Headunit and 3 gauge center dash mod

[JustJeff]

Originally Posted by Pete_89T2

With proper shock/vibration isolation mounts, you shouldn't have any reliability issues with a regular hard drive in a car. 27+ years engineering experience with the DoD/Army has convinced me that even the most fragile of gadgets can be made to operate reliably in combat vehicles for a very long time with a well designed mount. Look in the boneyards for late-model luxury cars (MB/Lexus/Infinity, etc) that have built in hard-disk based nav & entertainment systems - you might get lucky and find shock mounts that can be re-purposed. Another source could be junked cop cars, as many now have shock/vibe mount plates attached to the dash/center console for laptops and all the other electronic crap cop cruisers carry these days.

Yeah, I've thought about vibration dampening. I was thinking of finding some rubber stand offs from random electronics, but I like your idea of finding some OEM parts.

Originally Posted by Pete_89T2

USB cable length may become an issue here, presuming the motherboard/USB hub is in the trunk. USB spec calls out a max. cable length, something like 6 feet. Beyond that, and there's no guarantee that whatever you connect to it will work - some USB devices will, others won't.

I've been thinking about the same thing with the USB cable length. Two options might be a powered USB hub or simply get a 32GB flash drive and keep it attached to the carputer and in the trunk. With something that large I wouldn't need to swap flash drives, I'd simply have to take it in to my desktop to update it.

Originally Posted by Pete_89T2

Yup, that and polarized sunglasses will make just about any affordable monitor hard to read.

Excellent point, I didn't even think about polarized sunglasses. Between the convertible and biking, nice sunglasses are a must. The cheapest I saw 7" touch LCD designed for outdoor use was $400. But I work for an IT company that does a lot of repair work. We have two techs making a killing repairing iPhones, smartphones, tablets and laptops. Maybe Fate will smile on me and I"ll find a broken touch LCD in need of repairs?

[Pete_89T2]

Decided to mess with the gauges above the radio again. With the gauges flat in the panel at that location, I found it was still difficult to see the entire gauge face and read it at a glance. Always wanted to figure out a way to point them slightly upwards and towards the driver's sightline. Then I had a clever idea to re-purpose some plastic bits that came with my gauges. In my case, the Prosport gauges I have all came with these plastic sunshields. If you slip the gauge into the rings backwards, I figured the part could be modified to make an angle mount. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:



And now the original piece, next to a modified one that gets me a good viewing angle. I determined the angle by trial & error test fitting - and the angle that worked for me may not work for all drivers. I'm 6'0" and sit with the seat all the way back; a shorter guy who sits closer to the wheel will need more angle to get a good sightline. Anyway, the angle is subtle, and just enough to point the gauge face toward the driver. To repeat that angle for 2 more gauges, I made up a wood jig to replicate the angle and used it with a miter box & hacksaw to make the cuts on the other 2 rings.



Since space is limited, you need to glue the right-most ring to the panel first, and then the center ring needs a bit of shaping so it "steps over" the ring to the right. Do the same thing with the left ring, letting it step over the center one. Don't worry if the cuts/grinding are not perfect, the gauge rim will likely cover the gaps, or you can fill with bondo & paint. You'll probably want to paint it anyway, which is what I did. Here's the setup ready for installation in the car.



And here it is completed, right from driver's point of view. Note that you can clearly see the entire gauge face at a glance