Instead we created a foam pad that houses the screen within it, that mounts onto the back of the headrest with a strap. The whole thing is soft and squidgy and has masses of give in it. Ros of Fusion Leather fame, made me up some covers for the pads that matched the material on the headrest, the end result is reasonably elegant and safe. With everything in place it was time to set up the visual side of things, We used a number of DVD’s to test the picture quality and all was well until we ran “The Matrix”. There is a scene where they have a helicopter with a Gatling gun blasting away. Whenever the gun flashed, the picture would distort. It seems that the system can’t cope with bright light. We started fault finding and found that when the switching units were bypassed the fault vanished. We spoke to Alpine technical who went out and bought The Matrix so they could simulate the problem, and lo and behold the fault showed up there. They are currently working on the problem and hopefully will have a fix for it soon. We attempted a couple of fix’s using other equipment, but to no avail. In every other respect the DVD and screens work well. The surround sound is awesome! With the big subs thumping away when the Gatling gun was blasting away, they would shift enough air in the car to make your hair move!!
It is set up so that the rear passengers can watch completely different things and have headphones that are dedicated to whatever they are watching. For example one can be playing on the PS2 or X box whilst the other is watching a DVD and the people in the front have the navigation system on their screen and are listening to a CD etc. There is a inbuilt failsafe that doesn’t allow the front screen to display any pictures other than navigation, when the handbrake is off.
The next thing to set up was the navigation system. This is a DVD player with a disc of maps and a GPS aerial. It also uses the odometer to back up when the signal becomes intermittent with trees or tunnels etc. It is excellent and very accurate. It has an optional voice that tells you when you are approaching junctions etc. It was also equipped with numerous anti theft devices and tracking equipment. It would not be a good vehicle to steal anyway as 90% of the stuff in it is handbuilt and there are only a few examples worldwide, apart from our own custom stuff. It would be easy to spot.
All that was left to do was the finishing touch’s. We built a lid to go over what was the spare wheel well. We covered it in Stainless mesh to match the cabinet base. Whilst we were at it, we cut an outline of a Thunderbird in the lid under the mesh and lit the battery box with diodes. At night the image appears through the floor
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