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The Comvette Project - diy BOSE Replacement for C4e Corvettes
Blog Post

2019-03-10

Comvette Chassis Design

The Comvette chassis attaches to the original OEM mounting points for the BOSE head unit using the original OEM hardware. No modifications or cutting of your car's dashboard is needed.

The chassis consists of:

Base-plate chassis base-plate Acrylic - Clear, 0.118" thick External Link
Face-plate chassis face-plate Acrylic - Clear, 0.118" thick External Link
Overlay chassis overlay Acrylic - Black on White, 0.059" thick, matte finish External Link
Hex Standoffs standoff Aluminum, #4-40 x 1-1/4" long

The Base-plate, Face-plate, and Overlay are custom laser-cut, Acrylic pieces. They were made from my drawings by Ponoko.com External Link. Ponoko did a great job at a very reasonable price.

The Comvette chassis has mounting points for the volume control, USB jack and touch-screen. A wiring harness with an OEM style socket is employed to connect the Comvette chassis to the existing car wiring.

Aside from the volume control, the USB jack, and the touch-screen, no other electronic components are placed in the dash. Sufficient wire and cable length is provided to allow mounting the other related electronics elsewhere in the car (under the seats, in the rear storage compartments etc.)

These cables/wires are provided in 10 foot lengths:

  • 3.5mm audio cable
  • HDMI video cable for the touch-screen
  • USB data/power cable for the touch-screen
  • BOSE Amplifier control wire
  • Antenna Control wire
  • Antenna COAX cable
  • Constant 12v power wire
  • Switched 12v power wire

The Comvette head unit is simply a chassis to hold the touch-screen, volume control, USB jack, and provides all the wiring needed to interface with your cars sound system. No other electronics are placed in the dashboard.

The Comvette head unit can be used with any computer (Raspberry Pi, MiniPC, laptop etc.) that has a 3.5mm audio output jack and a HDMI video output jack. What you use to drive the Comvette head unit is entirely your choice. Your system may be constructed in any way that suits you. However, I chose to use a Raspberry Pi because of its low price, small size and low power consumption. The Comvette software is targeted to the Raspberry Pi and may need extensive modifications to run on other platforms.

chassis image

Shown to the right is a Comvette chassis partially assembled. The volume control, USB jack, and touch-screen cabling are in place. The screws that hold the front panel will be replaced with counter-sunk screws in the final assembly in order for the face-plate overlay to lay flush against the front panel.

Shown below is a Comvette chassis with most of the major components installed. (volume control & knob, USB jack, 5" touch-screen, face-plate overlay, and touch-screen cabling). Missing is the volume control harness, and USB jack cable.

chassis image chassis image chassis image chassis image chassis image chassis image

If you want to build your own chassis, you can download the cut-files below. The cut-files are in .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format and were created using templates provided by Ponoko.

When viewing the cut-files, you will see the Ponoko template guides but the actual chassis parts cut-lines may appear to be missing. This is because Ponoko requires that cut-lines have a width of 0.01 mm which is so thin that the cut-lines are very hard to see. If you zoom-in, the cut-lines will become visible.

Base-Plate & Face-Plate Cut-files:

Material: Acrylic - Clear, 0.118 inches thick

View | Download Base-Plate Cut-file (102.2 KB .svg file)

View | Download Face-Plate Cut-file (32.8 KB .svg file)

Overlay Cut-file:

Material: Acrylic - Two Color - Black on White, 0.059 inches thick

View | Download Overlay Cut-file (39.8 KB .svg file)

 
Have a question about this project? Need help? Send a message by clicking the "Message Me" button below. I'll try to answer any questions you may have. Or you can click the "Zoom Me" button below and if I am near my computer we can have a Zoom chat.
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