Hey guys, recently been interested in hooking up a laptop in my truck along with a few other things that would run off of a normal wall socket. Ive considered taking out all of the center controls (Stock radio and temperature controls) and in its place putting an LCD screen to attach to the computer. I currently have a laptop that does not have a working monitor but the base of the computer is pretty damn decent.

My biggest thing right now is trying to find a good way to wire the 400w Power inverter to the Battery while running the wires clear out of sight straight into the cab of the truck. Has anyone dealt with this sort of wiring (pretty much anything from the battery) into the cab without it looking tacky. What im going for with this mod is to make it look professional. As for the LCD i'd like to try and make it look like its from the Factory.

97' 4.6L F-150

Any ideas... pictures...or past experiences that could be shared we be awesome. Even failures that you may have had in trying these types of mods would be helpful.... Thanks

 

To bad your screen on the laptop does not work. They following pictures will give you some ideas.



The above image shows the battery connection.



This image shows the Ram Laptop Mount and the power inverter.



As the system with navigation looks today.

Wiring runs under the seat and floor cover beneath the door sill through the fire wall.

 

for a 400 watt inverter you should be okay with running 8 gauge wire from your battery into the cab. if you get down under the dash, you can see quite a few grommets that you can bring the wire in through. Or, you could just use a unibit and drill your own hole in the firewall, just make sure you use a grommet and seal it.

 

Nice pics, thanks for the visuals

Well a spare laptop that I have has a broken screen, it was given to my brother by his job. He works in a Hotel and a bunch of drunk guys were nice enough to trash the hotel room and not pay for a few nights, they weren't coming back needless to say. This HP laptop was found (dual core, decent video card 2 gigs of ram) in the room along with the beer bottles and what not but with a broken screen. When hooked up to a normal DVI monitor with its external DVI port the computer works fine. Of course my brother is locked out of windows because he doesnt know the password for Vista but Ive got software to crack it and most likely would boot and nuke the drive in favor of an XP install (or car system software)

I do have my own laptop that is in perfect working order. I didnt want to use it in the vehicle with a stand like the Ram Laptop thing (although very cool) I was more for what you have there in the center console the display with your GPS info on it. I'd like to find a normal miniature (Non-touch screen) LCD monitor that I could make look factory and hook it up via DVI to the laptop that has a broken monitor anyhow (Removing the monitor part of before hiding/mounting the laptop inside the dash.

 

i ran 8 G wire from the battery, through the firewall, into the door sills and have a 700W power invertor mounted under the passanger seat

 

While a DC to AC power inverter is good, if you want specific laptop power, you might try:
http://www.lindelectronics.com/cgi-b..._gen_aaa_mfgs/
I use this to power a laptop in the truck and it takes less power than a standard inverter. This is a DC to DC converter with much better efficiency than you can get from a DC to AC converter and then converting back to DC with the laptop converter. There are several makers of mobile touchscreens. Goggle "car PC" and you will find several. They are designed to run off 12 volts too. You can then drive the screen with the laptop bottom and connect the touch screen with USB. They have 7 inch, 8 inch and larger if you got room. You could even play DVDs with it. Hope this helps and have fun.