3rd gen t4r head unit relocation

[rushthezeppelin]

Posting this on t4r.org as well but figured I'd post here for the few 3rd gen owners we have.

I have grand ideas of doing this swap so that I can have a nice touchscreen head unit in a spot that I don't have to look down to look at maps or cameras or any number of things. As we all know the stock location is crazy low and not ideal for things like navigation especially.

So this has been done for sure in at least two different cases that I've found, no more. One seems to have routed the ducts down to were the head unit goes and just installed some generic vents on a flat plate there.

The other seems to have made a totally custom bezel. While the custom bezel would be awesome I assume probably the only way I'm going to pull that off is with 3d printing and a lot of cad work so I'm going to stick with the first option while I'm brainstorming this to even decide whether I want to do this mod (probably a little ways down the road but I want to be prepared). Figured I would start this to document things since none of the other examples seem to have done that.

Right now I've found as many photos as I can of the bezel being off and head unit removed.

So right behind where the head unit goes there is this white thing. What I assume that is a box containing the a/c coil and fan but I'm not sure. So what I'm wondering at this point is if in fact I could tap into that to create said vents. That would vastly simplify that part of the job. However my fear is that this area is below the part of the ductwork that directs air based on what selection you choose between front vents, floor vents and defrost vents. If true this means these vents would have air no matter what although I guess you can just close them completely if you don't want air coming from them. I actually see a potential advantage to this though in that I could get all three directions of vents at once. I guess the other option is to figure out a way to route some flex ducting off the stock vents. Obviously the stock vents will need to be closed off as well.

The next hurdle would be relocating the rear defrost and hazard buttons. I'd imagine just relocating the buttons either to the plate where the vents go or perhaps into the dash bezel. Making it look clean might be a little tricky and I'm betting the harness would have to be cut and extended (nothing terribly hard). I also wonder if aftermarket switches could be used to accomplish this. Obviously if you have a 99+ you only have the hazard button probably to worry about. For those of us with the 96-98 dash we could probably chop out the useless cup holder even though the example I found didn't do that.

The last piece of the puzzle would be to create a DIN slot where the vents are. Considering my plan would be to use a big touchscreen head unit I don't think I would even have to make this look super clean but would probably involve some plastic welding.

Kind of thinking of going to a pick n pull and at least messing around in a few third gens in one of those to try and get a better idea of what I need to do before hacking away at my own truck. Need to go anyway to grab some LCAs. I might actually be doing that tomorrow depending on whether I end up doing an activity with some scouts tomorrow or not. Might even be a good idea to grab one of those bezels from the scrap yard and try and create all the bezel parts of this before hand so that when I do tear things apart it makes it a little less work.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

So this looks very doable, as you can see in this picture the white piece I'm almost sure is downstream of the controls that send air to the front, feet or window defrost given that the duct that goes to the passenger side vent is coming off of here.

Pretty sure this was a limited with the electronic controls but I doubt things would be in a totally different spot here with regards to whether this is downstream of the controls.

Also I'm pretty sure I don't even have to touch the clock, rear defrost or hazards (although depending on the head unit I use the hazards might be behind the panel).

Doing a rough measurement of where the central vents are it's a little wider than a din and definitely taller. If I want I could probably cut down a little bit and fit a double din unit if I want. The trick at this point would be mounting a bracket securely enough into the slot that I cut that it would be stable and not bounce the head unit around but I feel pretty confident that could be done and I could assess the stability on a donor bezel before installing. Might require some plastic welding. Might even be able to use the ductwork attached to the bezel to help accomplish this and leave the duct in the dash to help support it all. Unfortunately the 2 96-98s that I found at the junkyard had already had the bezels taken so I don't have one to start hacking at just yet.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

Well I managed to get a donor bezel to work at figuring this out. Guy out in woodland park that has so many 3rd gen parts it's nuts. He's working on probably the sickest 3rd gen heavy modification I've ever seen (he's already got it SASed with full hydro steering among MANY MANY other things). Told him about the club too so hopefully he signs up here. Definitely see this as durable bit going to be a long term project, if nothing else for the funds to get a head unit and cameras. This was apparently a base model with no clock which is great as I plan to do an outside temp monitor in that spot anyway.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

So to update on a lot of my research for this I did run across some vague build details on the second picture in this thread. Two things stood out to me as really really good ideas. First of all using the cupholder slot to help support the din. He used an L bracket off of it but I might try to do something a little more robust. Second thing is that instead of trying to run two ducts off the plenum you run one that goes into a boot in back of the bezel that sends the air to both vents. That will simplify putting the whole thing together with one piece of flex duct instead of two (and I can use some more standard sizes for things).

 

[rushthezeppelin]

Might have to change plans slightly here unless I want some heavy fab work. So I took off my bezel and poked around a bunch thinking of ideas and seeing if I still had a factory amp (and also seeing if my mic had come unplugged from the Alpine that I currently have, pretty sure it's just dead). The only way a double din works is if you have something low profile (like ideally no deeper than 1.5"-1.75") on the components in back of the head unit. The reason why is even if you cut all the way down to where the bezel curves in to the climate control faceplate you only get about 3.5" up till you start having to chop BOTH the top clips that hold the bezel in. I think with both of the examples they had low profile units that were 7" screens and they just built the shrouds to give it structural stability as much as for aesthetics. This would be a smidge trickier with a floating screen 10.1" double din unit like I'm looking at. Possibly doable but I would have to hack up the double din mount plates to clear going inside the bezel. Also that's a lot of fab work and I wonder how tricky it will be be to piece it all together.

I'm now leaning more towards this unit Amazon.com that is a 10.1" screen on a single din. The screen mount looks very sturdy (if I do buy it I will double check that sturdiness before I build this up so that I can return it and rethink things) so I don't think that will be an issue, plus I can adjust the screen up and down to my liking if I have any other clearance issues. As it stand the vent's are almost exactly the size of a single din anyway, only a half inch wider which I can easily work with. The price difference probably isn't a big deal if you factor in all the other stuff I would need for fabbing the double din. In fact I think I might be able to buy a single din plastic shroud and hack it up to the profile of the bezel and plastic weld or glue that on for a decently clean look (color probably won't match but I'm a bit ambivalent on that). I'll post pics in a sec here.

 

[rushthezeppelin]

So here's where I'm at now. Looking to cut approximately a 2.5x7.5 hole where the vents are and make a 3d printed piece that slips in from the back that I can epoxy to the bezel. This will support the head unit and give things a nice clean look hopefully. Did a little messing around and learned tinkercad enough to throw this together as a rough draft of my idea. Likely will tweak this a bit but I think it's a good rough draft so to speak until I get a head unit and see what I'm dealing with in terms of mounting brackets and how all that will play into the design. This is essentially a front facing view of the part. Those lips will catch the back side of the bezel and that bottom piece should rest almost perfectly on top of the cup holder on one side. Sides and top are 1/4" and bottom is 3/8"