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WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE FINISHED
that is another one I did, for my car. I did not have a camera at the time though so I was not able to do a diy. this time around though I am sponsoring 93dubsters supercharged vr6 and I will be thorougly documenting the process.
DAY 1
so, today, I just finished up mine, and started choppin up the next one.
just finished putting mine back together....
starting on 93dubsters. it all starts with some chop. this is one of the hardest/most tedious parts of the whole ordeal. there is no good way to cut through this plastic. a dremel and a very sharp knife are my recommendations. I didn't have much time to work on this today but I got started with the chop chop!
more chop! you have to cut away that whole cupholder area anyway you can.
anyways, got cut short cause I had to go install my chip with dan.
a couple pics of our rides.
they look like friends, aww.
So yea, its not much for now, but I will be workin on this pretty much every day this week and I will keep postin hopefully daily with pics and prorgress.
and this time, ya'll only get an internet , cause so many people were talking ish about it yesterday!
Day 2 Start Out » « » 3:25 PM 10-26-2004
some more chop chop before to get some frustration out of me.
oh yea, the easiest way I've found to chop(next to a dremel, but a dremel gets messy and is kinda slow):
a test fit. in order to really test fit it you need to diassemble the screen, which is what we do next.
first things first, make sure you have the right tools before you start pullin apart a $300-400 screen. if you strip these tiny bolts, your going to be in a world of pain. make sure you have good screwdrivers. mine were kinda messed up, so just to be safe....
up next is the dissassembly of the lcd monitor. will have that posted in like 15 min.
LCD Dissassembly
NOTE:
OPENING THE LCD YOU HAVE TO VOID ANY WARRENTY YOU HAVE. Make sure the lcd works before you open it up. I did not do this because I'm stupid. Learn from my mistakes.
OTHER IMPORTANT NOTE:
when disassembling your monitor, it may be much different from the one I am doing here. also even with a similar lilliput monitor there may be differences, there have been many different versions of these little monitors! make sure with any monitor you are patient and GENTLE!!!!!!
Make sure you do this in a clean area! these monitors dont like dirt.
Also, make sure you have a lot of room. the screen may be small but as you take it apart there are lots of little pieces that need to be kept seperate.
on to the fun...
unscrew these four in the sequence pictured here.
dont lose any of this stuff! its very easy to do.
gently go around with your finger nails or a small screwdriver(very carefully!) and unpop all of the little clips now holding the screen together. so slow and be gentle!!
once youve got it open, slowly open it up. there are a lot of wires connecting the two sides. you have to disconnect them and this can be a challenge with only one hand! again, be careful! its soooo easy to break this stuff!
another angle of whats inside when you first open it, as you can see you need to be very gentle when opening it up after cracking it open.
you need to disconnect this wire. its on the front side of the screen(side with buttons). its kind of tricky to figure out how these wire connectors open at first, but you'll get the hang of it. again, the key here is patience and, well, being gentle! you need to push open each side of it and then slide the wire out. do not tug on the wire, if it does not slide out very easily, you did not open the little connector things correctly or one is still closed. its hard to explain but you'll get it
hopefully youve managed to get it out. good job, the rest are either the same, and now youve gotten it so it will be easy, or they are just simple slide on connectors
you have one more on the back side of the screen.
way to go, you got that one off two. its all downhill from here.
this part is a little difficult/scary. theres mercury inside the lcd, and if your not careful at this stage you can puncture it! the connector here is connected to the back of the lcd with some double sided tape. slide a screwdriver under there and then pull it off. yet again, be very careful.
alright, now this one is simple. just disconnect the wire.
congrats! now you can put the back piece of the screen down. what a relief...
alright, add the back piece to the pile of stuff. you wont be touching that at all now, until you reassemble.
you now need to take these four screws out. they hold the lcd panel in place.
they look like these once you've pulled them out
more stuff to add to that pile...
once you've gotten all four of those litte things out, you can take the lcd out.
it should come over pretty easily. theres only some not very sticky tape holding it in now.
put the lcd panel on something soft. its important and very fragile. look after while its not in its housing.
this is what your now left with, the button panel. you need to take these four screws out.
pull it out and add it to the pile...
wow we have a lot of stuff now...
the buttons are now now held in by anything, just flip the front plastic around and push them out, gently.
what they look like out...
now you need to get the infared clear cover out. i didn't take a pic of this. its above the volume button. just push it out.
then take this little basterd out. be careful, he doesn't like coming out and he likes to break, little phuker . remember, you really cant replace any of this stuff!! so again, be careful and use a screwdriver to gently pop him out. hes usually kinda melted on there.
the two little clear basterds taken out, phew, and were almost done!
we have accumulated a lot of little, easy to lose CRAP. keep this stuff somewhere safe. either put it in bags with labels on them or keep it where it is and dont move it. if you mix some of it up or lose any of it, its gonna be bad news!
alrighty, thats pretty much it.
just take this krappy little logo off so we can shave the front when we go in with filler. use a little flathead screwdriver.
.
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Hopefully your all still motivated to finish this up. this was probably the hardest/most tedious part. I will post up the next part, mounting the lcd frame, either tonight or tommorow. good luck and again, be very very very very very careful when taking the lcd apart. if you've already taken it apart, and haven't broken anything, good job!!
Day 2 Part 2 - Mounting The Screen
Mounting The Screen
alright, so now we've got just the frame of monitor and we can hack that up.
its a tight squeeze to put a 7" widescreen in an area this size, but it can be done.
time to start chopping. dont worry if you cut to much, or if it looks like crap. it will be covered up by filler later.
try to leave just enough room for the lcd, so its easy to glue, but dont work about it too too much. its really hard to cut throught the plastic so just focus on that.
chop chop...
as you can see, its a tight fit.
look at how ghetto mine is. dont worry if it looks like crap, again, we will cover all this up later.
alright! we finally chopped enough away to get the frame in there. good job!
now line that sucker up! you may have to trim a little more to get it to sit right. its up to you how you want it to face(up, down, left, right). there are drawbacks and positives to each position. to make it look natural, it has to be facing the drivers side slightly and facing upwards. the cupholder area actually favors the drivers side a bit. it looks cool when you exagerate this and make it face the driver.
alright, hopefully you have some good glue lying around. if not, go grab two packs of this stuff. its very good glue, and drys very very strong in 4 hours. its what i use on all this kinda crap.
alright, mix that ish up.
this is also something that will be covered later, so dont stress how it looks. just make sure you dont get any on the buttons area, and make sure it will dry strong. also, make sure it doesn't move when your glueing it, you dont want to nudge it and have it face the wrong way. after this stuff dries, your pretty much stuck with whatever position the montior is in
see how crappy mine looks? cosmetics dont matter at this stage, again, focus on strength and position!
you are gonna need to tape it so it doesn't move. it actually is probably a better idea to do this before you glue..but whatever.
alright, if your like me, you get impatient and dont want to wait for the glue to dry. if you want something to do while the glue is drying, mask off the area around the screen. luckily vw made a nice line around our screen area, just for us, so it looks pretty natural and its easy to mask off a nice area.
do the whole area.
alright, thats it for today I think. I'll post more updates tommorow. we start the gross part(fiberglass) tommorow.
i am the center console man
Day 3 - Fiberglass
Today's update is not going to be very thorough. It's impossible for me to take pictures while I'm actually in the process of fiberglassing, because it is very messy, and it gets all over my gloves, and there is no way to take pictures without getting fiberglass all over the camera.
Unfortunatley I don't have someone helping me out who could take pictues..but luckily there are TONS of fiberglass tutorials on the internet. I forget where I got my information, but frankly, its something that your gonna have already had some experience before you do this. If you haven't learned to glass yet, either go practice, or hope you didn't cut to much and have a lot of epoxy.
The goal/function of the fiberglass for this particual install is only for strength. You could do it with just epoxy and body filler in theory, but it would crack and break very easily and it would probably end up being a lot more work and end up being veyr messy.
So, hopefully your experienced with fiberglass and ready to take on a very challenging fiberglass misson! I have a lot of experience with fiberglass, but this is one of the hardest fiberglass projects I've had to do, and I have done it a few times before, even once in the same area!! It is important that you dont mix in too much hardener cause you need a lot of time to work with it. The only real tip I can give you is to make sure you sand down the areas the fiberglass will touch, with some 60 or lower grit paper.
If you don't know what you will need to do fiberglass, you probably shouldn't be trying this step, but just in case you forgot:
For this one I am using fiberglass resin(you dont need much at all), hardener, a krappy paint brush(as cheap as possible), something to mix it in, gloves, and a good respirator. When we do this, and when we sand, in order to keep from coughing up crap for the rest of the day, just wear the dam respirator.
Again, you are gonig to have to use your imagination to get to the next stage, because I couldn't take pictures. Also let me reiterate that this step is not for first time fiberglassers. You should be able to recreate the method I used to do this, and if you can't figure it out, just skip it and use epoxy.
I did kind of a bad job. Even someone like me with a lot of experience has trouble with this!!
Some close up shots:
Try to avoid this. You dont want to cover the buttons, but you need to have it come up to the bottom of the screen. It's hard and like I said, I took my time and have a lot of experience and I still ended up with this crappy job:
Remember when I told you to mask everything off? Well, it is important. Real important. Once fiberglass lands somewhere, its happy there. You need to have everything masked otherwise you'll end up having to sand it down and then paint it, and it will never look right!
Alright..let that ish dry. Give it time. The next step is sanding it so you want to make sure its really dry. There's really nothing you can do while your waiting for it to dry, so find something else to do. My recommendation?
Alright, now you've given it like 2-3 hours to really dry. Touch it with something that you can wash to see if its dry. Sometimes when you don't put enough hardner in it doesn't dry, and you end up with fiberglass resin on your finger..which will slowly seep into and fry your brain...well..maybe thats an exageration..but I sure don't like having that s*&t on my finger!
Sandpaper is a beutiful thing...
I just started sanding here, but make sure you get those areas that you accidentally covered in fiberglass. It is much easier to get them out now than later when they are covered in body filler!
Ok, well, that's it for now. I will probably post some more updates on the sanding progress later tonight...I will be starting the really fun/creative part, body filler, tommorow.
I have to go do some...um.....homework....
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