fitting a touch screen car p.c into a corrado thread

[C488ADO 0]

fitting a car p.c into a corrado..

 

well i am new to this site i did put a hello in the newbie section about 4 weeks ago, i have finally picked up my rado vr6 from one of the forum members.... very nice good base to start a project from...

 

anyway i picked car up on saturday and drove it back , sunday just had to start on something so the p.c it was.....

 

 

1.33 little vally mobo 1 gb ram

80 gb seagate 3.5 inch drive

20x dvd rewriter liteON

m2 atx psu

8 inch lilliput widescreen with touch

 

i have put some photo's below just to give an idea....

 

 

stripped dash of all switches

 

 

 

 

here is a pic of the screen yes its dirty!!!!

 

 

this is the motherboard and hard drive/cd drive

 

 

 

i think it will fit nicely.....

 

 

 

 

with the centre console out of the car i set on cosmetically changing it :norty: the plastic bars had to be removed and the plastic around the top of the console jut below the heater vents also had to be removed....

 

this was quite time consuming as i had virtually no tools (as i left them at work) and i didnt want to scratch any plastic that you can see once this is finished....

 

 

with the bits cut out i decided on a dummy run, ok thre screen and newly located heater controls are not fixed in but just rested in position for the photo's ,they kinda almost fit!! :clap:

 

 

as you can see needs a lot more work to get it looking right but this is a good start i feel....

[C488ADO 0]

the next thing to over come is the screen surround is a different colour plastic to the rest of the dash....

now should i bond the surround into position with araldite etc and use filler to blend into the centre console so it looks almost factory.... then texture paint it black to match the other plastics...

 

or do as above but also incorporate the heater controls too, so yea i would looose the fan numbers and the diagrams around the controls but it would look as one unit i guess.....

 

thoughts please.....

 

the only prob i can see with the above is putting the heater controls back in???? the steel wires how the hell would i connect them back up???? :shrug:

 

i want the install to look as original as poss i have thought about cover ing in leather to match interior etc etc but that isnt going to work i dont think....

 

 

any ideas on how i could fit the heater controls would be gret many thanks

[coolrado 0]

Get an I/O module for the pc and the heater ducting from a car with climatronic and use the pc to control the heaters.

 

Or fit the climatronic ducting and use a climatronic control panel like i did.

 

Or get longer heater control cables from a different car and cut them to length so you can move the controls.

 

remove the surround from the screen, use fibreglass or plastic filler to mould into the heater control panel and fill the gaps at the sides and get it painted the same colour as the rest of the dash.

[C488ADO 0]

thanks for the reply...

what is an I/O converter???

 

got any pics of this climatronic stuff??

 

cheers

 

fairly new to this corrado ownership, cheers for the input though!!!

[coolrado 0]

An I/O module has inputs and outputs that you can use to control external devices like motors ect...this is quite complicated to do as you would need to design an interface on the pc to mimic the heater contols and working out what sort of signals you would need for the air flap servo motors wouldn't be easy.

 

Climatronic is the intelligent air conditioning system from later golf's, passat's, Skoda's, Seat's ect. but you can fit it without the air conditioning system so it just controls heat, air direction and fan speed, but this is a big improvement over the standard system anyway, as it gives you thermostatic temperature control, fully variable fan speed (and a much more powerful fan), recirculation, and allows you to select any combination of air direction, it's also more reliable.

 

here are a couple of climatronic install's

 

My one with the SEAT control panel

2.8l 24v Climatronic system.pdfdash.JPG[/attachment:o5bdzd5i]

 

I think this is from an earlier passat or golf

Climatronic%20Control.JPG[/attachment:o5bdzd5i]

[C488ADO 0]

hmmmmm sounds complicated............ :notworthy:

 

not sure if i want to get that involved with changing to climatronic??????

 

 

looks a neat install though.... did it just fit into the dash pods??

[coolrado 0]

Unfortunately not :lol:

 

I had to build an alluminium frame to support it, and carve bits of the surround to make it all fit.

[C488ADO 0]

do you have any pictures of the building of this??? would be good to get some ideas from that.............

 

 

if not is there anywhere else i should be looking to get inspiration from??

 

cheers

[coolrado 0]

Unfortunately I dont have any pics of the progress as I didn't have a digi camera at the time, but if you have a search around for dash installs, climatronic installs ect on here you should find a few threads that might help.

[C488ADO 0]

thought id give a bit of an update ...

 

 

 

 

as you can see in the pics it looks a bit of a nightmare....had to bond the screen surround in place then fill it to get it to look as though it fits...same with the heater controls....yes im going to loose the illumination....for the time being....

 

 

 

 

 

the frame is all sanded down please note im no good at filling sansing at all............. wish i was as this job would turn out so much nicer .......

 

 

 

 

anyway pics below are now of the centre console filled primed and texture painted to match the other black plastics....

 

 

looks fairly good but need some more filler work really , it does however look better in the flesh and when it is fitted it should look fine....

 

 

[Goldie 2]

Some good effort gone into that, nice one..

 

Is that Solitaires old motor??

[C488ADO 0]

Hi yes it is!

 

i have a build thread on a local forum if you would like to see some more i can post the link up??

 

good car actually quite pleased with it so far....just got a couple of things in my head to get it really nice , needs some paint and im going to refurb the interior dont get me wrong it cleans up nicely i hust would like to get it as mint as i can on my budget....lol

[ben_wooduk 0]

Look Superb to me! Nice one

[KipVR 1]

Good skills, but how are you going to hold the heater control mechanism in place behind the facia?

[C488ADO 0]

th heater control clips in to the facia panel, then at the back of the heater controls is a screw point which luckily is only 3-4mm away from the original ashtray fixing point so it will be fixed securly in there... i will post pics up when i have achieved this

 

 

i only get to work on the car a couple nights a week and then for not long so hopefully you will see some more results eithe tonight or thursday....

 

 

here is the link to my local forum...

 

 

http://www.swdubs.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9699

 

 

is there anywhere on this forum i could start a build thread?? the knowledge on here is massive so would kinda make sense really......

[waynos 0]

that looks amazing, did the same thing a few years ago in my mates calibra.What are you going to do about illuminating the heater controls? oh n make a build thread up in the members gallery

[Leonard 0]

Nice work, love watching stuff like this come to life :)

[C488ADO 0]

I HANVE NOW STARTED A BUILD THREAD IN THE MEMBERS GALLERY PLEASE SEE THERE FOR MOST RECENT UPDATES

 

CHEERS

[C488ADO 0]

pretty much finished the install on this had a few issues i had to deal with thought id better update the thread to show what can be achieved on a low budget and some off the wall thinking!

 

with all the lumps and bumps you could see in the last few pics i decided it wasnt good enough, i had to strip the dash down again and well not start again but certinly get the filler and sand paper out...

 

 

 

in sanding it right back it luckily revealed the heater controls,

 

 

 

very light dust with texture paint and looks like we're good to go!

 

 

 

dash all ripped out looks kinda daunting , its all good though fixed the dreaded heater sticking problem while it was all out

made sure all the rings were clear of any over spray need them as good as poss for the light im going to stick in behind them.

 

 

pic of the screen surround from the back

 

 

dummy run to see what it looks like and where the hell was i going to stick the 12v socket??

 

 

 

 

get the glove box out and cut the back out of it enough to pass through hard drive and cd drive cables through

 

 

 

should look like this

 

 

mother board sits in the back of the centre console on the side of the heater matrix housing, easy acess to add /work on by taking out the passenger side shelf

 

 

power supply sits up front on the side of the dash itself

 

 

very snug wiring is a bit shite but then its not finished yet!

 

 

 

some spare usb's

 

 

repair manky heater flap

 

 

now the paint is dry

 

 

hold up to the light and you can see the heater controls!! yippe!!

 

 

[C488ADO 0]

once the unit is rebuilt the next problem was the lighting,

 

chose the red led strips more of a modern look and the only ones bright enough to shine through..

 

 

 

 

 

had to cut out melt all of the webbing on the back of the heater control panel, did this to get the leds to sit as far back from the heater face plate as possible , so i could attempt to get a better throw of light through the icons.

 

 

 

a bit untidy looking but you aint ever gonna see it!! so not massivly important

 

 

 

a few issues with the lighting i couldnt get numbers 2 and 3 to light up , another trip to maplins and picked up 1 more led strip had to make it fit pain the ass that was but got there eventually and the result is below.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

ciggerette lighter location decided

 

 

and light up

 

 

the red strip across the bottom is now blue no pics though oh and here are acouple of screen shots

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

will update as soon as i have finally ironed out a few niggles with the installation of

 

blue tooth

wifi being a pain

and vag com , also with this i have got the full workshoop manual downloaded to the hard drive with all part number etc for the car so i can now run diagnostics and get the part numbers i need for repair.....

 

over kill..yes but quite cool........

[ozowen 2]

Absolutely brilliant... :clap: :clap: :clap: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: .

 

But I would like a little :help: on two fronts. Could you tell me what stuff you use to sand and fill the plastic and also the textured paint you use and finally where you can get it all.

 

Second one the Led lights obviously came from Maplins; is that where you got the glue to stick them in place too

 

Look forward to the response

[C488ADO 0]

as you have a blackberry rado il let you know!! lol i am biased.

 

tacking glue use stuff like mitre bond excellent to hold bits and pieces in place , then plastic weld i used just the normal isopon p38 car body filler for the filling and then just sanded it back using different grades think i started with 180 and went up to 800 ish maybe a bit better but as i was using texture paint wasnt totally nessacary .

 

texture paint is available form plastic surgeons or car body repair shops try halfrauds etc or a local car acc dealer all the leds etc i et from maplins as they are cheap as chips and they are local.

 

they normally have red blue green white on display and you can press a button to see what they are like etc

 

 

do you have a car p.c then? or are you getting one? thanks for the comments by the way!

[ozowen 2]

Thanks for the info. No I am not considering something like that, one of my blackberries has at some point had a mobile phone cradle and now it has gone the dash has 3 holes in it so I want to fill and spray and when I saw your link I though right man to ask. :clap:

[Rinse 0]

This is shaping up to be an awesome build!

[Henny 0]

what software is that you're running on the PC? Looks quite good...