This is going to sound dumb, but it's mainly for music.
In about 2005 I was super big into computers. I saved up some money and bought the first commercially available mini-itx form factor motherboard. It was a 533mhz fanless computer with a built in dvd-decoder.
I was saving up $600 for a pop out single din vga screen, but the runs were limited and you often had to wait a few months between batches. When I had the money they were always out of them, and I sucked at saving money as a 18 year old kid.
I never got around to building it, and the place that built the screen got bought out and went under.
Fast forward 10 years, and my kids wanted a computer to get into Minecraft. My work was throwing out some old Lenovo servers and told me I could bring them home. I hadn't even touched a computer since I bought my first Android, it did everything I really needed at the time.
But I always had that itch, and now that you can get a raspberry pi screen for $25 on Amazon, I decided to go for it.
I also travel quit a bit for work, and often were running fiber optics for cell towers in places with no cell service. I'm dealing with court stuff from ex #2 now, and there are times you just need a desktop and a printer. I bought a laptop to bring with me, but it's really inconvenient to set it all up and carry it in and out of a hotel room and keep it safe in a trunk full of tools.
How I've got it setup right now, I have think client mounted in the trunk with a battery box and a cheap power inverter with a laptop power supply. Eventually I was to just put a 12v laptop power supply in there, but trying to find one that is reliable and quality but not too expensive is sorta annoying. The power supply I am using is rated for 95w and running stress tests, it maxes out at 40w. In general use, it pulls about 10w, about the same as a 2amp cell phone charger.
I am working on mounting the 3.5" screen where the clock went. I had to Dremel it out slightly, but it fits good there. I am running two full sized HDMI cables from the trunk tucked under the rear seat and under the center console with a single 3.0 USB.
Behind the screen where the clock would go, I am going to mount a powered 3.0 USB hub. I have wired in a power supply that turns on and off with the key to power the hub, then I am going to add a small USB 2.0 hub with powered switches for the screens and touch screen.
The basic idea is to use one screen and the HDMI for Pandora/audio. Then I have a larger 5" screen that I was hoping to use where the clock was, but it's a bit large and I want to keep both center dash vents.
But with that small touch screen I can play/skip songs more like a modern car stereo, then I am also going to use Bluetooth with a USB microphone to give me hands free calling through the stereo.
Then If I want to do something more task heavy, I have a USB touch pad and that larger screen that I think I am going to mount to the sun visor. The switched USB 2.0 hub will be so that I can turn the screens off when not in use without a blank white screen illuminating at night.
Definitely not a power house gaming setup, but if I wanted to, I could take my multimedia backlit keyboard and play Minecraft with my kids while I'm out of town, and even do voice chats with them.
Like I said, it's kinda pointless, I could do almost all the same things on my Android phone, but it's a life saver for emails, pdf, and if I wanted to, I could even type up and print legal documents if I get surprised with something.
All and all, it's kinda dumb but I love it. When I get finished with mounting everything the way I want it, I'll post some pictures, maybe a short video of it in action.
Starting my car pc project. Gonna just mount it in the trunk, mount a small 3.5" rasberry pie screen where the stock clock goes and go from there. I have a old i-5 6500 mini computer I got cheap used. Hooked it up to a watt meter, and it pulls a grand total of 40 watts under full load, and as low as 5w at idle.
been a long time coming, and im excited to do it, even though its pretty pointless with android devices and stereos now a days.
I'm also leaning towards the map sensor or a vacuum leak. Having 19-20 at idle should be in spec. An easy way to test it,, as well as a base idle reset.
With the car running, unplug the iac. The idle should barely change. How I adjust it, I turn down the idle screw until it starts to buck or have a hard time idling, then I plug it back in. Thats it.
If you have a bunch if vacuum leaks, then you will not be able to lower the idle enough the car might die.
The reason I bring this up, if the iac is unable to control the idle, the car will try to compensate by messing with timing and fuel. This causes all kinds of issues.
If you can get the car to almost die, then the iac is able to perform it's job, and you really don't have to worry about vacuum.
However, I would check the plastic vacuum manifold. These 5.0's like to eat motor mounts. I've had a few where they started surging and gas mileage went way down. Either that plastic manifold was broken/cracked it the hose had a hole. This is the main vacuum distribution for the whole engine.
You need to verify that the mao sensor is indeed getting the same 19-20ish vacuum at idle. If that's all good and you are able to do the iac reset like I said, I would feel pretty good about saying that the map sensor is probably bad.
As far as the cats go, they usually only last 7-10 years and about 100-150k miles. Almost every one of these cars I've seen, the cat is either completely hollow, it blowing honeycomb out the exhaust. I even passed emissions with 291k miles on a car that had a very annoying rattle. The rattle ended up being a round chunk of cat material that bugged me for years. It was about the size of a golf ball, just bug enough to not go through the exhaust opening in the cat.
One day I replaced the rusted out tail pipe, when I dropped it, a little ball came rolling out and my rattle was gone.
Fox Stang oil pan should be the same as the stock fox tbird oilpan. The only difference is that the tbird pan has an extra low oil level sensor that the Stang pan doesn't
Does the starter spin but just not engage the flywheel, or does it just not spin at all?
Pretty much every starter has the same tooth count reguardless of flywheel tooth count.
When I did my sn-95 t-5 swap, I found out that there are two different offsets for the nose of a starter, 3/8" and 3/4" length. The first starter I tried. It hit the flywheel but could not pull back enough. After doing some reading. Lot of guys had the same problem and added a 1/2" stack of washers. That when I found out about the nose length difference and I got the correct starter out of a pick up truck.
My thinking. It might be possible that you have the wrong lenth and the teeth don't always make contact.
Beleive it or not, but I believe this to have been like this since I owned the car.
The entire time I've owned this car, its gotten bad gas mileage (between 20-25 freeway) and its had an intermittent stumble that I just couldn't find.
I have occasionally gotten an o2 code and even swapped out the side that had the issue twice. Both times I assumed that it was fixed because it seemed like the issue went away.
Even after I did my head gasket, it seemed to run better, but I was bummed that it still had a miss. I did a basic tune up on it and couldnt find anything wrong so I jist left it as is.
I've owned this car for about 3 1/2 years. In that time I've put around 120k on it. I though I knew it pretty well and had it pretty well figured out. In all that time, ive only been able to chirp the tires on wet pavement.
Not only does the stumble seem to be gone, but the intermittent issues as well. I haven't quite ran a full tank out of it yet, going to do that over the holiday weekend.
But it also seems to have all kinds of power down low. Up top feels about the same, but I can now spin a tire from a dead stop and keep it spinning.
I honestly believe that wire was messed up the whole time ive owned the car. It also had a brand new o2 sensor on that side when I bought it.
Its not perfect, feels like it might be pinging a bit at low rpms/high load, and feels like it needs a real tune up. Maybe its time to change the oil and air filters for the first time.
Why replace something if you don't know if its broken?
I hate to say it, but there are really only maybe 6 wires the car needs powered up to run and there are really only a few critical sensors. The computer will tell you if things aren't working.
If you don't want to check if the computer is working, I really don't see much point in trying to fix the car.
It takes two minutes and a paper clip. Most 86's done have a check engine light, so we have to use a test light or a 12v buzzer or an buttstuffog volt meter.
Unplugged the o2 harness because I forgot how much of pain it is to get to. Hooked up the jump box and it no longer gives me an error and the car starts right up.
Soent about 30 minutes pulled the connectors off the o2's. One connector is melted at the o2, so i need to either replace the o2 or repin it with another and haven't gotten the other side fished out quite yet.
Started it up jist for fun. Idles a bit off but seems to have fixed the fire and hopefully my intermittent stumble and battery issues.
So I went out to the car and the battery was dead. I hooked up the jump box and didn't even try to start. Got out to cables and something was visibly on fire under the intake manifold near the rear bell housing.
Shut off the jump box and pulled the cable. I was able to blow out the visible flames. But I am at a complete loss. I've never had a car catch on fire, and the only wiring I could see In the area was the o2 sensor harness. Fuseable links don't appear to be melted. I am not going to have a chance to mess with it until next weekend. Gotta be in bed by 8 and up by 4:30 in the morning for work
Well I've pretty much verified fuel is good as well as the computer and I have already traded out the tfi/pip. I have had a bad coil once. It was arching out to the fender. Honestly the car still ran good while it was doing that. Just happened to see it when I was topping off washer fluid late at night.
I'm down to wiring or fiddly things. Working 6 days a week, 10 hrs a day 3 hours from home is catching up to me.
