O.K. so I was going to wait till I finished the project to show some Install Porn, but since my co-worker let the cat out of the bag, I guess I can show a few pics.

First, it must be noted that the F-150 has something like a 1.75 DIN hole. There are several after-market kits that give a DIN mounting hole and some kind of short pocket. There just is not enough room to mount the empeg and a CD/Radio in the dash hole. I wanted to keep the factory head for the CD player and Radio when the empeg is not in it's sled.

My first attempt was to build a console with some cup holders on top and the empeg hidden inside. The top opened up to reveal the empeg. The idea turned out pretty good except that when I had a car full of people, the drink holders were usually full and so it was hard to open and get access to the empeg controls.

So I decided on a new approach. After much contemplation, I came to the conclusion that there just was not enough room to instal it anywhere except maybe under a seat or in the glove box. Neither sounded good to me. The only thing to do was to build a place to mount it.

Now, I learned while making the console that the inside of the F-150 is so $@#$() curved everywhere that there is no simple place to call "0" from which a set of measurements can be taken. I finally decided that the only hope was to mold a back piece that fits the contour of the dash exactly and then construct the rest of the box on top of that.

The first set of pics is the dash all taped up with the contoured fiberglass rear plate drying. The black stuff in the fiberglass is just sharpie ink I was using to mark the fiberglass material.

The second set of pics skips straight to the currently installed unit. The shell has just been primed, I still have to match the paint to the dash color and do some work on smoothing out the bezel around the face plate.

Now before someone gets their panties in a wad, I know that the recommended mounting angle is 0 degrees. However: 1. I don't have much choice, and 2. I looked inside the empeg, and I'm quite sure the worst consequence of a bad mounting angle would be hard drive failure. It'll be a good excuse to get a larger dirve. (Talk to me again in a few months, if I've had to replace the HD several times, then my story will likely change).

When the project is finished I'll post pics of all of the pieces, including the ethernet cable bracket for the wireless gear .

So less babble, more pictures . . .


Steve