Headunit and 3 gauge center dash mod

[Pete_89T2]

Originally Posted by JustJeff

I like your's, great work.

Thanks, since the last post I finished it off with a satin black paint that has a very fine sand-like texture to it. Matches my S5 center console texture & color well; will have to shoot a picture later to show it off. I tried covering the panel with the black fake leather as I mentioned, but that effort was a failure. The 3M spray adhesive I used didn't give a reliable enough "stick" along the narrow edges by the radio - vinyl kept curling up along the edges. So I had to strip it all off, then prep & paint.

Originally Posted by JustJeff

I'm thinking of re-relocating my gauge. I'd loose my oil temp gauge and put my boost, water temp and oil pressure all on the a-pillar. I have one single pod and one double pod for the a-pillar. Reason being, I'm giving serious thought to building a carputer. I"ve been building computers for a long time and have enough spare parts to build a serviceable carputer. I've got a motherboard, CPU, RAM and spare hard drives. The only real expenses would be getting a 7" touch lcd monitor and building an enclosure.

Due to the motor-mouse belts, you can only get 1 gauge on the A-pillar of the S5 coupes; that's where I have my boost/vac gauge. Might be able to fit 2 gauges, but it would be tight. 'Vert owners catch a break here.

Originally Posted by JustJeff

The only other obstacle is wanting a solid state hard drive. My concern is that a traditional hard drive is going to fail from shock and vibration. I have Illuminas and Tein springs and I just don't see a non-SSD having much of a lifespan. I'd buy a small SSD and only keep OS and bare minimum software. All my entertainment would be on USB flash drives.

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.

Originally Posted by JustJeff

My idea is to put the enclosure in the trunk with a push button control in the glovebox for my power supply. I can also run a usb port from the glove box.

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.

Originally Posted by JustJeff

Well one other thing to consider is that I have a convertible and the LCD monitor is NOT going to like direct sunlight during the top-down warm weather. It may be so washed out from the glare that it will be barely useable. I may have to spring for one of the expensive LCD designed for outdoor use.

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