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Anyone make a custom case to put in their car?

M

mAdD INDIAN

Diamond Member
Me and my buddy started working on building a custom case out of wood to put in the trunk of my 240SX.

At first we wanted to use plexiglass, but after seeing the price of it and the fact that we don't know how to cut it nor have we done anything of this proportion..we decided to stick to wood.

The criteria is:
  • The case should be small enough to fit in the side of the trunk behind the carpetting
  • The case should get aquedate cooling <this is what worries me>
  • The case should be structurally sound to hold a motherboard, cpu, two hdds, one cdrom, and one power supply

Anyone done anything of this nature and can offer any tips?

Thanks.
 


<< This doesn't really answer any questions, but what are you doing with this? >>



It's mainly to play mp3s but its flexible enough to do other things...the computer will be hooked up to a 4inch lcd screen and will give sound to my system thru a tape adaptor (for now).
 
I hope you're not planning on putting anything of value in that computer... just junk parts, etc. i doubt the HDs in particular will be able to stand the extreme cold or extreme heat that can be found in cars (think car parked in sun on hottest summer day and sitting outside overnight in coldest winter night).
 
We have PCs mounted in out patrol cars. They sit in hot or cold trunks for hours and seem to work just fine. Also our driving isnt the most comfortable ride for a human let alone a computer. The two companies that make our terminals are Litton Mobile Data Systems and Data 911. Check their websites and see what specs they may have that could help you.
 
The parts that make up hte compuer are old stuff..such as an old 8GB hdd, a P-166, 64mb ram, sb32 snd card, etc...

I'm concerned with the building of the actual case.
 
Check www.usplastic.com. I got a 12x48 inch sheet of 1/4" acrylic for $15, my total order was only $6 shipping (about 20lb) shipping. They have great service, and orders ship the same day. They have many other sizes too.
 
If I can and you think it will help ill take some photos of the computers inside some of our cars so you can see what the case looks like, how they are mounted and how they are protected from shock.
 


<< If I can and you think it will help ill take some photos of the computers inside some of our cars so you can see what the case looks like, how they are mounted and how they are protected from shock. >>



I would really appreciate that! Thanks a lot! You can email them to anoojs@yahoo.com

Are you a police officer?
 


<< Yes I am. Next time im at the station I will take some pics... >>



Uh..is that legal for you to do?? I don't want you to get in any trouble.
 
I know about saving HDDs from shock in cars 🙂

I had a computer in my car last year for MP3s (k6-233, 64mb ram, 4.3gb hdd) and i unfortunately had an accident which caused the car (and it's contents) to be thrown around a lot!

I had the hard drive supported in the metal hdd/fdd "cage" from the AT case the computer was in, with the HDD mounted sideways | rather than ---. This "cage" was surrounded by and resting on a couple of old car sponges, and also had a couple of Lego springs duct taped to the PSU and edge of the "cage", so that it wouldn't move towards the PSU (the air intake of the PSU is at the front of the PSU so couldn't put any sponge there or the PSU would choke).

When the PC was thrown around in the boot (trunk for you Americans 😛), the computer and hard drive worked fine, and still do to this day 🙂

Also, from where i was reading when i was doing this, one person had a computer in their car for over a year, and did a full disk scan (including surface scan) and there were no bad sectors 🙂

I do not have any pics of the inside of my computer case, but i do have a couple of pics of the AT desktop case in the boot of my car. Click on My Car on menu on left for pics, click to pics to enlarge

ConfusedBW
 
Thanks for the info man. Do you have pics of the case and its insides? That would really help me out. Also what about cooling? How hot did the case get in teh summer?

Thanks
 
Nope, no pics of the inside unfortunately 🙁

It was only in there a matter of weeks, cos I only started driving at end of August, and had the accident middle of November, and so it was in the "not too warm" stage in England!

If i can hunt out the sponges tomorrow i'll put them in the case sort of how they were and take a couple of pics 🙂

Cooling was stock (read: tiny) heatsink and fan on the CPU, and also the PSU fan. I had it on for the whole of a 2.5hr journey down motorways and sitting in traffic jams, and it was quite a sunny day, and it worked flawlessly 🙂
 
this sounds like an interesting idea I may have to steal...
how do you power? some inverter on a long cable or something? speaking of which, how do you have the cables mounted, just under the car chassis?
 
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