I made a little mount in place of the OEM sat radio. I am going to sell the sat radio with cables and going to PIE inputs.

This is just a piece of computer case that I cut up and put 4 screws in place to hold it in the dash. It will hold the LOC on the left and the PIE on the right (when I get one).

I figured this was a good way to go instead of having everything floating around. Its nice to have a ton of room in the dash, but I still managed to bang my hand up. I still want to do a dash mounted PC, but I'm chicken about the LCD mount. The rest is easy, but costs some $$$.

 

I too am intimidated by the glasswork that goes into the mold. The rest shouldn't be an issue. I also don't want long bootup times, the Z1 is bad enough.

 

You just have the PC go into suspend state. Warm boot in seconds. Also there are some tweaks that you can do to remove some modules from XP (if thats what you choose) to have it boot more quickly.

On our trucks, you dont have to do fiberglass, but you have to take your $200+ touchscreen apart and glue it to the radio install kit or to the back of the radio bezel. If you F it up, you are out a nice chunk of $$$. I agree with mini-itx hardware, the rest is an easy deal.

Here are some installs that I found on the web. I think MP3 car website. The mustang set up is a mini-itx car puter that completely sits in the dash. Very very sweet.