2004 Mazda3 Carputer Project

March 01, 2005

    This is my 2004 Mazda3. This car was everything I was looking for when I bought it. It was inexpensive, sporty, roomy, well equipped, yadda yadda yadda. After a few months of driving it however, I realized, I should have gotten the factory navigation system. Oh well, maybe in the next car, or not. I then started thinking, what could I do to make my own navigation system? I had a little handheld Garmin E-Trex Legend GPS, but it was way too small to see, and didn't hold very detailed maps. Then I thought maybe I should just go buy one of those dash mount, voice guided systems, but for $1000 plus, I don't think so. I started looking for ways to mount my laptop in the car. The only mounts I found were large, clumsy, expensive, and cables would hang around everywhere. I wanted something that looked factory. In all of my brainstorming, I thought, I have a few extra computer parts lying around, I wonder if I could put a computer in my car. I then started looking around for small LCD screens and found www.mp3car.com. WOW!! there are tons of people doing this! I also found links to custom fiberglass molded dash parts and lots of how-to's. This was it. I was going to make a carputer. Now comes the hard part. I need to figure out what I am going to buy, where I am going to put it, and how I am going to put it there. Off to the internet and forums to do some research.

 

 

 

 

March 10, 2005

    This is what my stock dashboard looks like. I am thinking that I want to put the entire unit under the center dashboard piece above where the a/c vents are. This is where the screen for the OEM navigation system goes. The OEM navigation screen folds into the dash, so I am thinking that there may be quite a bit of room under here. I will have to fabricate an entire panel to mount the screen and some type of mount underneath to mount the motherboard, hard drive, power supply, etc. I am hoping to mount a slot load, slim DVD drive under the screen for easy access. The panel I make will be made out of fiberglass and I will probably use the actual panel itself as a base for the fiberglass housing. That way, I will not have to make custom mounting for the panel. We'll see if there's enough room when I get a chance to take the dashboard apart.

March 19, 2005

    Today I took my dashboard apart. It was surprisingly easy to do. I am very happy about that. However, there doesn't look like there is much room. I guess I will have to get all of the dimensions of stuff so I can find out if it will fit. If I can get the motherboard in there, I can route a small hose from my a/c vent into the compartment for cooling. I will make it so that it creates a vacuum and sucks out the hot air. That way it will still work with the heater on. I think that will be really cool. (No pun intended.) However, If the parts don't fit, I may put the system behind the glove box. My glove box is HUGE, and this is where the drive for the factory navigation system usually goes. I will still have a tremendous amount of glove box space even after I mount a motherboard and stuff in there. The white part at the bottom of the glove box compartment is actually the fuse box. This will be great for running the power to the carputer power supply. This whole project seems to be working out real well. But It's still very early.

Here is a list of the stuff I am thinking of buying for the project:

 

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