This project car took nearly two months to complete with work being done pretty much only on weekends. I’ve received much help and direction on previous cars and projects through these types of forums so I thought it is my turn to give back to the cyber la la land community! The goal was to have my new Camry look as stock as possible. I wanted a PC as I have had PC’s in my last few cars. I also wanted some good sound and bass! Once again, I wanted to keep everything as simple and as stock as possible. Here are the results! I was an installer for the Good Guys for 6 years back in my college days so I’m fairly comfortable with fiberglass work! And I have a degree in electrical engineering so computers are second nature to me! Having that kind of background made this project feasible, but also extremely time consuming!
Wheels:
The wheels are 18" MRR HR-2 with 225/45ZR-18 Bridgestone Potenza S-03 Pole Position tires. Smooth ride! No complaints!
Sound Deadening / Interior Audio
Before tackling the audio system, I did countless hours of research on sound damping the car. I found a website:
http://www.sounddeadenershowdown.com/ which compared manufacturers of sound damping material. Long story short the verdict was Damplifier from SecondSkin Audio
http://www.secondskinaudio.com/ / . I purchased 96 square feet of this in intensions of doing my entire interior and trunk. I applied the Damplifier sound deadener to both the inside skin of my door panel and the outer skin of the door panel. I also applied this to the floor board, rear deck, and entire trunk. Please see below:
The sound deadening material’s job is to basically lower the resonant freq of the surface being applied, in a nutshell. In addition to sound deadening material, it was suggested to add a layer of closed cell foam for wave cancellation and acoustic purposes. Now closed cell foam was quite pricey via secondskinaudio so I found a pretty good deal via:
http://www.foamforyou.com// The foam was attached via adhesive glue and monster tape.
The audio system in the Camry consists of four MB Quart 6x9 speakers (1 in each front door and 2 in the rear deck), a 5 Channel MB Quart Amp, and a MB Quart subwoofer in the trunk. I also had to make baffles for each speaker as Toyota uses these awkward plastic housings for each of their speakers. I used ¼ hard wood and the spacers provided with the speakers to mount the speakers in all locations.
The PC
http://www.mp3car.com// is the holy bible in the car PC world. Most of the parts I bought for this PC came from those guys. They are great help and very knowledgeable. I used a Voom PC-2 case with the following: Via Epia M10000 motherboard, 510 Mb of Ram which I desperately need to upgrade, 80 gig laptop hard drive, slim line internal DVD rom drive and slim line external DVD Rom Drive which I mounted in my center console. Power is provided by an M1-MTX which is basically a power supply, a voltage regulator, and a start up shut down module. When you turn the car off, the PC goes to hibernation. When you turn the car on the PC comes out of hibernation. Works pretty good for the most part! In addition I used the XM direct universal tuner, the MP3car USB adapter for XM direct, and a
BU-353 Weather-proof GPS Receiver. For sound, I went with a Sound Blaster External Live. Last but not least, a USB hub was needed for all the different USB peripherals. Now when the PC turns on, the amp also turns on. However it takes a short while for the PC to enable the sound USB driver >>> LOUND THUMP / POP. The answer to this is a PAC TR-7 delay module. I am in the process of installing this now. All the above peripherals sit in my center console as there is plenty of room and the actual PC case sits under my passenger seat.
8” Widescreen VGA Touch Screen monitor
I had my dash fiber-glassed where the stock radio was to accommodate a Lilliput 8” widescreen
889GL-80NP/C/T. Pictures of this can be seen below.
Subwoofer / Amp Enclosure
My goal in the trunk was to keep as much space as I could! Hence, the amp was mounted on the back of the seat and the subwoofer was fiber-glassed in the far left corner.
Steering Wheel Audio control
Another important feature I had to have was to be able to use my steering wheel audio controls to turn the volume up/down, move from one track to another, and mute the system. Thanks to the guys at mp3car.com once again, this was possible. All I needed was a cheap IR remote which I already had, the PAC SWI-X, and the USB-UIRT. This is how it works: The PAC SWI-X has an IR eye that connects to the steering wheel controls. Now you program the steering wheel controls via SWI-X with the IR remote. Then the USB-UIRT takes in the IR from the PAC triggered by the steering wheel controls, converts it to USB, and a plugin makes streetdeck perform the necessary function! Easier said then done though as the PAC requires soldering resistors, etc….
All in all, I could not be any happier with the finished product! Not only does the system look sweet and as close to stock as I could have possibly made it, it sounds awesome! I had 06TC_OWNER design the custom skin which looks as if it came right off the Toyota plant! Couldn’t ask for anything more! Thanks Terry! The 12” driver is a little under powered and could use more air space but nonetheless it gives a hell of a boom! I have two toggle switches in the center console which controls the accessory and constant 12 volt to the PC. Being a PC in a car environment, you will find that the unit is capable of going hay wire and will need re-boots here and there. I would like to find a way to minimize the start up time out of hibernation as well as minor glitches here and there.. My next step is to integrate blue tooth phone capability. Well there you have it! My last two months in a nutshell! Please feel free to respond with any questions, comments, suggestions, etc here or at aliseraj@gmail.com!
That is a ton of work...but looks very professional and clean. GREAT JOB!! 
11 Sienna XLE / 07 Camry / 06 GS300 / Retired from service 04 GX470
Very professional job you did there. Real slick! That must have cost a small fortune, good thing you were able to do a lot of the labor yourself (I'm assumming).
. having a car pc is pretty tight!! but i guess it's to expensive for me, how much did it cost you just for the car pc? nice job on the exterior and the interior
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