Yes, there are vents there and it seems perfect. But the entire climate control system gets it's air supply from an opening directly behind where the screen will go up into.



#12 is the vent duct for the center, it's not straigt up and down (which would be ideal) it's straight in and back, the air flow is angled by the vent louvers. If you remove #12, you can slide the screen straight up on a rail but you'll hit #3 which is the main duct for the entire system. You'll have to re-route the ducts.

You'll also want to seal up the opening for #12 when you remove it or you'll get hot/cold blowing on your screen when it's up and it can get VERY hot. Also, if you don't seal it, no matter what setting you're on it will blow out the center.

 

Thanks so much for all the information. That DOES look like a lot of work. He said he'd still be willing to give it a go, but I'd feel guilty putting him to work on such a huge task... something to keep in mind though for down the road

 

Are you looking at motorization or manual?

 

Actually I was thinking some type of setup where it'd "pop" down like the radio door does, or the cup holder... think thats possible?

 

Like a spring load? That's all the radio door and cup holder are. Not sure if you could to that, you'd need room for the spring mechanism and gears. You'd also need room for the retaining pin that would hold it up in there. I don't know about you, but before I did all of this work, I've hit a pot hole and my radio door pops open on it's own. You'd need a hell of a retainer system for that weight of the screen.

 

Yeah I figured that'd be pretty complicated... I messed up my cup holder lid spring mechanism fairly easily.

Do you think the project is "worth it" or is it truly a lot of hassle?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 3ngin33r1
http://gallery.s2ki.com/imagecatalog/image...geview/81695/6/

 

For me, it was worth it. I dumped over $5k just for the screen to be motorized.

I had it on a manual setup before the motorization and I was not happy. The screen would fall off it's retainer and hit the radio door, then if I didn't notice it and opened the radio door the screen would fall down, then if I tried to put it back up to get to the headunit, I'd have to hold it up while I did what I needed to do. The manual setup also didn't allow for the varying force in which the screen was put up into the dash, it's tough to calculate that since it's your hand doing the work all of the time. You get a little ticked and slide it up too fast and something breaks.

The motorization is a constant. I can open and close the door whenever I want with no worries, the new slide rail is a dual setup on the far edges of the screen so it's always a straight in and out transition and I don't have to worry about my knee whacking it and screwing something up. The slide rails are a ball bearing type, similar to rack mount server slide rails so it's very smooth and quiet.

The problem, as I've mentioned before, was the 8mm of space to work with. We could not find any actuator for a reasonable cost that would fit. At one point we had contacted a MRI manufacturer and they wanted $12,000 just to start the project. For one little motor it wasn't worth it. We then tried a motor with a push rod but that didn't work because it was pushing and pulling the screen with 75 pounds of force. If you're hand was sitting there when the screen came down... OUCH!!!

So, we tried some servo stuff on worm gears but they weren't strong enough and were very loud. We tried about 5-6 other configurations and after exhausting all of them, finally came back to the push rod setup.

The push rod allowed for much more room since we could mount the motor anywhere behind the dash and the slide rail setup only took up about 4mm of depth, this also allowed for better screen angling on the rails when it came out. The problem was the noise of the motor in operation and the force they all seemed to apply.

So, one very early butt-crack of dawn morning it dawned on us. A power antenna motor.