Infiniti G35 Carputer Installation
Ashish and I managed to install the carputer in his G35 over President's Day weekend. It's a good thing we chose a 3 day weekend. We needed it!
We had already done some preliminary testing of the
system on Ashish's dining room table (see previous post). So on Saturday we began with dismantling the G35's dashboard. It looked so nice (picture on left) we were almost afraid to start. By the time we were dome mangling it, it was nearly unrecognizable (see picture on right). By this point were were both starting to wonder if we bit off more than we can chew.
Anyway, we managed to pull out the center console and head unit. We took it into the lab at Ashish's office to install the LCD. Ashish had bought a nice conversion kit to install a Xenarc 7" LCD in the cubby compartment at the top of the console. 
Anup and Mary both stopped by to help. The installation instructions were very detailed. Maybe even too detailed. The instructions talked about how important is was to use the correct spacers when mounting the LCD kit. Once we had it mounted, we were convinced the LCD leaned too far forward. We spent hours playing with the spacers trying to fix this problem. Having no luck with this, we checked the Internet and realized the console sits in the car at an angle. At this angle, the screen was just about perfect. We had spent hours trying to fix something that was not even a problem! After this discovery, we called it a day.
On Sunday, Ashish, Mary and I started on the PC installation. We removed the upper glove box to mount a bracket made for holding the mini PC kit. We had to remove the lower glove box to get to the upper box. 
We took the upper box into the lab to install the PC mounting bracket face plate. Once this was done, we were ready to work on the power system. We were planning to take the power from a cigarette lighter mounted next to the glove box. However, after a bit of testing, we discovered the power was applied to the lighter circuit only when the ignition was on. We needed to have constant 12V applied to the Carnetix power supply as well as an ignition signal. We could use the cigarette lighter for the ignition signal, but we would have to run power directly from the battery. Since we were short on time for the day, we decided to put it off until Monday.
Monday morning Ashish got a power kit for a car amplifier. He and I used this to run power and ground from the battery to the passenger compartment. This was no easy task. 
The only real way to pass the wires through the car's firewall is through a rubber grommet which already contains a huge bundle of wires. We used a wire hangar and snaked it through the grommet, then attached the wire with electrical tape and pulled it through. This took us quite a while, but eventually we managed. Once through, it was a simple matter of attaching the power line to the positive battery terminal and the ground line to a chassis ground point. Now that we had a power solution, we could test the whole kit.
First we had to connect all the wiring. This was pretty trivial except for soldering the power and ground to the Carnetix power supply. The power and ground lines we used are 8 gauge wires. All we had for a soldering iron were precision tips meant for soldering tiny surface mount components. The tips couldn't provide enough heat to really soak in the solder, but we managed to get enough on there. Once we were wired up we were able to test the system. Thankfully, it booted successfully. Now we just had to put everything back together.
We started with mounting the PC in the upper glove box. The mounting bracket we got held the PC in place. We attached the Carnetix power supply and the audio interface to either side of the PC bracket using zip ties.
We got the center console with the LCD back in place without too much trouble, though running the IR receiver for the LCD from the control display window above the clock was a little tricky. We ran all the extras to the lower glove box. This included the powered 4-port USB hub, the WiFi antenna, a microphone in line, an auxiliary audio input pair to the stereo, and an auxiliary video input for the screen. A few screws and a few snaps later, it was all back together. 
Now for the moment of truth... turn on the car... Damn! The PC did not boot. We had to drop the lower glove box again. If i jiggled the power connector on the PC, we could get it to boot. We finally decided the connector was a little too loose on the PC power input. We decided we could apply pressure to the side of the plug by zip tying it to the video connector next to it. It worked! The PC could now boot reliably. It was 10:30 PM, but we were finally done! We celebrated by having a lame dinner at Lyon's Restaurant. What a long weekend...
For more pictures from this installation, check out my G35 Carputer Installation gallery.
We had already done some preliminary testing of the
system on Ashish's dining room table (see previous post). So on Saturday we began with dismantling the G35's dashboard. It looked so nice (picture on left) we were almost afraid to start. By the time we were dome mangling it, it was nearly unrecognizable (see picture on right). By this point were were both starting to wonder if we bit off more than we can chew.Anyway, we managed to pull out the center console and head unit. We took it into the lab at Ashish's office to install the LCD. Ashish had bought a nice conversion kit to install a Xenarc 7" LCD in the cubby compartment at the top of the console. Anup and Mary both stopped by to help. The installation instructions were very detailed. Maybe even too detailed. The instructions talked about how important is was to use the correct spacers when mounting the LCD kit. Once we had it mounted, we were convinced the LCD leaned too far forward. We spent hours playing with the spacers trying to fix this problem. Having no luck with this, we checked the Internet and realized the console sits in the car at an angle. At this angle, the screen was just about perfect. We had spent hours trying to fix something that was not even a problem! After this discovery, we called it a day.On Sunday, Ashish, Mary and I started on the PC installation. We removed the upper glove box to mount a bracket made for holding the mini PC kit. We had to remove the lower glove box to get to the upper box. We took the upper box into the lab to install the PC mounting bracket face plate. Once this was done, we were ready to work on the power system. We were planning to take the power from a cigarette lighter mounted next to the glove box. However, after a bit of testing, we discovered the power was applied to the lighter circuit only when the ignition was on. We needed to have constant 12V applied to the Carnetix power supply as well as an ignition signal. We could use the cigarette lighter for the ignition signal, but we would have to run power directly from the battery. Since we were short on time for the day, we decided to put it off until Monday.Monday morning Ashish got a power kit for a car amplifier. He and I used this to run power and ground from the battery to the passenger compartment. This was no easy task. The only real way to pass the wires through the car's firewall is through a rubber grommet which already contains a huge bundle of wires. We used a wire hangar and snaked it through the grommet, then attached the wire with electrical tape and pulled it through. This took us quite a while, but eventually we managed. Once through, it was a simple matter of attaching the power line to the positive battery terminal and the ground line to a chassis ground point. Now that we had a power solution, we could test the whole kit.First we had to connect all the wiring. This was pretty trivial except for soldering the power and ground to the Carnetix power supply. The power and ground lines we used are 8 gauge wires. All we had for a soldering iron were precision tips meant for soldering tiny surface mount components. The tips couldn't provide enough heat to really soak in the solder, but we managed to get enough on there. Once we were wired up we were able to test the system. Thankfully, it booted successfully. Now we just had to put everything back together.We started with mounting the PC in the upper glove box. The mounting bracket we got held the PC in place. We attached the Carnetix power supply and the audio interface to either side of the PC bracket using zip ties. We got the center console with the LCD back in place without too much trouble, though running the IR receiver for the LCD from the control display window above the clock was a little tricky. We ran all the extras to the lower glove box. This included the powered 4-port USB hub, the WiFi antenna, a microphone in line, an auxiliary audio input pair to the stereo, and an auxiliary video input for the screen. A few screws and a few snaps later, it was all back together. Now for the moment of truth... turn on the car... Damn! The PC did not boot. We had to drop the lower glove box again. If i jiggled the power connector on the PC, we could get it to boot. We finally decided the connector was a little too loose on the PC power input. We decided we could apply pressure to the side of the plug by zip tying it to the video connector next to it. It worked! The PC could now boot reliably. It was 10:30 PM, but we were finally done! We celebrated by having a lame dinner at Lyon's Restaurant. What a long weekend...For more pictures from this installation, check out my G35 Carputer Installation gallery.
posted by Ed Miller at 11:10 PM
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