[kgschlosser]

I have also been working on my solution for the turn signals and fog lights.

I ordered a 5 volt 80 amp power supply and a 2 meter long strip of individually addressable RGBW LEDs. The strip has a total of 288 pixels which is a total of 1152 LEDs. The white LED's output about 3000 lumen or so and if i also turn on the red green and blue LED's also (white as well) I gain another 2000 lumen. I might be able to have a 5000 lumen fog light if the LED's don't burn up from overheating. I have a test rig I put together this evening made of 1/2" Lucite, 2 pieces of 8' aluminum L channel, an 8' piece of aluminum C channel (heat sink for the LEDs), an Arduino Mega 2560 to control the LED strip. I flame polished the edges of the Lucite so they are crystal clear. I wrote the firmware for the Arduino and just finshed testing the input and output of it. All that is left for the test rig is to braise the aluminum pieces together and wire up the LEDs to a power supply and connect them to the Arduino. I am going to do this at some point tomorrow, I will post a video of it when I get everything working. It should be tomorrow if it doesn't completely have a meltdown!.

 

[kgschlosser]

OK so the turn signal thing mostly works. The Arduino is to slow I need to change out to a faster micro controller. I already have this new controller except I have to write new firmware in Python. It shouldn't take me all that long to do. I will post a video this evening of it working with the Arduino so this way you can see kind of what it is going to look like.

 

[kgschlosser]

OK so here are some photos.

You have to excuse the dust. I didn't vacuum and wipe down before I took these photos.


This is a top down view of the front of the engine. You can see that I 2 toned the strut support by filing/sanding the edges. I am going to be doing this as well to the WRP logo. I scratched the thing so I am going to have to spray it with some black epoxy paint hence the reason why i didn't bother with the logo.

You can also see the stainless steel upper radiator hose. This I also 2 toned, I painted it with the black epoxy paint (3 coats) and then used 220 grit paper with a cloth back (so it was stiffer) to sand off only the paint on the tops of the corrugation. I do not have the support backets for the hose and other lines and wiring fully installed, I only have the pieces that hold the wiring harness installed in this photo. You can see the tops of the brackets at either corner of the valve cover.

Here is a top down of the back of the engine. You can see some of the work I did with routing the wiring harness differently. and also all of the new heat wrap around the lines and wiring in the turbo area.If you notice the intake manifold isn't congested with plumbing and wiring like it was.

Back of the block standing on the drivers side of the car. You can see the routing of the engine harness and the bracket I made that supports the harness as it crosses over the top of the brake booster. I also used stainless steel tubing for the vacuum line to the booster. I still have yet to do the 2 tone paint on that.

wiring harness on the passenger side of the car. You can see the copper colored aluminum ties around the harness. This is going to be added to the entire harness, it is very tedious to do this and I have not gotten to the rest of the harness yet.

The heat wrap was a royal pain to put on. I didn't go the easy road and get wrap that was oversized. I got wrap that fit snug. If you ask nicely I might tell you how I got the wrap over the heater core hoses, I have a special trick to do that.

I spent some time and polished up the heat shield for the exhaust manifold so it looks nice. I pilfered the outlet elbow off of the stock turbo and spent many hours with a file in hand to get rid of the finish the casting process left on it. I also got rid of the indents on either side where the bolts went through the flange. I also got rid of most of the flange, I said most because I left a small ring of it to act as a barb for the coupler. I know there is no clamp on the upper portion of that coupler, this is because I have to unbolt the turbo and move it so I can get the v-band clamp on for the wastegate.

different angle of the front of the engine.

This is an extremely important photo. It is kind of hard to see and you would appreciate it more if you go and look at this location on your solstice. The rats nest that is under the fuse box no longer exists. It was a large effort and took a large amount of time to clean up that mess. Not 1 wire is attached to the bracket that holds the fuse box. In fact if you look 2 photos up there isn't a wire anywhere nears that bracket. That place is a hot spot for the turbo and the wires should never have been where they were. They may have been shielded from the majority of the heat from the turbo but not all of it. The higher temperatures would eventually cause the insulation to dry rot. They needed to be moved further away. In any of the wiring photos you look at you will see the black clamps that hold the harnesses in place. I stripped off all of the old tape and used about 75% less when I put new tape on. Instead of making the harness in a manner to hold it's shape through using an excess of tape I opted to do it a better way and attach the harness to the chassis a whole lot mote then it had been done by GM. This accomplishes the same task but with a large reduction in the size of the harness. This allowed me to move the thing into places where it would not have fit previously.

Shot of the drivers headlight. The headlight fits into the hood better then it did into the OE hood. The tolerances are a lot tighter.

In a previous post i had a photo of the bracket I made to hold the bumper cover properly. It was a test version to see if I could get it done. This is now the finished product. It is 2 times thicker then the previous version (1/8") and I changed out the hardware for stainless and counter sunk the screws. I also have the piece a good buff shine. I actually came up with a cool way of bending that thing without using any heat. I used 2 pieces of 2x3 lumber that was about 2' in length. I drilled out a slot in either piece that was a little larger then the bar at one end so I could slide the aluminum into it. I used the lumber to provide leverage to make the bend a little bit at a time working my way down the bar. The wood is soft enough so it didn't cause any kind of damage to the bar at all.

 

[kgschlosser]

This is another important photo to look at. This is how I corrected the issue where the hood meets the bumper on the outside of the lights. I made 2 straps one for above and one for below the cover. The 2 straps are also longer then the mounting point on the bumper cover. The mounting point on the bumper cover is longer then the area the screws go into on the car and I needed to make an additional kerf cut in the mounting tab on the cover in order to get the curve correct. The problem was there was no way to attach the piece that I needed to bend in. The 2 bars pinch the piece and hold it in place. This solution actually solves 2 problems at the same time. It also fixes the gap issue between the bumper cover and the hood as well. There are adjustment screws so you can raise that edge but the issue is when you do that you end up causing waves in the cover. This solution minimizes that from happening. less waves = less sanding/filing of the cover to get it into shape. The bumper cover was so far off I had to add a 1/2" spacer under the cover where the bolt goes through under the headlight. I needed that even after adjusting the bar the bolt goes through all the way up. adding that spacer and also tweaking the mounting point on the cover where the bolt goes through gets rid of alot of the waves in the cover below the headlight. you want to drill out the hole to a pretty decent size so you can move the tab on the cover in the direction needed to get the smallest amount of distortion.

I wonder if I am the only person that has the RK sport hood with the stock hood stops installed. It was a royal pain to get those things in because all they did was drill the holes . The glass was wicked thick and it had to be sanded inside the hood and also on the outside. needed to make the fiberglass into a slide that the corkscrew on the stop could screw into. I also had to move the hood latch bars closer to the windshield edge of the hood by 1/2". This meant making the mounting holes oval. I also installed the cushions that rest against the cowl when the hood is closed. I figure having these in place would help minimize movement of the hood while driving. There are no mounting holes for these and if you install them then take caution the OE screws are to long and will go through the hood. You need to pre drill the holes and gets the threads made using the screws, then grind them down to 1/2 of their length. make sur eyou file the ground down end really well to get the screw to go back in.

back of a headlight. If you are having fitment issues with the "ears" on the outsides of the headlights this is because you need to have the headlights installed. On my hood the ears were way off. and when I bolted in the headlights it pulled them in quite a bit and made the fitment between the bumper cover and the hood a large amount easier. so save yourself some aggravation and get the hood into basic position and then get the headlight roughed in enough to be able to bolt the things in. Then get the fitment bettwe between the hood and bumper cover. Do not look for perfect at this point either. once you get the hood and bumper closer then go back to the headlights and get the final fitment done. Make sure you get the head lights pushed up in the direction of the windshield as far as possible. To do this you WILL have to oval out the mounting holes in the headlight. The thread inserts they put into the hood are off by about 1/2" or so. Be careful putting the OE bolts in. On my hood the bolts went in no issues on one side , but the other the bolts could go through the hood. I would use 1/4" spacers all around to start off with.

new lower radiator hose routing. It is no longer sandwiched between the frame rail and the block. because I moved the wiring harness there is now a clear path for it to go past the ABS solenoid block snafu.

I am still trying to figure out what to do with the overflow lines. I hate the way they are run and I do plan on changing them. I have not come up with a plan yet.
You can see in this photo how I routed the wiring harness and why it opened up space for the lower radiator hose.

OK last photo.
Because I am not using the stock bumper cover I no longer needed to use the 2 bars that bolt to the bottom of the steel bumper. Those bars supported the OE bumper cover. Those bars also needed to be able to be bolted into place after the intercooler was installed. This meant that the OE intercooler needed to sit some 2.5" below the steel bumper. With the new bumper cover this gap looked bad and it also caused the oversized Werks intercooler to hot the bottom of the new bumper cover. So I drilled new mounting holes in the flanges on the new intercooler. The cool thing is the aluminum is thick enough to thread. So instead of having to use the OE speed clips as nuts I was able to thread the OE bolts right in making the final installation much easier. I also made the intercooler perpendicular to the ground. This make the installation look 1000% better.

One other thing I did was I got rid of that faint line down the middle of the RKSport bumper cover. I still have a tad more work to do on it to finish that up. You can faintly see the line I am talking about at the bottom of the bumper cover in the middle. This line went about 85% of the way up. If you look at photos of peoples cars that have this bumper and are painted you can see the line. I wanted to keep some of the curve that the OE bumper had. While the elimination of this line makes the overall appearance of the cover look less racy I feel that retaining some of the OE styling in the cover is important so the cover matches with some of the curves in the car. While this line is hardly noticable and probably not paid attetion to I personally feel that the cover looks way better with this line eliminated. I am willing to bet that if you put 2 cars next to each other one with it and one without that little line would make a pretty dramatic change in appearance. Most people would be able to see that there is a difference but would not be able to put a finger on what the difference is, that is how subtle a change it is but makes a large impact in the aesthetics.


And this concludes my update.

 

[kgschlosser]

One other thing. The hood is like an ocean. It is wavy all over the place. So if you are going to fit the thing yourself and get it paint ready you are going to spend close to 200.00 bucks for sanding blocks and PSA sand paper for the blocks. You will also need to get a dark gray or black primer and have to spray the outside of the hood. Then lightly block the thing to see where the low spots are so you can fill them. This process is going to need to be repeated until the hood surface is correct.

To fill them you are going to want to mix finishing glaze and body filler together. I will tell you what the best ratio is when I get that portion done. If you do not do this the paint job on the hood is not going to come out as good as it should and waves are going to be noticeable in the reflection in the paint. Depending on how bad the cast of the hood is It could take me up to a day to complete. Just from the feel of my hand I am going to have to skim coat more then 1/2 of the hood to get the surface to be correct. I would also suggest in getting a "pressed" body filler. This will reduce the possibility of getting pinholes.

 

[Super Serg]

I also ordered a 700 piece push pin pack that has 16 different types of push pins. I am not going to reuse any of the ones I have pulled out.

I also ordered a 160 piece wire retainer clip set so I can reroute the stock engine wiring harness.

Have the info on these? Thx!

 

[kgschlosser]

These are the push rivets.

Amazon.com: RICWINA 620Pcs Car Retainer Clips & Plastic Fasteners Kit Fender Rivet Clips, 16 Most Popular Sizes Nylon Bumper Auto Push Pin Rivets Kit for Toyota GM Ford Honda Acura Chrysler: Automotive

Buy RICWINA 620Pcs Car Retainer Clips & Plastic Fasteners Kit Fender Rivet Clips, 16 Most Popular Sizes Nylon Bumper Auto Push Pin Rivets Kit for Toyota GM Ford Honda Acura Chrysler: Clips - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

and these are the wire retaining clips.

Amazon.com: SUPERFASTRACING 132 Pcs Car Body Wiring Harness Fastener Routing Clips Convoluted Assortment Kit for GM: Automotive

Buy SUPERFASTRACING 132 Pcs Car Body Wiring Harness Fastener Routing Clips Convoluted Assortment Kit for GM: Clips - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

This is the PET loom that I used.
3/4"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NVG25D1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1/2"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q4CVVG5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I only needed a single roll of each.

This is the copper colored aluminum wire I used to hold the PET closed. It also gives it a better look. You can choose from several different colors.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QL42W67/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here is the radiator hoses. I got 2 of these. I need to order another 3 feet to finish the lower radiator hose.

Amazon.com: 48" Stainless Steel Radiator Flexible Coolant Water Hose Kit With Caps Universal: Automotive

Buy 48" Stainless Steel Radiator Flexible Coolant Water Hose Kit With Caps Universal: Radiator - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

I ordered this so I can connect the oil cooler output into the lower radiator hose.

Amazon.com: Dorman 626-325 HVAC Heater Hose Assembly for Select Ram Models (OE FIX): Automotive

Buy Dorman 626-325 HVAC Heater Hose Assembly for Select Ram Models (OE FIX): Hose Assemblies - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

I need to check the line from the oil cooler output still I am not sure if it is 5/8" or if it is 3/4" Once I check I will order the correct adapter from here.

MarineEast -- Products

www.marineeast.com

you can get all kinds of ladder clips here if needed.

MarineEast -- Products

www.marineeast.com

Now If you want to go the cheap way out as far as the braided stainless steel is concerned.... If you have a Restore or something along those lines in your area go there and pick up the braided stainless steel service tubes use to connect sinks to the plumbing in your house. Cut the ends off then slide the braiding off. then slide it over whatever line it is that you want braided. The service hoses should cost 1 - 2 dollars. extremely CHEAP!

This is the electrical tape you MUST use. This is the only electrical tape you should ever use on anything period! You will understand why when you use it if you have not tried it already.

3M Scotch Super 33+ Vinyl Electrical Tape, .75-Inch by 66-Feet, 4-PACK: Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific

3M Scotch Super 33+ Vinyl Electrical Tape, .75-Inch by 66-Feet, 4-PACK: Amazon.com: Industrial & Scientific

www.amazon.com

You can also get the tape at your local big box home improvement store.

The tape gets used on the wiring harness, the ends of the braided stainless steel and also under every single worm gear clamp you use. This tape can stretch a large amount, you will need to do this when wrapping points on the harness. It is will nice tight bundles out of the wiring. strip off all of the old tape and loom from the main trunks, do not do the individual sensor leads. go back after with the excess loom you have and then do the sensor leads for the sensors that are in plain sight.

 

[kgschlosser]

OK so I changed up a few things. I didn't like some of the lines so I changed them out for something different. I will post photos in an hour or 2.

 

[kgschlosser]

OK so here is the photos of the change I made to some of the lines. I changed the coolant overflow lines that run from the block and radiator to the coolant overflow bottle. The ones you see in the photo are now semi rigid corrugated stainless steel. I also did the same thing to the coolant line that runs from the block to the turbo.

 

[kgschlosser]

I started messing about with installing the DDMWorks pro beam and also the Werks frame brace. I was looking at the layout of the rear suspension in the car and how both frame braces were made. While I am sure the Pro Beam and the frame brace would make a sizeable difference in the handling of the car I though it could be improved upon. So me being me I couldn't leave it alone. I added some bits to the frame brace with improved the rigidity of it probably no less then 500%. I am also going to join the frame brace and the Pro beam together to allow them to work as one. This is going to stiffen up the flexing of the control arm mounts when hard cornering.

This is what I have done so far.

This photo the Pro beam and the frame brace are more visible

The frame brace is relatively flat so I added L channel along the left, right and back of the brace. This would stiffen it up a whole lot. I am also going to add either corner braces in each of the 4 corners the pro beam and the frame brace make. This will join the 2 together. I might make an X instead of doing the corner braces. the reason why this would be a really important thing to do is because of how low the mount point is for the lower control arms. If you notice you cannot see the frame at all. It is quite the distance from the control arm mount point to where the frame is. This whole bracket that GM welded onto the frame acts like a lever twisting the frame during hard cornering. While the 2 braces will help it is not a 100% solution to this problem we need to keep the 2 control arm mount points square to each other. and to do thos you would need to create a box which is what the pro beam and frame brace do, and then add either corner brackets or an X.

The reason I added the L channel is this. if you take a piece of flat bar stock and welded it to the control arm mount points when hard cornering occurs what is stopping that flat bar from bowing? Nothing by adding the L channel it completely stops that bowing. I will put it to you this way. I put the frame brace on 1" blocks one block on each corner where the brace would mount. Then I stood in the middle of it. guess what happened?? I ended up standing on the ground because it bowed. Once I added the L channel Me and a friend of mine stood on it and it didn't budge. I didn't add one to the front of the brace because we still want to have some flex otherwise it could end up to stiff and cause hopping/skipping problems. The changes I made thus far are going to improve handling in a whole shot and also when accelerating coming out of a corner. This is where the load is going to shift backwards and then you would have the lateral pressures putting most of the stress on the back control arm mount. So this is where I am focusing on mostly. Sure it is going to change how the car handles during all kinds of driving conditions, but the 2 mentioned conditions are where it should really shine.

I am pretty good at locating weak points in a structure and also coming up with solutions to fix it. I am not a professional at it so I could be wrong. I figured If I am wrong I can press the rewind button and take it out since the modifications I made are bolted on. some time and a little dollars lost, and well my pride to some degree. How I am picturing the flexing and stresses on the rear frame and suspension of the car is probably close to being correct the question becomes when does stiff become too stiff and cause handling problems. This is the mystery.

 

[kgschlosser]

I am still working on the turn signals. I didn't like the speed they were running at so I had to break the strip into multiple pieces. There are a total of 10 strips now and 8 of them work in a manner that makes them look like a single strip. This is going to make the strip run a lot faster. I made the wiring harness for it and I have the lenses made and the LED's installed into the lenses. I am writing the software over again to handle the splitting apart of the strip.

I messed about with the lower radiator hose some more, I didn't like where I had the T for the overflow bottle. It was to mixed up into the ABS and A/C lines. Good news tho the system filled up without getting air bound!! YAY!!!!!!! The best thing is because I replaced all of the coolant lines with stainless steel I will never have to replace them.

I also started work on the fender liners and splitting them into an upper and lower section. They are cut. I have to add a few layers of fiberglass to the upper portions to make them stiffer so the 2 pieces will make a good seal. I changed the orientation of the overflow bottle so it didn't stick out so much over the top of the wheel well.

The CAI I purchased from Werks didn't fit. It was hitting the upper radiator hose. I put the OE upper radiator hose in to see if it would hit that and it did. So I busted out the sawzall and cut the thing into pieces I could use. I am waiting on a 90 degree elbow to finish the CAI, I should have it this Friday. I also had to move the CAI anywho because of somethign I did with the raim air hood, I explain more about that a couple lines down.

The wastegate if now fully installed, what a pain that was.
The catted downpipe is installed and I hooked up the OE exhaust until I can get it down to the exhaust shop to have a custom exhaust made.
The front frame brace is installed as well.

I added a duct to go from the ram air on the hood and it pipes into the duct for the radiator. Because I did a really good job at getting the intercooler and air dam installed so the only air the radiator sees is the air that comes out from the back side of the intercooler. This is a GREAT thing for getting rid of intercooler heat soak when the car is at an idle. The fan for the radiator is going to pull the air through the intercooler. It's a bad thing because the radiator doesn't see any cool air if the intercooler is hot. So I added that duct and inside of it there is a damper that will open only when there is a positive pressure on it from the ram air side. Otherwise it will stay closed, which means the car isn't moving and we want to cool down the intercooler using the radiator fan.

I am replacing the 13 year old OE battery with a 2600 CA stinger dry cell battery. This is probably going to be the last battery this car ever gets put into it. It is a smaller footprint then the OE battery and it's a few lbs lighter as well. It has a hell of a lot more cranking amps. the OE battery has 650 CA I believe. Because the battery is smaller I decided to make the battery parallel to the fender and shift it towards the door.

Changing and moving the battery opened up a pretty sizeable space under the fuse box and that space is even larger then normal because I had cleaned up the wiring spaghetti that GM had done there. Now there is a bee line right from the turbo to the fender vents I took the fuse box bracket out and cut some of it off where it was acting like a wall. I cut it down by about 1/2. I used fiberglass heat shield on the wheel well liner and I made a sheet metal bottom side and top to protect the wires and fuse box and the heater box. This should work like a champ at removing heat from the turbo area when the car is in motion. The air moving down the side of the vehicle should cause a negative pressure area where the vents are and air should be sucked out from the vents.

Here are some more photos of my progress.


Vent under the fuse box.

vent that goes to the ram air along with the final version of the hold down bracket for the bumper cover.

Lots and lots of extremely expensive DEI heat sleeves, and heat shielding. The shielding covers the entire heater box and covers the firewall from the heater box to about the middle of the engine.

This is a good photo showing what I did with the wiring and hoses running across the front of the engine.
The CAI pipe that is attached to the filter is going to run parallel to the radiator and then make a 90 degree turn and head down to the front of the car.
This is where the air cleaner is going to sit.

I like this photo, I think because it shows how complex the piping is. The amazing thing is not a single piece of it touches anything else.
You can also see where I marked the hood for where the piece of fender liner is going to sit.

 

[kgschlosser]

I have started doing the research on building an HMI (Human Machine Interface) for the car. I decided that I do need to have additional information provided to me so I know what is happening with the engine. The solstice already has a snug interior and I do not want to add all kinds of gauges. This would make it feel too cramped and it would also reduce visibility. I want to keep the dashboard exactly how it is and not modify it at all. My plan is to replace the gauge cluster with a screen and place the information I need within the factory locations. I am going to hijack the steering wheel controls so I am able to make changes for what is being displayed and to be able to set warning thresholds. I might use a raspberry pi setup with boot to qt so the gauge cluster will boot up in about 4-5 seconds. This is also going to be nice because I am going to be able to add additional sensors and be able to get the readings right where they should be. And if I want to go over the top I could add in a HUD.

 

[joybill44]

I have started doing the research on building an HMI (Human Machine Interface) for the car. I decided that I do need to have additional information provided to me so I know what is happening with the engine. The solstice already has a snug interior and I do not want to add all kinds of gauges. This would make it feel too cramped and it would also reduce visibility. I want to keep the dashboard exactly how it is and not modify it at all. My plan is to replace the gauge cluster with a screen and place the information I need within the factory locations. I am going to hijack the steering wheel controls so I am able to make changes for what is being displayed and to be able to set warning thresholds. I might use a raspberry pi setup with boot to qt so the gauge cluster will boot up in about 4-5 seconds. This is also going to be nice because I am going to be able to add additional sensors and be able to get the readings right where they should be. And if I want to go over the top I could add in a HUD.

WOW!! That is one helluva beautiful job!

 

[kgschlosser]

well upon further investigation on the gauge cluster idea. I am possibly going to probably communicate using the GM SW CAN and also from the OBD2 port using mode22 PIDS. I will be able to collect every piece of information I need through those 2 data channels in the vehicle. The OBD2 will allow me access to quite a few of the engine sensors and the GM SW CAN I will have access to things like the steering wheel controls, DIC information TMPS sensor readings basically all of the body electronics. I am going to have to poke about to see if I can locate a way to render onto a screen not using QT. the boot to QT thing costs about 5,000 USD. so I will pass on that one. I need to be able to boot the raspberry pi without having to boot a full fledged OS. Or maybe just a really stripped down Linux. I know there is an automotive flavor of Linux available I would have to do some more research to see if it would run on a raspberry pi.

Python is my language of choice and I would prefer to not have to learn a new programming language like QML (QT Markup language). I do know enough C/CPP and Java to get myself into trouble. For thee sake of speed I may build a nano PC and install that into the vehicle With SSD's and UEFI it only takes windows 4-5 seconds to boot up and there is also hibernation that can be used as well to get things going faster. I made a "custom" Windows 7 that has all of the crap removed from it that never really gets used. It has a small memory footprint and takes up < 10GB drive space.

This project is going to have to wait until either the winter or next year My wife is already about to shoot me because of the large about of money spent over the last 2-3 months. I can't drop another 1000 to develop a gauge cluster.

 

[kgschlosser]

@joybill44

Not sure if you are commenting about the photos are if you are commenting about the HMI

 

[JohnWR]

You don't mention it specifically, but I assume you know that the right-side SWCs go directly to the radio, and are not available over the CAN bus.

You might want to look into the "Sleepy Pi".

Also, with some creative control you could boot the Pi when you open the door, and have it running by the time you get the car powered and running.

 

[joybill44]

@joybill44

Not sure if you are commenting about the photos are if you are commenting about the HMI

The whole thing! It's amazing!

 

[kgschlosser]

@JohnWR

I have the monsoon system in my car. the amplifier is what has the volume control. The radio talks to the amplifier over the SW CAN. The steering wheel controls are easy to interface with. All of the buttons are attached to either 1 or 2 wires for the Solstice I think for the radio controls it is 1 wire and I believe the wire color is white with a black stripe. The single wire does all of the radio control buttons. The buttons are multiplexed to ground through resistance. each button having a different resistance to ground. Mapping them out so I could capture the button presses would be a snap. I can actually set it up so that if I press say the info button 2 times it will change the radio control buttons over to controlling the HMI and if I press the info button 2 times again it will switch them back over to controlling the radio. This can be done using the analog GPIO pins on the Pi. It would act as a pass through when not activated and then unlatch and stop passing through when it gets activated.I would also have a timeout set for it as well.

I already have a fairly extensive list of SW CAN control codes (arbitration id's). There is quite a bit of information available about GMLAN do a search for "GMLAN Bible" There are control codes for telling thee CD player to eject the disc. It's fairly extensive what can actually be done. couple that with the diagnostic information available over the OBD using the mode22 codes and that's a whole lot of available information.

I have my dash apart right now I am going to measure the thing to see what size screen I would need. I am thinking something like 14 x 8. I can get a screen like that with an HDMI on it so I can plug right into the pi with it. and because I am using the HDMI I will get the hardware acceleration for the rendering of the graphics

@joybill44
Thanks for saying that. It has been an interesting project to say the least. Correcting the crappy GM engineering has been OOO so much fun!.(sarcasm).. I will be turning my attention to the interior pretty soon. I have to replace my drivers seat belt. the damned thing gets stuck. I almost had to cut the thing because it had me pinned in the car as was so tight I couldn't get the release button to press down. I was able to locate a lighter I had in the car that gave me some leverage to push the release button in. Since I have to take out all of the plastic panels behind the seats I am going to "de-squeak" the car. a roll of the white 3M double side tape. Put a small piece where screws go through the panels and also wrap the clips. This gets rid of 100% of the rattles and squeaks inside of a GM vehicle. Total cost is 5 bucks for the tape and the time it takes to do it. I might also add some rock wool under the carpet over the side of the transmission tunnel on the drivers side. My gas petal foot sweats to much on longer drives because of the heat that comes through the floor.

I am hoping to have my turn signals up and running this evening. I will not have them installed into the car as I am waiting on a fuse box. I have to make a trip down to the local car audio place to get some terminal rings and also some power and ground wire. I am going to take apart the fuse box under the hood and add a fuse in there for the 5 volt power supply.

when I get the turn signals fully up and running I will set up a demo and shoot a video of them.

 

[kgschlosser]

OK so I am not going to have the turn signals done this evening, again..... I got into getting my car together to the point of being able to start it. which I did. I put the OE map sensors in and unplugged the coils and cranked it over to get oil into the Turbo. Once I did that I plugged back in the coils and started it up. It ran like pOOp but it ran and with no check engine light. The cars ECU was busy trying to figure out what the hell I did to the thing LOL. I wanted to start it up to make sure there were no oil leaks. it only ran for maybe a minute so not enough to get the coolant system pressurized. It has been sitting for a couple of days with the coolant in it and there are no puddles and the overflow hadn't dropped at all. so that's a good thing. I guess I got everything plugged back in properly as well, no check engine light. The engine was cold and it's about 42 degrees outside right now so it started and bumped the RPM up to 1500 when it does this the turbo spools up to 1 PSI. The thing sings even at 1 PSI of boost.

Tomorrow I am going to order HP Tuners and when I get it I am going to download my ECU data and send it over to Dave at Werks so he can do his thing. I will keep a copy of the original so I can see what exactly has been changed. I wish GMTech was still active on the forums he hasn't logged in since Jun 13, 2016. He has a pretty vast amount of knowledge on these vehicles and he doesn't seem to mind sharing and helping. Not sure why he has disappeared. It's always nice when there is someone that can answer some questions.

 

[kgschlosser]

I have done some more research for the digital gauge cluster. qIt is all doable and actually wouldn't be that hard to do. The only bump in the road is the boot up time. I will not have to worry about the Pi killing my battery if I leave it in a low power state when the car is off. I am already going to have an ESP32 micro controller that is going to have to stay in a low power state when the car if off unless the hazards are on. I have to locate a screen that has the same dimensions as the gauge cluster and has an HDMI port on it. These are available and shouldn't be that hard to locate. Our cluster doesn't have any kind of a curve to it at all which is a good thing. I can use Python and a WX python framework that I am familiar with to render the images on the screen.

Here is volume knob GUI control that I made using Python.

I can run cythonize the Python code into C code so it will run about 200 times faster. I am going to do some looking to see if I can locate a stripped down Linux for the Pi. This will also help to improve performance.

There are already SW CAN devices that are made so I will not have to worry about the low level protocol portions so I will only have to write software to handle the GM specific aspect. I am pretty sure that between the SW CAN and the OBD2 I should be able to capture all of the information necessary to make this work. Ideally I would like to not use OBD2 as it is a slow connection and not ideal for gauges. I may have to data log the connection at the gauges and reverse engineer the high level protocol to get the information I want.