Guest Anonymous Posted May 24, 2001 Share Posted May 24, 2001 hey guys, well since my car is no longer with us and beyond recovery I have decided to do some serious bench racing I plan on starting with a clean sheet of paper and doing it up right this time. I'm looking at buying a '92 toyota 4X4 pickup truck to drive till my next Z. I figure that once I get out of boot camp and get my enlistment bonus ($7000 on a closed contract baby ) I will buy a small flatbed trailer and a Z or ZX that is in good condition, no rust, no body damage, no motor. Guess why . I plan on doing a serious custom job this time since I will have access to the military machine shops and what not. and boy is the ole noggin a' whizzin. First things first my main question is what z has the best drag coefficient 280 or 280ZX I am not really worried about weight since it will more be a hi-po luxo cruiser type car. And I thought I would share an idea of mine with you guys and gauge it's reactions. you guys have seen knightrider right. well check out this site www.autonav.com can you say KIT actually my ideer is to use that computer system and then snag some sensors and what not for the seats, doors, locks, motor, etc and have it all tie into that computer (engine management would be ran seperately by something like SDS of course for safety's sake) and then program a voice recognition and command program into said system. now this would be a pain to do but it is exactly the sort of thing i will be trained for in the navy, advanced eletronics computer field to be exact and besides writing that kind of program will help keep me sane on ship duty. but here is the clincher though, instead of having the program emulate KIT off of knightrider I would have it act like guess who?? that's right it would be modeled after none other than HAL 5000 off of the 2001 space oddyssey film. I mean come on who wouldn't want that? just imagine, everytime you sit down in the driver seat it will turn on with that glowing red orb for an eye looking at ya through the lcd screen and say good morning (insert name here) how are you today? How cool is that? I"ve mentioned this to a fellow nerd and while he thinks it would rock he seems to be of the opinion that modeling it after a homocidal A.I. computer points out the fact that the programmer must be a little off his rocker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavyZ Posted May 24, 2001 Share Posted May 24, 2001 Wow! Since you're going very techno here, I would strongly suggest figuring out the total cost first before jumping in to all those mods. The nicer the Z car you buy, the better. It will need less work to begin with, especially if things are already working. The ZX aerodynamics are better, I'm fairly sure, although I have not looked at the Road&Track Cd for either car. If you want luxury, go for the ZX, if you want it a little more raw, go with the Z. Whatever you do, don't get caught in a "project" when what you really want is a V8Z to drive around. Finish the basics first and start with a decent car. Then go for the techno stuff. You'll be much happier with a car that actually drives. Hope this gets ya thinking. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted May 29, 2001 Share Posted May 29, 2001 actually the installation itself would'nt be much harder than wiring up a stereo system. I was thinkning of using sensors for the seats, doors, trunk, etc.. from a maxima or some similar high tech luxury car that i can find in a pic-n-pull. as for the price of it, well that should'nt be much more than a high end stereo system either sunce it is already made hardware that is mass produced. so it isn't like the hardware it self will be "custom" just the application. Like I said though the biggest pain will be making a program on that kind of scale. while a lot of programming is cut and paste nowadays there is still the fact that i want to incorparate a feature called "fuzzy logic" basically what that is is a way of programming will allow the computer to remember things and sort of evolve within it's programming. kinda like a lobotomized heuristic function. sy for example that every time i got into the car i aticmatically played a crtain song. well after about the 5th or 6th tine it would start playing that song by it self as soon as i got in to the car. also it will be able to "rember people by their voice print. so if i have a friend in the car and they recognize them selves to the computer it will recognize them say a month or two down the road when their in the car again and say hello and state their name. Heck i could even get rid of the ignition key. instead i could just sit in the driver seat and say a certain phrase like "go speedracer." and that will trigger the ignition. and nobody but me will be able to start it since they don't have my voice print. the possibilities are staggering. And bear in mind that this is perfectly well in the capability range of a pentium 3 or even a pentium 2. but i would really like to find something similar to that yacht computer but with a macintosh G4 chip since the desig lends itself more towards the type of programming that i will do sorry to get so technical on ya but i just kind of got stuck in nerd mode there. now that i think about it though, if I can do this and do it up well. maybe I might be able to sell kits of it with the programming already done for the person. how many of you guys wouldn't want something like this in your car? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted May 29, 2001 Share Posted May 29, 2001 I would also like to say that i didn't think that i misspelled that many things until i looked at it after it had been posted. man late nights can really mess with my head. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted June 4, 2001 Share Posted June 4, 2001 sounds cool...but i've learned that most cool things are ridiculously expensive... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MM_280Z Posted June 11, 2001 Share Posted June 11, 2001 You are obviously very enthusiastic about this (admirably so), and I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but have you actually done similar work like this with electronics? What you describe takes serious work, and it sounds like it will be mostly for novelty's sake. I too went through this "phase" in my younger days (not too long ago, actually). I did end up with cool stuff, but now that I look back on it, it wasn't worth the effort and I had no idea how much effort it really required from the start. Trust me, it is best to proceed in small, well defined steps where at any point you can stop and answer the question: "What have I accomplished, and was it worth the effort?" and be satisfied with the answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted June 11, 2001 Share Posted June 11, 2001 hmmm.. good point there MM but i don't really think it will be all that much of a waste of my time. for the simple fact that I am VERY VERY into programming and i want to learn as much about it as i can. I just see this a learning exercise so that i have something to flex my brain on that i actually enjoy doing(instead of a class assignment where i'm told what to do which kinda takes out the originality of it for me). also bear in mind that programming and maybe even hopefully computer system design is what I plan on making my career. As to experiance i have 3 1/2 years of highschool electronics courses (not counting allthe books iread and things i play with in my free time) wich are detailed enough that by the third year we recieve college credit for completing them. this includes every thing from ac dc theory, fiber op data transmission, laser technology, network troubleshooting, hardware troubleshooting,.. well you get the idea. also i have competed in a national robotics competetion (the F.I.R.S.T. competition) where with a team of three other members and no sponsorships from our town (we had to play gas attendant) we beat over half of the other teams there. where they had major backing, teams of 40-80! members and college engineers backing them. definately our shining moment if i do say so myself. also I do stuff like this for one main reason: personal pleasure. I need a hobby or i will lose my sanity It's like asking why people build small replicas of ships inside a bottle? cause they like doing it even though it's a futile waste of money in the end. don't take me wrong though MM, trust me i'm not trying to rant and dismiss you. infact you brought up a really good point about taking small well defined steps. and that is in programming it is very structured and that's one of the main ways you programm, you focus on one subroutine for a certain function and save when your done. and then another, and another, and another till you have all the little bits and pieces done and then you piece them all together and thats what gives you your program. I don't expect this all too happen at once or even easily for that matter I fully expect to take anywhere from 3/4 to over a year to write this program, this type of programm is new to me so i will be learning as i go. sorry about the length of my post but i felt a little on the talkative side Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MM_280Z Posted June 14, 2001 Share Posted June 14, 2001 Sounds good man. Go for it! From the descriptions in your post, one thing is for sure: you are guaranteed to learn a lot. When you get some cool stuff going post us some pictures (and schematics!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted June 14, 2001 Share Posted June 14, 2001 you can count on me posting my schematics for you guys. I mean i'm going to have to boast somewhere right. then there is the fact that most people will get that funny "I don't have a clue what he is saying" face the moment i bring up capacitance, or overclocking the cpu multiplier. I don't think that will happen here, i have yet to find any other car oriented BB where we get into discussions about declassified nasa papers on high altitude ram-air plenum shapes or the or the not widely known third derivitive A.K.A. "jerk factor" of various motors and all the formulie that follows. I know this is gonna sound corny but i get a RUSH out of learning new things and then applying them for my own means. maybe I've read one too many sci fi/fantasy books but i do know that when i retire my goal is to have a shoebox full of various diplomas Man isn't that little spiel straight out of disney Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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