Iron Man Xbox 360 themed install
Here is the Xbox 360 repurposed as an in car PC. This is lightly touched on at MP3car.com and other Xbox 360 forums. However we never see one heavely modded for show and also installed in a car. Most the install seen are simply a inverter wired to the xbox 360 and place it in a floor board. In any case they are weak and make an uneventful presence in the car, as if they go unnoticed. I am going with a Iron man theme xbox 360, with red colors and maybe ( big maybe) I will add small gold accents. I plan to make a plexi light up piece for the DVD drive over the cd cut out I will make that will look like iron mans chest piece. The case for the DVD drive will be powdercoated or painted candy red as well as the metal cage all the electronics for the 360 are sitting in.
To start with we need a cleaned out area to do an install in. Fortunanly I previouslt made a home for a full size desktop PC in my car the previous year. Since the video burned out due to non- incar related reasons and left me with a choice. Install another computer or do somthing better.... Okay we know what choice I made. The air bag in this picture was removed however it is not totally needed to install a 360 in a dash. A glovebox in most cases will accomodate a xbox 360 board and airflow is a non-issue as the machine should always be watercooled when installed in a vehicle. Water cooling and having a large resevoir of cool water ( or other coolant) will keep the 360 temp closer to ambient. Trying to air cool this in a car is already difficult.
Here is the initial Xbox 360 frame. It does not need to be too complicated , we will get elaborate with fiberglassing. The frame at this point consists of the 1/2 inch MDF backplane and a knotched out bottom support. The fiberglass will meet the knotched bridge over and the bottom edge will be hidden inside the dash. Two wedges were cut to make extra support for the knotched piece. These only hold the bridge perfectly in place because the 360 will in be in the frame when everything is stretched and fiberglassed. Fiberglass resin ruins just about everything it touches and please always use gloves! The frame seen here is only the wood and the brigdge has two screws holding it in place from the back side. A piece a 1/4 in plexi will be cut and placed under the bridge as the xbox will sit ontop of lit plexi after all the fiberglass is made.
As you can see from the bottom, the DVI connections are here as this is a newer 2007 made xbox 360. Some ask " where are you putting all those wires in such a small space?" Well first off there will be enough room on the side for the hard drive to plug onto, so that is covered. The HD- DVD drive can plu into the USB port. Though they have been discontinued it may be repurposed as a easy access upgrade/ cd/ dvd player so I dont really need access to the drive in the dash. It will be a pretty asset that is not used often. The power wires and video cabels also run through the botton. The fans exhuast out through the bottom however the machine will be liquid cooled before the install is done, The space where the fans where is where the water cooling hoses and other lighting wires will pass through.
Given that resin ruins everything and it only takes one mistake to ruin the dash, I have covered the adjasent areas with overlapping masking tape, and plastic will be taped over this to reduce chances of dripping.
Since the plexi cover is already made and I dont feel like making another one over agian when this just needs to be polished. The floor will be covered with towels and the side panel with paper. By pressing down on the cover while it is curing we insure that the fiberglass tub will fit under the plexi and still lay flush and it will help keep the fleece tuaght while the initial fiberglass cures. Wrinkles are the enemy and are prevented at all cost. I will also use hot glue to tack the fleece to the masking tape for fine tuning of the shape before application of the resin hardener.
Updates will follow soon as the fleece attached to the backplane and bridge. I will followup will illistrations for this post of plans. Thanks for reading!
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