The electrical outlet next to the cup holder would make me nervous.

 

wow man, that is one hell of a setup you got going on there, i like it, i have some plans for a sound system which goes along the lines of what you have in there, cept i might be replacing the center console w/ a custom jobber

 

i look forward to following your setup it sounds like you'll be taking it a few more steps than i did, i just cut holes in stuff and ran wires haha, i'm just 20 years old and broke because of school now so i just worked with what i had. hopefully you can get some ideas from this and if you need help with anything just let me know, i took at least 800 pictures when i put this stuff in so everything is documented well. As for the cup holders next to the outlets it's next to impossible to short those out, anything spilled just drains too quickly to pile up, everything is fused too. I love it when i take it in to get free oil changes from the dealership and they just yell at me for having romex wire or two instrument clusters with diffrent mileages in my car saying i can't do that haha

 

lol im only 20 also, which is why nothing has happened yet, but i have access to a full wood shop in my basement, and have done lots of wiring myself, and ROMEX is not acceptable for the rather high current draw of 12v electronics unless you run higher gauge wire. however for your 120v setup it should be just fine.



and you cant legally sell the truck (at least in NJ) if you change the instrument cluster and dont have the mileage flashed in correctly.


i also have most of my plans drawn up in my head, and ill give you the hint that it is based around a pretty nice laptop(one that has an accelerometer in it to stop the hd when you hit bumps) at this point, although the idea of using desktop components w/ a ssd has crossed my mind as well, that would also make it easier to replace stuff if it broke, havnt quite decided yet

 

All I got to say is WOW......


This is just not my thing.

 

haha ya i only ran romex wire for all the 120v stuff and 6 gauge stranded for the dc voltage for the inverter and amp, and just cut up those orange extension cords for power the screen and stereo and other things, oh ya can't forget the 8 track player too ha.

With the second intrument cluster i had an extra i bought from a junkyard just for the bulbs, the original is still in place with the original miles (almost 200k) i just spliced a computer parallel cable onto the 20 wires going to the cluster and put a connector in the center console, so the second cluster has a 10 foot parallel cable coming out of it you can just plug in and throw to the people in your back seat to keep them quiet and amused haha it looks like this:

it's interesting that the mileage is only stored in the cluster, or so it seems, swapping out clusters won't change the mileage at all, my original has 198k, swapping to the one i got with 156k will make my car stay with 156k, and putting back my original will put it back to 198k, but don't worry i'm deffinatly not going to do any fraud, besides the dealership records your mileage for your carfax report on every oil change.

i helped friends install carpcs in their trucks before, it's just not really something i would have a use for in mine but they all used mini itx boards with atom processors and could never afford ssd drives but they got away with using low rpm (4200) laptop sata hard drives on rubber mounts and have had no problems. we run a program called hd sentinal which will tell you when your drive has bad sectors and after a year theirs still have none. it sounds like you're talking about an ibm thinkpad laptop, i love them (i ran over mine with my car once by accident, still works) i have a T43p with the accelerometer, it does lag/buzz your music/video playing when it parks the heads if it detects shock, in a car there's constant unexpected bumps, the HDAPS is made to detect a fall then while it's falling to have time to park the heads. sorry if that killed your idea haha but hey a low rpm laptop hard drive will work for you just fine. i've always wanted to see a carpc install in a durango just to see what it would look like, then again i'm assuming you're installing in your 2002 model with the new layout and no floor mounted t-case shifter, lucky haha

 

Sorry for this question as it may seem stupid to you, but what's the point in having 2 units? It tells you the same thing twice and completely obstructs your view.

 

Is it actually mounted like that on the dash? WTF?? I thought since he mentioned it was for the rear seats to see it (for some reason) that is was mounted elsewhere.

With all this said, I'm out. Two gauge clusters, one unframed and simply mounted to the top of the dash??!? Time to push the button.

 

haha no guys the second cluster is attached to a 10 foot cable and isn't mounted anywhere. it plugs into a connector i put in the center console so it can be unplugged and pulled out of the car. I just set it on top of the dash for the picture. i know it's pretty useless for me but people just like to hold it and pass it around and are somehow really amused by it. hopefully this helps clears things up:


this was much more of a learning project for me to see how the wiring and CCD bus works in the car

 

Are you an electrical engineering major? Cause your work is kinda cool! I'm not one but I admire your work.