Today Rob came up from Georgia to Knoxville for his PC install. He and another PSP member already installed his speakers and built an amp rack for the PC to sit on. My job was the screen and PC install. It looks great unfortunately we were not able to listen since a few of the amp speaker connections went AWOL.





I am sure Rob will comment further but we were both very happy with the screen and the outcome, looking forward to hearing it.

Rob was a super nice guy and it was cool to have someone from the PSP come up and hang out for the day!

If anyone wants further information about the PC, etc.. let me know.

 

lookin good, you're taking this car pc thing and running with it! awesome!

apon closer look...isn't that your old bezel? are you still going the car pc route?

 

It is my bezel. I never even put it in my car. Yes I am still going that route. Rob was ready and so I sold that one to him. I am going to work on mine ASAP. I am very motivated to get the PC going back in the Hummer and the Vette again. I sold the Hummer one as well.. working on another for both.

Thanks for the compliment...

 

i think you are worse then i am....at least i install my stuff before i immediately turn around and rip it out.

 

I just went and bought some more stuff to put one in the car finally.

 

Thanks Nick! It was nice meeting you and I know I will love the computer. I'm going to try and get the parts and wire to finish hooking up the amp this week.
To those considering getting a car PC, Nick went the extra mile getting me as set up as possible with my missing amp connections, and walking me through all the screens on the PC. It is amazing what this is capable of, imagination is the only limit.

 

Thanks and working on yours really reminded me how much I missed having mine. I painted my amp and case cover and I ordered a few thinigs I was lacking in getting mine done. Should not be too long and I will be back in the game...

 

looks great, but how come you eliminated your only cup holder?

 

That cupholder is about as usefull as **** on a bull. I have two of the girl in a box cupholders that will actually hold a cup. This was originally going in my car, but I sold it and installed it for Rob. I closed the area off to make room for a boost controller.

 

Very nice

The "fit and finish" of the aftermarket equipment is the reason I dont do this to mine. But, after looking at your bezel I am begining to rethink this

Phil

 

what model screen is that? It fits a double-din beautifully!

 

That one is a Xenarc. I modified the factory 1.5 DIN bezel.

 

hey black, check out the c5 audio faq and i wrote up a how to if you're interested.

 

very cool, thats the screen I was lookin at gettin before. I'll check out the faq.

 

BlownZ06, that bezel looks fantastic. What materials are you using to do that? What paint?

 

Basically I do the following:
1. Think long and hard about how to make this fit.
2. Start cutting with little regard for step 1..
3. Once it is rough cut, use making tape to finalize the location
4. Locate the pieces with hot glue.
** In this step it is important you don't get hot glue anywhere you are going to fill in and have to sand later, it does not sand and paint very well.
5. Use the ABS sludge method to fill large gaps after being taped from the front.
6. Roughup the pieces
7. Untape and being filling from the front using bondo
8. Bondo and sand until you are happy with the final look
These next steps are not necessary but I like to do it.
9. Sand the entire pieces to remove all old paint
10. Prime with high build primer
11. Wet sand finish sand the entire part until smooth, try not to sand throught he primer everywhere... if you do it is not critical as the paint will stick to the ABS.
12. Paint with SEM Texture paint.
13. Paint with SEM Low gloss clear
14. Stand back and have a beer (this was for you!)

Follow my thread on completion of my car... there are step by step photos on there.. I am adding more right now.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=1374699

I will do this custom work for people as well. I generally get about $600 for a bezel with the monitor and your bezel.

 

Thanks for the info! While I remember reading it somwhere, I can't recall and I've never done it, but ABS sludge is a mixture of ABS and acetone?

 

Yes I use either Acetone or MEK. The company I work for does plastic injection molding so I get the pellets from here. You really need to break them down farther. I tried a food processor, no good, I am going to see if we have some regrind here that I can use. I don't know which works better yet. I don't have to tell you how open with ventilation the area needs to be to use either of these.. I do it in my driveway in the open air.

 

Interesting. I wonder if there is any place I can get the pellets or something finer around here. I plan on getting back into the stereo project soon and will need to make the bezel a double din. I've seen people make the Eclipse 5435 fit into the opening with minimal trimming but the added look this provides looks much better imo. I'm surprised the food processor didn't work. Do you think a hobby shop would have something?

 

I think the guys on the forum are buying black ABS pipe from home depot or something and just chopping that up.. it will work fine. You can get it when you get the ACETONE or MEK. I talked to our chemist here this morning and he thought both were about equal from an ABS melting standpoint. He said use whichever is cheaper basically.

For the cost of one of these high end stereos the car PC is really the way to go. What you can do with it is limitless. I had about 8,000 mp3's in the one in the Hummer. I also had about 40 music videos for doing demos and about 20 movies.. I convert my DVD's to DIVX compressed movies and you can store them on the harddrive.. couple that with XM or Sirius, you can still play CD's an DVD's, GPS navigation.. the options are limitless. You can just integrate the system so much better in the car. I do not like the aftermarket head units and they way the look when they are installed.. they look.. well.. aftermarket... and add on. This looks like it came this way from the factory.