Rod's Rig - Round 2

[rodw]

Well I got a bit of progress on this. I took the bits to a Plastic welder and he said that the dash was polypropylene and in 25 years, he had yet to find something to stick to it and sure enough he could not weld the ABS plastic of the case to the dash fascia.

So anyway, this meant that I would have to mount the monitor into tthe dash like a head unit. I struggled to come up with an idea to make sure everything was in the right position as the Toyota radio is wider than a DIN unit, but the rear where the mounts are are DIN sized. This meant that there was no reference point to mark where the side wings would need to go in relation to the dash fascia.



Anyway driving home from work yesterday, I had a brain wave. I mounted the stock radio back in the fascia and it fitted in nice and snug. I then put a steel ruler up against the back of the head unit and marked the fascia as this is where the mounts are located. Then I positioned the monitor case where I wanted it and transferred these marks onto the monitor case. This was where the side wings needed to go.

I rounded up a couple of side wings from a plastic LCD mounting fascia I never used and visited my plastic welding shop again this morning and he did this:







One side was really easy as the mount needed to be hard up against the edge of the back side of the case, so we just held it together square on the bench and welded it up. Then we used the head unit as a guide to get the width right and welded the other side on. It was a bit more fiddly because of the shape of the case and we decided to simply weld in in some filler pieces rather than cut notches in the side wing I had.

Anway I tried the thing for fit and it lined up quite nicely, but I had to cut a fair bit more off the bottom to get it to fit.



Here is the dash where it had to fit into:



I had a bit of a problem in the bottom left corner and I trimmed a bit of the circuit board. Also there was a case mounting screw too close to the bottom edge which got in the way so I could not trim enough of the bottom of the case. I ended up grinding a fair bit out of the brace above the HVAC controls. Probably should have just cut the whole thing out.

Anway, Here it is all sitting in position:



I was pretty worried about how I would secure this to the radio mounts but there seems to be enough room to get into it frrom the outside to get some screws or bolts.

Anyway, there is a bit more work to do to fill the sides in and get clearance around the buttons, but I think it will work out quite nicely. It will be much better than the steel DIN LCD mount I was using once this is done.

[rodw]

Well I got this done now and am happy with the result:

You can see I relocated the UHF and decided to screw the mike mount onto the dash now becasue I have ground away a fair bit of the fascia near the buttons and have the original fascia for when the rig gets sold (don't hold your breath)

Here is what it looks like out of the car.


I bought some plastic bumper filler to fill in the gaps where it joins and painted it with black satin bumper bar paint which gives a pleasing finish.

I roughly welded on an extra tab on the outside edge opposite the buttons to fill in the gap. Bit rough but won't fall off.

[Alby]

Thats looking good Rodw, your a bit of a handy fella..........................don't know why you bought a Hilux you probably could have made your own

Cheers Alby

[rodw]

Jack of all trades, but master of none sums me up Alby.

[Alby]

Mate as long as you are enjoying yourself doing it go for your life

[Hilux Max]

Brendan,

any chance of moving this Rod's Buildup to the Build Up Section?

Now back on topic, little birdy told me today that there are some improvements lined up for the grey beast, ey Rod?

Im getting excited with anticipation on this new addition to the Hilux...I wont tell if you wont, so Ill leave it up to if you want to mention it here, otherwise, Ill just buildup the anticipation for the forumites.



She's gonna look heaps tuffer now, can anyone guess whats next?

[rodw]

Trying to work out what to say, the missus is sitting beside me so I'm speachless

All I can say Max is a bad influence, but yes, it would be good to get this into the buildup section. I have not given up on this, just an enforced slowdown while on crutches.

[Hilux Max]

Trying to work out what to say, the missus is sitting beside me so I'm speachless

OOPS! SORRY MATE

didnt mean to cause problems

should i have a talk to her to make things better?

[dute]

Trying to work out what to say, the missus is sitting beside me so I'm speachless

OOPS! SORRY MATE

didnt mean to cause problems

should i have a talk to her to make things better?

Lol. . . . .

[Steve9R]

hey rod.. are you willing to share your interface /menu system that you're using for your carpooter ?

[rodw]

No problems Steve. I use Road Runner (RR has recently changed it's name to Ride Runner) but it lives on www.mp3car.com more particularly here http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/road-runner/ It is free for download.

I am using the Brushed Metal Version 2 (BMV2) skin which until recently was the default skin for RR. I have done a bit of customisation of the screens using Photoshop (I found the Photshop.PSD files on MP3car). I've actually done a bit more to it recently in preparation for adding some OBDII diagnostic software to do the ScanGuage thing.

I also wrote a basic fuel logging database application (which I have made no effort to look like R). You are welcome to it. Also half finished is my embedded controller which should automate switching between the reverse camera input and the VGA input as well as provide 4 temperature sensors and some volt meters. Stll got a bit of tweaking to do.

The two pieces of commercial software I have purchased to go with it are OziExplorer and Odyssey Navigator for street navigation from www.twig.com.au as well as some maps (Natmap and the QLD 25k series).

All of the buttons and stuff in RR are configurable and there is a skin editor which makes life easy. You design what the screen looks like and then tell it in a text (skin) file where the buttons are. There are quite a few tricks to get it running nicely and skin design is very tedious but changing a button function is pretty easy.

My Build up thread fo the car pc is here http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/worklog ... hilux.html. In my signature block on MP3car, you will also find a link to our work getting OziExplorer in a touch screen friendly format. There is also a thread called Aussie Offroad Car PC users or something like that but you will pick up a link to that on the links above.

I guess I could bundle up my Road Runner folder and burn it onto a CD/DVD as it would get you going but you need to spend some time on each piece to make sure it is working well. You'd have to change some folder names etc in the config files to point to your applications and install the various addons I have got. I am not using the latest version. Getting it all the way you like takes a bit of work...

PM me and let me know your phone number.

[Hilux Max]

Mate, your trucks looking more and more like the Space Shuttle.

I dont understand too much about all that computer jargon, "head-units" and "inter faces", usually mean other things where Im from.....

As long as its all working and your happy is all that it matters. Might have to get you to work out how to install the Nintendo Wii in tmy dash one day for the kids.

I can just see it now....SMACK into the back of the head. "But I was just bowling Dad!".....

[rodw]

MAte in my day all we could do on a long trip was to let the little buggers scream! You young fellas have it too easy!

[Steve9R]

Thanks for the offer Rod.. I think ill join up on mp3car and follow your links to start with and put it together myself first.. Ill let you know if i get stuck though if thats ok..

hehe.. when i was young our family outings to narooma every year consisted of a piece of electrial tape stuck down the middle of the seat in the back of my fathers fiat, my sister on one side and me on the other neither allowed to cross the line.. so i listened to cassettes in my v.cool walkman clone that chewed AA batteries like you wouldnt believe..

[rodw]

The old Holdens had piping on the vinyl seats so there was some no mans land between the pipin tin the middel of the seat my brother and me. We'd make reccies into the others territory and thump each other if we caught the other. It was 95 miles to town and only 15 miles was bitumen, so this went on for about 2 hours. Geez mate, walkmans came out after I started work after 4 years at college!

[rodw]

Thanks for the offer Rod.. I think ill join up on mp3car and follow your links to start with and put it together myself first.. Ill let you know if i get stuck though if thats ok..

When you start off, you need to find a proggy called Xport. Search and you will find it. It splits the GPS input into multiple virtual com ports. So my GPS s on COM 3 and Xport replicates it to COM4, COM15, and COM17. So My street Nav uses one, OziExplorer has another and the third goes to Road Runner which can display Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Bearing, Speed and Number of Satellites.

I also use one called Navimon which attenuates the music volume when the GPS speaks by monitoring the wave volume. You set the MP3 player at 100% and the GPS at say 80%. when it hears the low volume source, it turns the volume down on the other one.

I also purchased a Silabs USB radio from Farnells. That is the best one to get.There is a much better DLL and Road Runner skin over on the UK forum. Unfortunately, the reception is not good so my long term plan is to put a head unit up in a roof console.

The rest is just take your time to get each part working one at a time.

[rodw]

Been a while since I posted a pic of my rig but seing as I went out with a couple of the Triton Guys to Scenic Rim 4WD park which opened on Thursday, I thought I'd post this pic.



Also amazed at the articulation avalable in from the Tough Dog rear Leaf suspension, I think this leaves some others for dead.


No wonder the Triton comes with rear lockers, they need them to make upfor the lack of articulation...

[rodw]

Also forgot to mention that I can get used to having OziExplorer on the dash with some large scale topo maps to guide us. Pretty amazing being able to see where you went at any time. TH epink line is th etrack of our edventure.



You can see as we were at a new park, nobody knew where we were going once we left the office and we drove around in ciclles until we got onto handbrake hill. And no I was not leading when we went the wrong way, but we had to drive on till we could turn around. Only one of the Tritons was game to tackle that track though, we left the other three behind on Tour Track 2.

Anyway, if I get lost, at least I'll know were I was at the time!

[rodw]

As it has been wet here today, I decided to tackle fitting the DVD drive I bought 4-5 months ago. I had already decided to fit it in the console armrest and had bought a spare armrest from a wrecker.

I would have liked to fit the DVD so that it opened out the rear but when I dismantled the armrest (it has an inner and outer part screwed together), I decided it was simply not practical to do this without a lot more fabrication work that I thought it as beyond me as all of the mounting screws for the hinges would have to be cut totally away. I have a cheap and nasty Dremel look alike here and I started by gouging into the inner skin and then later cutting into the outer armrest. So I made it open out on the passenger side. Here is the finished result:





It took a bit of thought to work out how to mount the DVD securely but in the end, I decided to use a piece of scrap aluminium angle iron which I stuck to the DVD case with some 3M body adhesive tape and screwed it into the innner housing.



I found you really have to take your time with this sort of stuff. I thought I had finished and tried the DVD out only to find the door would nnot open because I had squeezed the case together when I mounted it, so I spent more than an our patiently sanding out the slots until I had a snug fit without distorting the DVD case. You would not think that such a rough job was so time consuming!

The two wires that pass through the one hole are for the USB and 5 volt power cables, the other one was a bit of an afterthought but it is for my tiny keyboard which I have found to be very handy for simple system updates etc. The keyboard cable no longer runs accross the floor.



Initially I was going to mount the keyboard somewhere but found that is best to hold it in both hands to use and type with my two index fingers. I found a keyboard mapper ages ago and reprogrammed a couple of the function keys to press a couple of things (like right click which is very handy to open up context sensitive menus). It has been living in the console until I need it and now the keyboard cable is all hidden away and looks nice and neat.

I was able to get wires under the floor covering and spliced the power wire onto an exisiting 5 volt lead under the rear right door sill. (the existing lead powers a hub under the dash for the GPS and auxillary USB port under the glove box). I had to extend the USB cable so I cut the end off and soldered on an IP67 USB lead that screws onto my off road hub enclosure.

So all I got left to do now is to get the Arduino finished and add OBDII software to give me the Scan Gauge's features on steroids. No doubt I'll think of a few more jobs too...

[Hilux Max]

Geez,

You just keep on surprising me with the electronic gadget you keep managing to fit in the hilux.

I gotta admit, you hilux looks good dirty.....just need 33's and sliders to really make her stand out.

did anyone get any video footage of your truck?

and yes, the hilux rear does have good flex.