I know what you're all thinking. What has possessed myself to put a computer in my car? It all started with my parent's car. I had purchased a CD player for the old Plymouth Sundance and I was happy, I didn't have to listen to the garbage that's on Canadian radio. I love my country but the radio stations are just terrible (THANK YOU CRTC!!). Everything was fine and dandy until I found myself with a carrying case with 30 CD's and I'm constantly changing CD's because I don't like all the tracks on the CD's. Things got a little better when I bought a CD Writer. I now had all my favorite songs on just a few discs but 6 months after I bought my CD writer, I found myself with 30 CD's again. In July 2000, I bought my car (about freakin time), it's a 1991 Toyota MR2 with a normally aspirated engine (it's going turbo in the spring time). I thought about putting a CD player in there but I would be changing CD's again, this time it would be more difficult with a manual transmission. I decided to put a computer in the car to play MP3's ONLY, I had an old Pentium 100 kicking around that would do the job perfectly. I powered up the thing only to find the motherboard is dead. I needed a new computer. The more I thought about it, the more ideas came to my head. A color TFT screen, DVD movies, GPS system, a web cam for parallel parking. My goal is to create the ultimate MP3 car, I had to one up all the other cars out there that only has a one line scrolling display. Anyways, enough rambling, check out the rest of the site.
April 23rd, 2003
In preparation for the big MR2 meet in Las Vegas, I decided to revamp my computer setup for the meet. It was a good idea for me to take pictures because I'm adding a few pricey speakers into the setup, the pics would help me if I ever had to make an insurance claim on them as well as for Canada Customs. A few weeks ago, coming back from Seattle, Customs decided to search my car for any products that I may be smuggling into the country, they were suspicious of the computer setup and thought I was lying to them because they thought I went down to Seattle to install the computer setup. I told them to look at this website which had pictures hosted here for about 2 years which proves that everything I have in the car was installed 2 years ago. Below are a few pictures of the install process, things were easier to wire this time because most of it was already done, amps are already mounted under the seats as you can see. I also mounted a few more switches beside the screen to be able to shut off the subwoofers and to turn off power to the GPS (needed because from a full windows XP boot up, it sees the GPS as a mouse and starts to do weird things). Also I moved the computer to the front trunk so I have room for another subwoofer and I relocated the capacitor so it's bolted to the stock storage box. I also cut out a top piece for to cover up most of the ugly wiring in the front trunk and cut a hole in it so that you can see into the computer. There's also a neon inside for a cool effect.
May 23rd, 2001 - RIP MP3-MR2, Long Live MP3-MR2 TURBO! Here's a little background on what happened. In the beginning of May, I took a trip down to Las Vegas with a stop in LA before heading home. About 30 miles from Vegas down the I-15, I blew my 5SFE. Not sure what lead to the breakdown, it's possible that all the oil burned off or the engine overheated. After all, I was going over 100 mph since Idaho, it's a 24 hour drive from Vancouver to Vegas. I was pretty much driving it near redline for hours. At first I heard a slight pop, then a rattle and then boom! Black smoke everywhere, I pulled over immediately and ran out of the car afraid it was gonna explode! I stayed in Vegas for a few days at the Luxor since I came all this way and the hotel was already booked. At the end of my stay in Vegas, I rented a Ryder truck and towed my car to San Jose where I had the engine swap done at Speed Image by James Lee. I figure if I was going to do an engine swap, might as well put in the turbo engine instead of putting back an NA. While my engine was out, I took a look at it and it appears that the connecting rod broke on the first piston which would explain the initial pop sound. Then the rattling sound came from the loose parts in the engine and the loud bang is when the crank shaft broke and shot right through the engine block.... on BOTH SIDES! There's a hole on each side the size of my fist, you can actually see right through the engine... anyways, I have the car back with a Turbo engine, my arm is hella burned from driving home during the day from San Jose, it's much faster than I expected and the fuel economy is great, I drove through Washington on one tank of gas. The only downside is that I didn't get to put in that V8 that I was saving for next winter... maybe when I buy a second MR2, put in the V8 and slap on a Diablo Roadster kit on it... had the engine not blown, I would've attempted to put in the Lexus V8 in November. Contact me if you want to buy some NA parts, I did manage to drive some of the stuff home such as the exhaust, tranny, clutch, shift cables, ECU, wiring harness, axles, wheel hubs, etc...
Nov 20th, 2000 - I have been wondering why my computer constantly crashes when I start it up sometimes. The only conclusion I can come to is the computer doesn't like the freezing weather. It only crashes when I try to start it up after the car has been sitting for a few hours, it never crashes when I shut it down for half an hour or so. It has also never crashed when I'm parked in an underground parking lot. It has become habit to blast the heater for 10 minutes before turning the computer on, that seems to fix the problem. I can't wait until summer is back!!
Nov 19th, 2000 - I finally finished the site, I still have a few pictures to scan in and put up but that'll have to wait. I've been using my system for almost 4 months now and I've not had any problems what so ever. Windows 2000 is really stable and the hibernation feature makes startup time a lot faster. I did have one incident where some of my cords came out of the computer but that was due to road vibrations so you have to make sure they're plugged in once in a while. The GPS is great, I have yet to get lost with it, I constantly go to Seattle without any paper maps and on the way down, my passenger enjoys watching a DVD movie on the screen. Now if only the car wasn't so cramped.