My civic was hit a few months back and I finally have the time and money to repair it. They luckly only damaged the front bumper cover, which is plastic, so I ordered a new one along with some other new parts to create a nice new front end. This picture will help explain



The front All of the parts pictured are the current parts on my car, all of which are going to be replaced. The bumper cover and fog light covers will remain the same with the exception that the foglight covers will be paint matched black instead of silver. These are OEM honda covers but I am not a huge fan of the contrast. The front scoop, or skirt at the bottom of the bumper will be replaced with a new one with a slightly slimmer profile that is a clone of the Si scoop. The grill will have the largest change, currently it is an aftermarket chrome and black mesh grill which is starting to show its cheap e-bay quality after a year now. It will be replaced with an OEM style grill with chrome trim and a new H logo in the center to match. The reason I replaced it in the first place was the faded black plastic looked bad, now with new plastic and chrome it should look new and stock.

Just as soon as all of the e-bay parts come in I will send them out to be painted locally and then snap them all on the car.

I had a chance to finally install a pretty neat part in my car pc after it sat in my room for a few weeks. It is a special PCB board made to fit my exact car pc case/motherboard/psu combo that connects the power on the motherboard to the power coming from the PSU. This enables better air flow as there is not a huge mass of tangled wires now. Fairly simple, only $5 and should keep things cool.

Before


After


I also tried something out I read online to avoid buying new headlights. Mine were looking pretty dull (see picture below) and almost foggy. It looked as if they fogged up or were dirty on the inside. I discovered that they are like that from dirt and other small particles scratching it ever so finely over the past 8 years my car has been around for. The good news is that this dirt and scratches can easily be removed by the same techniques I have used in the past to create super glossy paint finishes. You simply sand the crap out of the headlights with a fine 2000 grit piece of sand paper (wet sand with a hose) and buff with some rubbing compound and presto crystal clear headlights just like new! The sand paper creates micro fine, but uniform, scratches as it removes the top layer of dirt and unevenness. The buffing/scratch removing compound polishes out the micro fine scratches left by the sand paper, because the sand paper leveled out the surface it can now smooth out to a nice glossy shine. *warning* elbow grease required.

Before


After

I found this amazing program called iresize for free for my mac and you simply tell it what size you want your photos to be then drop them in and it creates a copy that is smaller. Perfect for my web site when taking huge pictures then uploading them here. Anyway on to some of the pictures I have been meaning to upload..

Eww rusty calipers and drums! What to do?



Get new ones and paint them black!




Now that's better!




My new Rockford Fosgate subwoofer is unprotected from the dangers of things sliding around in my trunk.


Thankfully a custom grill is recently available from crutchfield. It fits where the old trim ring does but is cast Aluminum and has a mesh grill to protect the sub. This thing is pretty solid.
Here is a picture of my review camera turned on while driving(I'm stopped at a stop sign) It is a reversed image so it looks the same as looking in the rear view mirror. It is also wide angle and night vision so it works great.


Here is the last piece of my dash I had to modify (besides my top-secret hidden system disable switch... sorry no pics of that)The top row of 5 mini buttons are for the display settings like brightness etc. The large red button is to switch between the computer, review camera, and other video source (iphone maybe?) The white switch next to it turns on the relay for the rear view camera. In the middle of course is the 12v standard car power port. On the right is a sweet brushed aluminum button that has a ring that lights up blue. This turns the screen on and off but leaves the system on. The blue LED indicates that the system is on or off.


Here is the back side with everything wired and zip tied together. I finally found a half way decent multi wire connector so that this can easily be removed if I need to get in there.


And finally after what seems like forever, my dash is back together. I installed a new cup holder unit, and took some time to label all of the wires under the dash so when I have to get back in there I can remember which red wire it is I am looking for. Towards the bottom you can also see the relocated AC buttons and LED's by the shifter. It is so much nicer to get rid of the huge buttons that were formally on the dash and relocate them as they are rarely used. I will have to get around to taking some more pictures along with before and after shots.


I decided to do all the work on my front end at once since I finally had all the parts in! Here is the bumper taken off of my car before being modified.


On the back side I drilled holes and cut out a nice opening for the fog lights.


The plastic the bumper is made from cuts easy with a utility knife. Here is the fog light installed in place with the opening fully cut.


I also added what is known as a front lip. This is made from the same flexible plastic as the bumper and attaches to the bottom of the bumper to add some additional style and lower the front end about an inch or two. This went on quite easy once I figured out the best way to attach it to the bumper. I hung the bumper from my garage ceiling with string and stood under it to screw it in. Otherwise it wold have been a challenge to attach this lip to the bottom because there is no flat side to lay the bumper on.


Here is a side shot of the front end of the car. You can see now that the front end is even with the side skirts of the car and the bottom flares back out instead of tapering in at the bottom.


Again a side profile shot of the front end. Here you can see the fog lights installed. Yes, the lip will be painted to match the rest of the car eventually.


I tried to replace the front grill as well but the part I got from ebay just did not quite fit right. I wanted to replace the OEM grill with a similar chrome edged one but with black mesh in the center instead of fading black rubber and a H logo. It is only looking semi decent in this picture because I had to remove the black mesh to try to make it fit.


In this picture you can see that the ends stick out even with the mesh removed (that was preventing it from fitting in all the way). Now it is boxed up and I am driving my car grill-free for the moment until I can get a new/different one.


I was able to install the cold air intake just before the rain hit last saturday(you may have noticed the rain in the previous pictures) Here is the intake to the engine after removing the stock air intake. The stock one is nothing exciting so I will skip showing you the picture of a plastic tube.


Here is the section of tubing that connects to the intake at the engine. Yes its blue. It makes me happy.


Here is the full engine shot with the cold air pipe installed all the way to the lower front bumper. The strut bar was installed a few days later. It really tightened up my front end and combined with my new tires my car handles great!


Here is the air filter connected to the end of the intake pipe and going through a hole ending up just behind the passenger side fog light. It will get plenty of air here as well as be protected from rain from all sides. The engine now has a deeper throaty noise when accelerating and has a little more power. I am fairly happy with the engine mods so far. The mechanical aspect is not really my thing so this should be good enough for now.


That about wraps up my huge post of pictures here. Most of the work on my car is now coming to an end. I still have some new head light and fog light bulbs on the way and need to get my fog lights finished wired up and working. Other than that my car is nearly complete!! For those of you who have seen my car for the past two years in it's various stages you will know this is quite the accomplishment! Check back later for some more updates. Sometime when it's nice out I will take a few nice pictures of the finished car.

I took some time this weekend to install some of those parts I listed off in my last post. I got the cold air intake installed and completely removed my front bumper for a variety of modifications. I cut out two holes for fog lights, I added a front lip to the bottom and I attempted to install a new grill. The fog lights are half in... meaning that they are in but the wiring isn't quite right so I need to play with hem some more. the new front grill does not fit correctly so I will most likely have to return that. the front lip went on fairly easy though. Now I just need to see if I can get the strut bar put on today and if it fits with the cold air intake. in the mean time I will be driving around with non working fog lights. pictures to follow after work...

After having my civic for almost 2 years now I am finally aproaching the end of my plans for upgrades to it. About a year before I bought the car I had planned every detail out from where the electronics would go, to which wires were going to be routed where. There were a few minor changes to my plans one I begain work but most of the stuff has stayed the same. This weekend I hope to finish up the remainder of the work on my car. Now that the interior has been put back together I just have a few more cosmetic pieces left to finish up and my once sensible fuel effeciant civic will be transformed into the kick ass ride I knew it could be.

So what's left to do to my car?
Install fog lights
Install front lip on bumper
Install new chrome grill
Install front strut tower bar
Install cold air intake

I currently have all of these parts. it's just a question if I can install them all my self. The last thing I am thinking of doing cosmetically is to get new head lights (think projector bmw style) and those hyper white bulbs for the headlights and fog lights. I am holding off on those for now while I learn more about HID lights and different bulbs. later I will be posting pictures of my interior and the new calipers and drums I painted and put on!

My new wheels and tires are on and now its time to break them in. Here they are, Konig Tuner II 17" wheels with Hankook tires. But first, a brief evolution of the exterior of my car.

My stock civic


Genuine Honda Spoiler added (and rear bumper replaced due to someone hitting me)


Windows Tinted with 35% and 25%


17" Konig Wheels and Hankook low profile tires


That about wraps it up for the exterior cosmetics of my car. A few minor things like fog lights need to be added still. I hope to wrap up the inside of the car in the coming weeks. (yes I know its been a "work in progress" for over a year) Stay tuned for more updates.

I finally have made a decision as to what wheels to get for my car. I think I have been waiting over a year now to get nice wheels and tires on my car. They are Konig Tuner II 17" and will have Handkook tires. I decided that I liked the look of machined silver finish but that a wheel with black paint incorporated into the design would go nicely with my car. Here is a picture of the wheels and a picture of one next to my car. They are going to be installed tomorrow. More pictures to follow of course.

I have gotten through some rough electrical issues and finally have my car pc working again. Since the latest update of Street Deck it has been working 10x better. Before it struggled to keep up with the graphics ( what can you expect from a c7 processor and 512 of ram) and transitions Street Deck wanted to display. And forget about playing music AND using gps at the same time! The gps would lag so bad that it would only update every 5 sec. Now all of those problems are fixed and my GPS worked every time and quickly found a signal. I took it on a road trip out of town for 7 days and it was able to help me find restaurants and other places I needed to go. It would appear that a blown fuse in the in line filter on the LCD was to blame for the LCD not powering up. Now there are only a few things left to finish up and I can put my car back together! This includes the LCD controls to be mounted on on of the panels, fix the cellphone charger, and get the DVD drive working again (or get a new one). Here are some pictures along with the dash backlighting that I added to complement the screen and blue LED's already in the AC controls.

Here is the completed dash area after the reworking of the display.



This is a close up of the LCD in the music playback screen



A close up of the El Back lighting on the gauges.

Ok so many of you who have visited my site know that I like to mess around with computers. What you might not know is I have been building and fixing computers and other electronics for quite some time now. Its been mostly a side business here and there, setting up a new pc or removing viruses, setting up home networks, recovering data etc etc. So I want to form a LLC so that I am more professional in appearance and have certain legal rights etc.

Currently I am doing consulting work for a number of small businesses in my town. I need a sweet business name, short, easy to spell, remember, and create cool branding logos etc around.

Here are some of the things my company offers. Computer repair/maintenance /upgrades Networking /wired/wireless/ networking other devices/printers etc. Security /encryption/ internet security/backups General consulting - Computer network design/ hardware etc Web site design - Custom web site with advanced user control pannel

The name has to end in LLC or Ltd or Limited.

So far I have been looking at names like (insert cool word in blank)
______ Consulting LLC
______ Solutions LLC
______ Technology LLC

Do you think these names convey my business? Can you think of a cool business name (that isnt taken and has a .com available)?

The best I have come up with on my own is Fuse Consulting LLC (where as fuse would mean join together)

Bonus for coming up with a name that is at the beginning of the alphabet.

I will be rewarding anyone who can generate a sweet name that I end up using, with a cash prize that has yet to be determined. Drop your comments in the forum on the dojo or in the comments section of my site.

I shopped around locally and found some more rims. I have narrowed it down to 2 styles from the same company, Motegi Racing. There are 2 styles, the FF7 and the MR7 (there both 7 spoke) Each style of rim comes in different finishes, the MR7 in Silver and Gun Metal and the FF7 in Silver, Gun Metal and Black. The gun metal in real life is a dark gray that looks almost black, You will notice the FF7 Gun metal and Black rims look similar, the MR7 is a much darker gray than it appears in the picture. The silver FF7 is a polished silver as where the silver MR7 is painted silver. All of the FF7's have a polished outer rim where it meets the tire, not chrome. FF7 has slightly recessed spokes where the MR7 has flush spokes. The FF7 also has a cover over the lug nuts. Thats about all the details you should need. There are 5 different styles/colors to choose from.

MR7 Silver



MR7 Gun Metal



FF7 Silver



FF7 Gun Metal



FF7 Black



Please pick one and tell me briefly why you like it ( its shiny, black and silver would look good with your car etc)

Again for reference here is a picture of my car

Spring is on it's way here and I need new tires for my car. But why buy new tires when you can buy new tires AND rims!? So after some research I have discovered that I can get 15" rims with tires that aren't super low profile (decent tread wear and don't look like balloons). Now the hard part is finding decent looking rims. Thanks to Tire Rack I can see what the rims look like on my car before I buy them. I have photoshopped up some layouts detailing some pics and specs of 4 different styles of rims. Ignore the prices etc as I will most likely not be buying the exact rim pictured but ~$100 priced similar version. So here are some huge pictures that are sure to screw with the sites formatting. Leave me some feed back and let me know what you think.

Click the "comments" button below this post and leave your comments!!

Multi-Spoke



8-Spoke



6-Spoke



Tuning Fork style

Who doesn't love blue LEDs? I put some blue LEDs in the A/C control unit (yeah it still works) to replace the mini bulbs that were in there. It looks pretty sweet next to the brushed aluminum button which also has a blue LED in it. I also picked up some thin 24 guage 2 conductor wire to run a microphone from the front A pillar to the rear where the PC is. It seems I have also blown a fuse that connects power to a few devices in the car. So sometime this weekend I will be running the last wire, replacing the fuse, glue the A/C control unit into place, and finally put the rest of the dash back in.

I worked up enough motivation this weekend to solder about 50+ tiny wires that were in a custom connector I built to connect the controls in the lower dash. They were all crimp on molex type connectors that I had previously installed. Apparently, the connector was not well designed as almost all of the wires did not make a solid connection inside of the connector. This was due to the wire floating inside of the crimp connector and making no contact. I had to remove all of the pins from the connector, solder the wire to the pin to make a solid connection, then reset the pin and put it back together one at a time. It was a painful process and I did manage to shock myself a few times but all of the buttons and switches now work in the lower dash.

Here is an overall view of the dash.



This is a picture of the 12pin molex connectors that connect the control buttons



This is a picture of the armrest controls etc. Top left is a USB port (thumb drive in use). Top right is an audio in jack and is used with a short male/male audio cable to connect other music devices into the system (ipod etc). Bottom left is a modified versa charger to charge my phone or any other portable device I buy a tip for. Bottom right is the bass control for the sub woofer. Inside the armrest, mounted vertically is a DVD drive for importing music and playing movies.



I only have to finish the A/C control unit and add a microphone and I can close up the lower dash! Sometime this week I hope to reinstall the OS and software as well.

Eventually I will get my dash finished. I have finished assembling and wiring the buttons but they donít all work now. I think I know the cause but it will take another hour or so upside down in my car to fix it. This is the piece that goes under the LCD and in front of the shifter. You can see the relocated A/C controls that used to be in the dash. The remainder of the buttons control things like turning the LCD on and off as well as other LCD settings. There is also a switch that controls the power to the computer and the neon lights and a reset button.

I am happy to report that my car computer project is nearing the finish. All of the plans I have had for my car since I started the project will be completed hopefully by this tuesday when I drive to school to start my first classes of the semester. I have taken apart my dash and put it back together more times than I care to count. I have finally rewired the LCD screen so the controls which used to enable me to do things like change settings on the LCD are now relocated to where the cupholders and AC controls are. I also wired in 2 composite video sources into the LCD which will later be used in further mods (backup up cam perhaps?). Lots more wires have been run all around the car as well as lots of new stuff in the arm rest area. Lots of pics are on the way but for now check out these pics of the lower dash area.

This was my test panel made out of a scrap piece of plexi. its purpose is to hold the AC control buttons (the go in the square hole in the middle) and the switches and buttons that control the computer's functions (power, reset) as well as all of the LCD screen functions.



As you can see in this picture though the flip up cup holder lid hits the buttons when cups are in place. My "biggie" coke was changing the source input everytime I reached down for a drink!



My solution was to create a pannel that fit inside the frame instead of attaching to the outside. This is the template I made to cut out the piece from more plexi.



The template was then glued to the plexi from the rear so I could easily see where to cut. It was then test fitted.



Here is the plexi pannel piece after all the holes were cut and drilled by hand with a dremmel. Not bad for not using a drill press. I then sanded the front so it could be painted.



Here is the entire dash piece back together to give an idea of what it would look like.



So thats where I am now on the dash area. Just a few more connections and wires to connect up and that area will be finished! I'd talk about all the other fun stuff I did today but I will wait untill I have the pictures go go along with it.

So I finally finished up my fiberglass sub box yesterday. Well the fiberglass part was done since 2 days ago but the finishing touches were done today to complete the project. Here are the pics from where I left off last time.

Here is the shell that we left off from last time. I made a mounting ring for the sub and positioned it with dowels and hot glue.



I stretched T-shirt material over the whole thing and secured it to the back with hot glue. This creates the basic shape to complete my sub box.



Next the material is soaked in apoxy so that it hardens in to a surface that I can lay down fiberglass onto.



This picture shows the front after 2 layers of fiberflass. You can still see the blue material through the glass.



This picture is after about layer 6 where you cant see the blue much any more and it was becoming the right thickness.



After I let it set for 2 hours I cut all the excess off the sides and cut the hole out in the middle and also a hole in the back for the wires to come into.



I picked up some gray and black carpeting to finish up the box. The carpeting went on easy with some 3M spray glue.



Here is the sub in its placeall finished and blended into the car. THe sub is blurry in the picture because it was on at the time. Some foam tape helped to seal the sub to the box to prevent leaks.



This is a completed shot of my trunk just how I had planned it to look before starting this project. Also note the black material on the trunk lid covering the shiny silver sound deadening material. The sub sounds great and hits harder than it did before. I may have to turn down the power to it to prevent over driving it as it moves up to 4 inches in and out when all the way up.

Yesterday I finally got around to getting all the things I needed to begin my fiberglass box. It decided to rain as soon as I got home so I had to wait till this morning to start it. It was a bit tricky at first but I think it turned out well so far. I have it about 50% complete right now and hope to finish it off tomorrow and bolt it in my car. Here are the pics from the work I did today.

My trunk before the fiberglass box, this is my 4-5 year old bandpass box which sounds nice but takes up half my trunk and slides around all the time.



Here are most of the materials I used. Resin, Fiberglass mat, some mixing stuff, blue tape, gloves etc.



The first thing I did was tape off the area to be fiberglassed



Then I put some tinfoil over the taped area (light portions on the blue tape) and proceded to cover the tape with apoxy and fiberglass. It was tricky at first and doing it inside the car didn't make it easier.



After about 2 hours it was completly cured and flexable enough for me to pop out of the trunk easily.



After it was out I began to layer more fiberglass and apoxy ontop of the first 2 layers. This is after 4 layers.



This shot is when I finished with the 7th layer. I also happened to run out of fiberglass so I guess 7 layers is good enough. The piece is much larger than it needs to be to account for weakness around the edges. Trimming the edges will make it look neater and it will be much stronger.



Before I cut the box I filled a 1'x1'x1' box with packing peanuts. My 10" sub needs 1' cubed amount of volume but it is really hard to measure the strange shape of the box. The solution is to create a box of known dimensions then pour the packing peanuts into the box. As you can see I have more than enough room which is great because I will be trimming off the edges.



I marked and cut the edges of the box so that they best fit the flow of the inside of the car and the volume I needed. The actual sub should not protrude much beyond the current width of the box. I can always cut more though if I need to. We will see how it all goes together tomorrow!

I am ready to begin fabricating the fiberglass sub box for my trunk. The weather is however, not. It has been overcast all day today and should rain the rest of the weekend which is no good for playing with fiberglass outside. I have to talk to some people to figure out where I can pick up fiberglass materials like resin and fiberglass mat cheap (like a boat store) because I will need at least a gallon and I get the feeling Lowes will charge the crap out of me for that much. Today I am planning and calc. all the materials and dimensions etc I will need. Tomorrow I hope to purchace and prep the car and if the weather is nice I will begin the project.

I took some cool night shots with the black brushed metal night skin on. They look pretty hot and I am more than happy with the car computers preformance so far. Today I am going to RIT to see Taking Back Sunday so I will get to test out a few different GPS programs and see which work well for me. Anyway here are the pics.

The main menu with the night skin on.



Media menu that controls the music.



This shot was taken while driving on the parkway. It looks hot in my dash at night.

I repainted my dash flat black to better match my car and give it a rough texture. The lcd works great now thanks to MP3car.com . I sent them my broken lcd and they fixed it and sent it back in a few days. I also recarpeted my trunk and remounted the sub amp outside of the carpet. I have some night shots of the lcd in action. Those will get posted shortly.

LCD installed back in the dash.



Trunk carpeting back in.

My computer and audio system have been installed for about a week now and seem to be working great. here are some pics of the install. Once I finish the dash more pics of the pc in action will follow.

1.4 farad capacitor running at 14.3v powering the amps and pc.



mmmmm monster cable was used for all wireing including rca connections and speaker and sub wireing



trunk shot. sub amp mounted on the left, 4ch amp mounted on the left seat, computer mounted on the right seat, and 10" sub in its temp home on the right.



better shot of the right side and sub



amp and pc from the back seat with the seats folded down

I have had my spoiler on my car now for about a week but it wasn't untill now that I actuially put some pics of it up on my site. So here are some pics of the spoiler (notice the lack of bumper dammage. Thats because a new bumper has been put on and the side has been fixed up) My car looks good when I wash it.. I should do that more often.

I have both my 4ch amp and my 1.4 Farad capacitor in the mail and I am ready to install everything in my car. The only thing preventing me from being completly inside my trunk with wires and drills right now is the fact that my car is still at the repair shop! The shop said that my car would be ready by sometime today I am just hopeing sooner rather than later. Today I plan on test fitting and checking everything today. Then I will go out and get any screws or connectors that I might need to hook everything up. Tomorrow I should be ready to install and wire everything and test some basic functions before I go to class. In the mean time here is a pic of a lot of the electronics that are going into the car.



In the picture you can see the dash with the lcd display and the custom vga cable and power wires comming out of it(left). to the right of the LCD is a black box which contains the USB hub, under it is the DVD drive. On the bottom left is the rockford fosgate 150watt mono sub amp, infinity 600watt 4ch amp to drive the speakers, and the car pc. Under them is the 1.4 farad capacitor.

My car is back in one piece again, sorta. I installed the 4 guage power wire from the battery down the passanger side to the trunk. It took over an hour to get the wire through the firewall, fun fun fun. I also put a single ignition sense wire and a pair of wires to power the LCD that runs from the computer in the trunk to the dash. A custom 15pin sub-D connector and 12' USB extension cable connect the computer to the components in the front of the car and are run down the middle of the car. After the wires were run I put the carpet back down in place, which was MUCH easier than taking it out. I cleaned all the plastic panneling and put it back in place followed by the seats. My car looks normal besides the gaping hole in the dash and wires floating around the trunk. Here are some pics of the install, I'll have some more later of the car as it is currently.

You can see the carpet covering the wires and sound deadening material here. The power wires are also visiable along the door jam.



This picture shows the dash or lack there of with the VGA and USB wires newly added. Also note the VGA extension by the e break.



Here is the trunk with the wires all ready to be connected to fun things.



So the wireing is in and the car is back together. The next step is to test the computer in the car and make sure it works properly and starts up and shuts down right. I ordered a 4 channel 111w/ch infinity amp and a 2farad capacitor this morning. So as soon as they come in I can begin to connect and install everything. From there its not long untill the project is complete. I will still need to make a fiberglass sub box, re route the ac controls, and finish my custom dash but after this next phase the car computer will actuially be installed and working.

I tried to get my car's interior back together but the place that cleaned my seats and carpet did a really bad job and I will have to get it done somewhere where the people know what they are doing. Untill then I have no carpet and 1 seat in my car so I can still drive to school.

I finally finished up most of the wireing thats going in my car so I can go ahead and install it tomorrow now that I know it's working. Here is a diagram of how the data is going to be connected in the car.



Here is the close up of the usb hub. I soldered the wires directly to the board because I did not want to risk usb plugs falling out due to vibration etc and it also holds the Bluetooth usb adapter. The black box will be attached behind the dash and bridges the computers usb ports to the GPS, DVD, Bluetooth, and external usb plug.



Thats it for now. Hopefully this weekend I will be doing some test runs of the computer actuially working in the car!

Wow I did a lot of work this weekend! I slept in saturday.. I guess I was more tired than I thought. It was overcast and was going to rain so I moved the car in the garage to remove all the seats and carpeting. The whole removal process took longer than expected and due to the lack of light in my garage I called it a day once everything was out of the car.

Today I cleaned the inside and preped it for the insulation. I spent all day putting down 2 layers of the deadening material. It was much easier than the doors because they wern't many screw holes etc but their was lots of area to cover. Now the car is coated from the firewall to the trunk with 2 layers and it looks pretty sweet and is a hell of a lot cleaner in there.

Speaking of clean, I took the seats and carpet to a place to have them detialed. Maybe they will give me a discount because they are out of the car. I then spent about an hour trying to get the 4 guage power wire through the firewall without drilling a hole. I had to remove the battery, fuse box, and battery holder, but I finally found a place to squeeze the wire through. After that I put everything away and called it a night. It was pretty dark by the time I was finished. Here are the pics from this weekend.

Here is my car in the garage with the seats and center console out.



Then I took out the carpet... A lot harder than it looks.



This is after 2 layers of sound deadening all over the floor.



You can see its a solid coat from the front all the way to the trunk.



So that's what I spent most of the weekend on and it should pay off later when I put a nice audio system in. Tomorrow I get my seats back and at least the drivers seat will go back in so I can get my self to school.

So I didn't have class today so I spent the whole day working on my car. I did manage to get a lot done today though. I finished up all the doors with the second layer of sound deadening and put the doors back together. I cleaned my trunk out and took out the spare. Then I laid down 2 layers in the trunk as well. This took the better part of the afternoon and I went through about 4 rolls of the insulation. The stuff cost 14$ a roll and I have used 6 rolls to do all 4 doors and the trunk with 2 layers. so its about 90$ I have spent so far. The real Dynamate stuff cost 50$ a door and 150$ - 200$ for the trunk kit so it's costing me less than half as much to use this stuff.

Here are some pics of what I did today.

Here are the doors done with the second layer waiting to go back together.



This is my trunk during the first part of laying down the insulation



This picture is after both layers were put on.



Here is the finished trunk with the spare back in. It will be like this for a while untill all the wireing is in.



That's it for today. Tomorrow it might rain here but I should be working in my garage anyway so it wont matter. All the seats and carpet come out tomorrow and hopefully I will be done laying the insulation by tomorrow so sunday I can install the wireing and put everything back together. Time to go play with some of the computer parts tonight to get them ready to go in the car!

I did lots of work today but can't say that I have a ton to show for it. I could not get my hands on a hair dryer that worked which I need to heat form the material to the metal. Instead I stripped the panneling off of all the doors, took out the back seats, and removed all the trunk fabric. Now that everything is exposed I can just spend the next 2 days applying the sound proofing. I did manage to get 1 layer on the front passanger door though. The first layer takes about an hour to apply and the second one only usially takes 30min. My progress is on track so far and I should have all the insulation done by this weekend as well as the wireing and car back together. Here are some pics of the current condition.

Here's all the doors stripped and ready on the passanger side.



There's my trunk all stripped and ready to go.



Here is the left side of my trunk where my sub amp will be mounted. The red area will be a board thats bolted into the metal. When the carpet is back in place you wont be able to tell I changed anything but I will have a solid mounting surface for my amp after.



That's it for now. More work tomorrow morning.

Today I took apart my driver's side front door and put some sound deadening material on the metal in the door. It took much longer than I expected, over 4 hours to do one door. Tomorrow I will do the passenger door followed by the rear doors. That should take me to about this weekend to finish. Friday I hope to be doing the entire trunk which will give me the weekend to take apart the entire interior and do the floors and firewall. Anyway on to the pictures!

Here is my door with the interior off and the first piece of insulation stuck on.



This is after heating it and forming it to the door.



Here is the first layer completed.



This is after the second layer. I also put a strip inside the door visible through the large speaker hole.

Though I have mostly finished the dash I feel like it may be infact redone or modified in the future. I will most likely attach the IR sensor and mount it in a vent or somewhere out of sight so I can still control the monitor if necessary. I also might repaint it to give it a more flat black look though the finish now is pretty sweet. It all depends I guess on my mood at the time.

I am currently waiting on parts and working space as well as some decent weather to continue with the project. The next step in the installation process involves finishing the custom data cable and plans for the in-dash electronics and connections. Once I have the extension cable working for that I can begin to install both it and the amp wireing kit. My buddy Tim hooked me up with a sweet 4 Gauage amp power kit for my car.

I also just got some Peel and Seal to serve as Dynamate. I am in the process of cleaning out my garage so that I have some room to take apart my car and lay down the "dynamate" all over the inside. As soon as I get some free time I am going to do the front 2 doors with 2 layers and see how well it works. Once I finish my data cable I will be able to coat the whole inside of the car and lay the cables at the same time. From there I will be installing the electronics one at a time mostly in the trunk and dash.

Last week I ordered a usb to laptop DVD drive external conversion box. This will let me use the DVD drive up front via usb which will be mounted behind the cup holders along with the now removed ac control buttons and extra USB port. As soon as it comes in and the data cable is finished I will be able to test all components before anything gets actuially installed in the car. So I am hoping to accomplish a lot this week that will really get this project moving.

So I have been working on my dash over the past few weeks and its turning out well. I will post pictures of the process of fabricating and painting the pieces later but for now I thought it would look cool to see what the dash looks like now compaired to my photoshop mock up earlier.





Not to bad? What do you think?

Now that my computer is working I figured I would tackle the dashboard as it will take some time for me to cut, bondo, and paint the entire thing. Right now it's your standard double-DIN dash but the LCD will be cut and glued into the stereo opening. Bondo will then be used to even everything out. After a few coats of flat black paint and lots of sanding it should look as if it rolled off the factory this way.

Here is a photoshopped mockup of what the dash might look like when it is done. Yeah I know the picture is done poorly but it gives me an idea of what I am trying to build here.

Now that the car PC is up and running it was time to test some front end software that will be my interface for driving around and using the computer. I liked Frodo Player the best so far but I am still playing with settings and whatnot. Here are some pictures of Frodo and the current setup.

This is a daytime brushed metal skin on the media player menu which lets me select songs etc.



Here is the darker night version of the same skin, this will help reduce night blindness with the bright screen. The software auto switches between skins baised on the time of day.



The computer is running ontop of my stereo and connected to aux and is also supplying the 12v to the LCD which is now configured to auto power on and switch to VGA when it gets 12v (which happens when the car turns on)



This is an example of what might be in the dash. The lcd, usb hub, GPS, and bluetooth. All devices are connected only to the pc and require no other connections such as power. I will most likely make a custom cable to carry all wires together.



So that's the current progress of my car PC. I am still trying to get my phone to talk to my computer so I can use it for a hands free when I am in the car. Other than that and a few minor software tweeks it should be ready to go in the car soon.

After I got all the parts in I wired up the inside of the computer.

Here is the initial wireing with all the connections made. (messy)



This front shot shows the power wires that will come out of the back of the case. It also has a quick disconnect so I can remove the PC easily



I connected the 160watt DC-DC car computer to the 12v line on an old 180watt PSU so I could use the computer indoors. Also I threw in a cd drive to install windows XP



Here the computer is formatting the 60gb hard drive and installing XP



Windows XP running after the install.



After XP was installed I took off the cd drive and squeezed everything into the case. Here is the case with the back about to be closed.



Here is the back of the case closed



Here is the front of the case



There ya have it. The computer is together and working. Now I just have to configure all the software and settings and it will be ready to install in the car!

I installed all of the computer components in the amp case today and started testing it out. Here are the pics of the process.

Here is the steel plate that holds the mobo, psu, and hdd.



I screwed in the mobo and snapped in the 512mb RAM.



The hard drive screws to the base with foam washers providing some resistance against vibration.



The special IDE cable is folded to fit and also contains the 5v power connector.



The power supply screws into 2 standoffs and hovers just above the hard drive.



Here is a top view of all the parts installed.



Now I can go wire the whole thing up and put it together!

Here are the parts for my new car PC that came in the mail from mp3car.com


The top of this picture shows the special IDE cable so that I can connect the 60gig laptop hard drive ( in the bottom of the picture) with the motherboard. The motherboard is a VIA MII 1.2ghz with a PCMCIA and CF slot in the back. To the right of the motherboard is the stick of 512mb ram. Above the motherboard is the intelligent 160watt DC-DC PSU that will allow me to power the computer off of the car's 12v system. The giant blue amp looking thing is the case that all of those parts with go in.

This picture shows the 7" touch screen monitor. What makes this special is that it takes a VGA input (just like a regular computer monitor) so you can get a nice sharp picture and actually read computer text on it. Also it has a USB touch screen integrated into it that will allow me to touch custom buttons on the screen to navigate through menus. This will eliminate the need for a keyboard and mouse though I may add a keyboard later.

I have just updated my site so that I can post ongoing project logs here. This one is for the car pc project that I just started. All project posts will be shown in the main page as well. Click on one of the logs under the "Project Logs" catagory on the left.

I just ordered the computer parts to build a car pc for my Civic. I found a specially designed case that is shaped like a car amp to provide cooling and easy mounting.



Inside it holds the tiny 17x17cm 1.2GHz Mini-itx board with 512mb ram. A intelligent power supply regulates the 12v DC in the car and sends shut down commands to the computer when the ignition is switched off rather than just cutting the juice. The board also has PCMCIA card slot on it so I can slide in my Dell 802.11b WiFi card with the antenna jack and put the magnet mount antenna on my trunk for some good war driving. A 60 gig hdd will also be hanging out inside the case to hold various music and video files as well as program data like GPS maps. The computer will live in the trunk and be controlled via a touch screen 7" LCD monitor custom installed into the dash where the stereo is currently. The computer will run Windows XP with a special program known as a Front-end that will allow me to set up custom menus that make it easy to access functions on the computer. It might look something like this.



Why put a computer in my car (again) you ask? Well I plan on it having the following features:
MP3 playback
Video playback
DVD playback
GPS navigation
War driving
Bluetooth cellphone control (wireless hands free phone operation and computer dialing)
Wireless auto sync with home computer
Mobile internet
As you can see there is a lot I can do with a computer in my car, these are just a few major features I plan on implementing. As soon as the parts get here I can hook them up and begin installing, configuring, and testing them. I am also going to start a project log somewhere on my site very soon.