My carputer install

Ok well after a total of 17 hours doing a full format and running a disc checker program to check for damaged sectors i have a working har disc again.
now just need to copy al the media back across again and itll be ready to whack in the car

Thats good then mate least you don't need a new Hd....:D:D
 
yeah there is that, just a shame that i changd alot of settings after i took the copy of the mge so trying to ge these all set back up then going to take another image.
just in case.

cant get mappoint to embed properly it works when you class it as iguidence but the buttons dont work. when you mark it up as mappoint it loads up then disappers.
problem being that it was written for the american version rather than the euope one.
think i might have to email the guy and find out how to change the settings

should say autoroute became mappoint
 
well i used map point to get down to essex the day.
much better than the old autoroute that it replased, now does out recaucuate if you go off route but even thou its the 2009 edition its still out of date, alot of the roundaouts on the A1(m) are gone and its still looking for them but at least it works out a new route as soon as it sees you back on track.

womans voice is pretty bad but thats easily changed


yeah just need to sort out the wiring,
trip to maplin for the battery and finish fabbing the screen, hope to make more progress next week on this as off until friday however dont get back home until early hours of tuesday.
and get 2 short 4mm bolts (approx 15mm) but will get these from work as not paying £2 odd for 4 outo homebase as my local ironmonger doesnt go that small
 
yeah am hoping ill have it ready to go in during jan at some point. im lucky as need black paint for the cadets to paint ammo boxes so ill be borrowing whats left
 
Well got 1st coat of filler on the top, not looking too bad me thinks.
will require another possible 2 coats and sanding down to make it nice and perfectly smooth.
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just need to wait until i get my torx keys back so i can check the climtronic will still fit before painting
 
the along the right hand edge darker areas are where ive sanded down through the filler and into the fiberglass stuff itself some areas like this on the top and LHS as well.
the darker area on the bottom around the buttons is where ive sanded though both the filler and fiberglas to get it nice and level
 
Ok since the last pic has been taken it has been sanded down and another 3 layers of filler to build it up smoothly. Climate control was taken out of the car and fitted along with the trim for it to make sure it had as smaller gaps as possible around the edge. sanded down for filler for the final time tonight. 80 grit for the top ( it had been built up alot so i could sand down level and shape ) 260 grit for the rest until nearly smooth then 600 grit to finish off. total time taken around 1.5 hours worth of careful sanding. 2nd coat of primer is drying just now, a quick sand down in the morning before the final coat of primer then go get the satin paint on monday to finish it off.
will get new pics up in the morning as phone currently dead
 
Ok since the last pic has been taken it has been sanded down and another 3 layers of filler to build it up smoothly. Climate control was taken out of the car and fitted along with the trim for it to make sure it had as smaller gaps as possible around the edge. sanded down for filler for the final time tonight. 80 grit for the top ( it had been built up alot so i could sand down level and shape ) 260 grit for the rest until nearly smooth then 600 grit to finish off. total time taken around 1.5 hours worth of careful sanding. 2nd coat of primer is drying just now, a quick sand down in the morning before the final coat of primer then go get the satin paint on monday to finish it off.
will get new pics up in the morning as phone currently dead


Thats gonna look sweeeeeeeet. I can't wait to see it in your car...:D:D
 
ok photos as promised
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this was taken this morning, christ i must have been tired last nit i thought it looked smooth when i put the primer on.

so another 1 hour of sanding down this morning an its looking better.

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well i say it looks better you need to look past the filler thats showing through it. waiting on it to dry so i can put another coat of primer on
 
wel 2 coats of primer have been put on it since it was sanded down.
not looked at it again - wont until tomorrow that way the paint will hae dried enough to sand down again if its not right.

hopefully itll be ready to go in the car during january, going to do a couple of weeks testing in the house to make sure everything it fine. part of whats worring me is that some of the fiberglass/filler/paint has went through to the back where the touchscreen sits. if it touches to much then it will get an inconsistant resistance from that part of the screen and want to move the cursor over there.

at least i know the climate control fits not sure about the top as not trial fitted it in the car yet but looks level
 
wel 2 coats of primer have been put on it since it was sanded down.
not looked at it again - wont until tomorrow that way the paint will hae dried enough to sand down again if its not right.

hopefully itll be ready to go in the car during january, going to do a couple of weeks testing in the house to make sure everything it fine. part of whats worring me is that some of the fiberglass/filler/paint has went through to the back where the touchscreen sits. if it touches to much then it will get an inconsistant resistance from that part of the screen and want to move the cursor over there.

at least i know the climate control fits not sure about the top as not trial fitted it in the car yet but looks level


Mate I know you'll get it in buddy. Roll on January...:D
 
Its not easy getting a smooth finish. Looks like you are doing a great job though. Good luck and I can see why you hate sanding.
 
no it was nearly perfect with the primer on the last coat. now ive got a few bubbles in the paint after doing the second part, so waiting till tomorrow to sand down slightly and put a final coat on.

also misjudged how big the back was, it fitted in and out ok before i fiberglassed it in however i needed to cut the rest of the tray out to get the rest of the screen to fit back in properly. but at least i know now the touchsreen is uneffected, well it is now had to run a stanley blade across the back to get rid of some of the fiberglass that was attached.
hopefully should have it reading for its testing on wednesday
 
ok the last layer of paint dodnt go on too well and basically looked like marble, anybody have a clue why it was only on a small section. tried to paint over it but it made it worse.
guess what more sanding tomorrow, ARRRRRRRRRR
 
ok the last layer of paint dodnt go on too well and basically looked like marble, anybody have a clue why it was only on a small section. tried to paint over it but it made it worse.
guess what more sanding tomorrow, ARRRRRRRRRR


Just a question but was it cleaned really really good? Or was it left somewhere before you painted it?
 
no it had been left on the work bench, only time its been moved was when i was rubbing it down. What i think it was was the paint hadnt been mixed for long enough, it does also warn on the can that its to be repainted over withen 4 hours or the paint my wrinkle.

sanded it down last night and got some primer this morning so its on. just waiting for it to dry.
and get a second coat on.
 
ok paint done the same again. think ive sussed it thou.
the warning on the back says that each coat has to go on within 4 hours otherwise the wrinkling will occour.
think thats been the main issue as ive been leaving it overnight to dry. got the 1st coat of paint on the now and putting a second on in about an hour then will look ater that whether it needs a 3rd coat.

on the plus side i have found the files for EWF also the newer version, will have to find out what one works better. Files for Minlogon are also there.
and my CF to sata adaptor has arrived so looking at doing a new install keeping the GPS and Roadrunner on the normal hard disc along with the music and running XP off the Compact flash card
 
Updates are taking longer you must be getting tired of it all! Keep at it mate it will be worth the effort!

Failing all else you could get MrB to flock it for you.;):lol:
 
its finding the time to get it done, every time i say im going to do it now something comes up.
hafway ripping out the dining room as well.

did think about asking 2fast for some of that red black vinayl last light at work but when i rethought it this morning it wouldnt work.
what i was thinking it would be red during the day and black at night. never tought that the light would have to go through it.

so far the paints sticking fine thats me just put on the final 3rd coat.
if i get a chance ill put it back togeather tomorrow.

usig a spare hard disc i managed to get the minlogon working tried using EFBW (think thats what it was called ) but it wouldnt load the desktop up, going to reformat the drive and try the older EWF setup.

Have to cut down my windows install by around 1 gb - and thats after ive removed Mappoint and RoadRunner
 
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this was taken last night after the paint had dried.

went to it this morning and in the bottom right hand side theses some wrinkling just very slight at the minute. going to leave it and watch off the following month, if it gets any worse might retry using normal matt paint rather than the satin

also got a micro version of XP thats only got a footprint of 250-300 Mb (less than 90Mb on CD) so going to see what that is like
 
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

OK my mistake this time, after taking that pic yestaray i put it face down on the table to screw the buttons back in, forgot about it went back late last night and looked at it. its coverered in dimples
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Not even willing to take a pic as its that bad

going to sand it back down later on and looking at putting fiberglass resin on it to harden it up then repaint it using normal matt paint think its the satin thats rather soft

on the plus side ive got a virtual machine running with a cut down version of xp running at 380Mb On the Harddisc with No paging file - just need to get the Minlogon componant working with it then load up RR and Mappoint see how it works then install the EWF. If all works fine im going to copy th virtaul hard disc to a normal one then onto ther CF.
very very slowly getting there.

also have a relay set up in the case to cut power to the screen straight away when the ignition is turned off rather than waiting for XP to shut down and then the PSU to cut the power
 
Yip you could say that. im thinking about doing away with the buttons because of this just fill them in, or maybe fitting a slimline CD drive in theyre place
 
bad luck mate but i'd say keep the buttons it makes it a little more unique :bigsmile:
and if you are going matt you can get a matt lacquer ive only seen it 1 place hope this helps
paints4u
 
Have you thought of stretching some black film over it? Most melt with a little heat for a smooth wrinkle free finish.
 
yeah thats the plan if it goes wrong again.

still working on trying to get the drive as small as possible - managed 1.01 gb, with windows, codecs, road runner, .net framework 2 and winamp along with some driver packs required for VMware. going to install mappoint on the other harddisc as it is 1.6 gb on its own and im wanting to use hibernation as well.
 
Have you tried the windows "compress the drive" option? Its under disk cleanup and seems to work well.
 
yeah ive compressed every folder apart from the main windows and roadrunner. did take it down by a lot.
should be alright with that as using a 4gb card, next is cancelling the services that i havent already removed
 
ok the picture youve been waiting for
3199208617_51e2fd753d.jpg


the screen back in the cage along with the buttons,
didint realise id built it up so much the buttons sit back a bit. last time i looked i was too shocked by the dimples i never noticed

so what was done

after the dimpling it was sanded back down to the filler and 2 relatively thick coats of fiberglass reason painted on and left to dry ( think this is maybe whats built it up so much ) this was sanded smooth and primed. 2 coats of primer then 2 coats of matt paint left to dry overnight then 1 final coat, after this had a look at it, looking good so far.

then went and thought something genius - clear sealer this would dry hard and prevent the dimpling happening again. the thought was good but not a perfect one, after spraying on the second coat realised that it was gloss and not a matt finish. as the sealer was still wet i chanced it and rubbed it off this left some light smearing so quickly sprayed some matt black on top of it. Worked out quite well as its left it textured.

now got a new problem. VMware doesnt allow you to copy a virtual hard disc to a real one. and active disc manager doesnt recognise virtual or mapped discs, found some software that does allow it however i found some software that does allow you to copy everything - should point out for anybody not computer geeked that the operating system writes a small partition of the disc called the master boot record this store the loading information for the OS. doing a direct copy of the disc by copy and paste doesnt copy this part over so you get boot loading issues in the startup. - however this software is only evaluation and i wasnt willing to pay for the full version so it only copied the main partition and not the MBR
so now i have to go and install it all.

also looking at lowering the RAM down to 512 Mb to help with hibernation and Post times.

1gb ram is also being used in new multimedia monitor in the dining room (carputer project gave me more ideas for a big touchscreen and motherboard on the back of it and ebays a great place for bargains in the recession)
 
Well done mate. See it was worth it. What would you do differently next time?

When does it go in the car.
 
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