Close

Madhouse Reloaded

A project log for Retro-futuristic automobile control panel

Conversion of dashboard from an old, Communist clone of the French Renault 12 (Dacia 1310)

skaarj[skaarj] 05/29/2016 at 20:220 Comments

Allright, so we've got a nice terminal, a Raspberry PI running FreeBSD, some CAN-BUS replacement protocol. Let's acquire some data by interfacing with the automobile.

Console down again, this time wire diving into.....

...the most sadomasochistic wiring I have ever had to solve.

Welcome to the Madhouse. It's so hot outside that my usual IQ booster (my favorite beer) would send me straight to beauty sleep.

Nothing written, nothing documented, schematics on the internet have nothing to do with this mess. Classic communist piggery. I need to MacGyver this insanity with nothing but my old analog meter and a knife. And of course soldering everything plus ducktape to keep sparks away.

4 hours later I identified all the wires that should go through a fuse panel.

There's a problem with my camera, it does not always focus.

They say they no longer build things like they used to. This is true. Commercial products are now a priority. A few things are built to last forever. To keep things old-school, the work must also be done old-school. So the red wire is the short lights line. Soldered.

Then, a cable plastic coating applied on top of the soldering. While driving, the wires vibrate and move. The soldered area is hard, the rest of the cable is soft. After years of repeated process, the area at the start of soldering... will begin to break and the cable will become interrupted. So this little hack keeps the vibrations away from the problematic area.

Finally, isolation tape to prevent the extra-coating from slipping.

And in that mess there are A LOT of interrupted cables, contacts isolated in a hurry, a lot of "work" done in the most offensive unprofessional way. It is amazing why no short-circuits happened all this time.

Finally - the fuse panel is ready:

Bottom right: that's my solder gun. It's 40 years old, I use that even on tiny boards. And in the places I work, any professional precision soldering equipment will become recycling material, it will not resist. I can do precision operations with this old monster under microscope by manually keeping the temperature under control (button play). But for now - just old thick cables.

Finally all the madness starts to make sense. And surprise - the car is able to start in this horrible state. Even without steering wheel attached. Try to do this with a modern vehicle. Oldies but goldies.

Top-left: fuse panel kept in place with a spare wire;

bottom: driving lights control and direction signaling controls.

The rectangular connectors go to the gauges, there are two buttons and another connector for windshield wipers.

And I removed A LOT of cables which just sat there, no functions at all, they were just starting from a place (no connector) and going to other places and of course no connectors.

This UPS will be perfect. Powered from the car battery.

I need a 220 Volts power supply for the audio system...

...and for my CB radio transceiver. Army issued, code name UGAR and it is documented here.

Unfortunately I can not use the other radio station (R123M, soviet army issued) because on transmission mode it sucks so much power that it kills the engine.

The hardest part of this operation is to install the console back in its place. And of course the camera ate the batteries while taking the picture... no pic with this operation unfortunately.

Next log - wireless wizardry.

[END OF TRANSMISSION]

______________________________________

kernel panic: improbability coefficient below zero

Discussions