looking down inside the opening, I see two studs coming out of the floor with two nuts to hold down the seat bracket. Easy enough, even tho it was kind of difficult to access them. After about 15 minutes of swearing (every time the wrench slipped and I busted my knuckles) I got the two nuts loose. Seat still firmly planted in place. I start to feel around under the trim and find another bolt way under there, completely out of sight. I spend another 15 minutes trying to get this bolt out. Finally get it out and the seat is still planted firmly in place. WTF?! So I keep searching and finally find yet another bolt under the ******* carpet! I fight with the carpet for several minutes in order to get it pulled back far enough to get to that bolt, and I still can't get the seat out. I find that there's two screws going thru the plastic trim that screw into the metal seat brackets. Take those out and the seat is free to move around finally. Then I realize with all this extra bracketry that they've added to the frame of this thing, there's no way to get it out without taking the whole side panel off. This means that I've gotta take the seatbelts out. Which means that I'll have to deal with GM's threadlocked torx bolts. If you've never dealt with these, consider yourself lucky. The last time I had to remove one, I ended up pulling the carpet out of the car completely so that I could use a gas torch to heat the thing and used an impact gun to get it out. I ended up spending about 4 hours and $30 (3 broken torx bits @ $10 each) on one ******* bolt.

Tonight I did manage to get the speaker wires connected from my amp to my components in the doors (no easy task). Had to pull the door panels, underside of the dash, sill panels, and alot of trim to hide all the wires. Then I started the truck to go get some food. I then got greeted by a nice alternator whine thru my amp. WTF?! This was also about the time I found out that the midbass speakers couldn't hold up to the power the amp was putting out (the speakers actually started to make a burning smell...) I ended up eventually dialing the gain way down on the amp so the midbass speakers wouldn't distort so bad. I played around with the EQ settings on my headunit and got it sounding pretty nice. With the gain on the amp backed off the alt whine is barely audible when there is no music. With music playing, it's impossible to hear. Thru expermenting, I found that the noise is only present when the shield of the Right RCA cable makes contact with the outer shield of the jack, which tells me it's a ground loop. Hopefully if I add a chassis ground to my headunit it will take care of that. But for now everything sounds okay, so I'm not gonna mess with it for a while. Still planning on upgrading the midbass drivers and I definitely need to sound deaden the hell out of my doors. But I've pretty much got my sound system completely finished. All I have left to do is buy the sub and bolt it in. Holy crap this turned into a long post....

Originally Posted by PSYKO_Inc

One of the engineers in this meeting said "In about 10 years, there will be a guy named Jay that will own one of the 1997 S-10s we're designing. Lets **** him off."

He was head hunted from Citroen.

Designed the centre consoles in the entire range to be just too small for a monitor.


Looking good, yeah aerial is a little large, but you dont good results with a small one.........