Is this thread the appropriate place for DIY vehicle mods? Hopefully it’s OK to share some of the changes I’ve made here.
My new truck doesn’t have an ash tray. Since that’s where I’ve traditionally kept keys and other bric-a-brac, I decided to make one myself. There’s a weirdly-shaped and useless opening where ashtrays used to be, and I 3D printed a pair of containers to fit there.
Here they are, closed up:
Open, filled with keys and such:
I installed a small crane, some brackets to hold a large hitch, along with an offset toolbox and a mount for a reserve jerry can. The wooden frame in the center holds 20 paving blocks (smooths the otherwise brutal ride). Also the tonneau cover and a fold-down ladder.
Pics of all the above:
On a lighter note, since the rear-most portion frequently contains a cooler with attached bottle-opener, I installed a magnet to catch the caps when they pop off. Better than letting them rattle around the bed during a camping trip. FTR: The yellow tennis ball thing is attached to the hitch when in parking lots, to alert passersby and save a few skinned knees (it’s stored upside down here).
Thanks!
The next project is 3D printing a bracket beneath the dash to hold a 120V receptacle. I’ve got the inverter etc. and have traced the wiring connections behind the dash, I just need to install it and the plug-in. Will provide pics (if I ever get around to it).
I got a pair of those for one of their intended purposes, hooking up a trailer without a camera or spotter. Put one on the hitch and one on the tongue. From there, it’s an easy solo maneuver to put the truck in position so everything is ready to connect. Much easier to install than a back-up camera.
We just bought a 2021 Ford Escape Hybrid with Android Auto. When I plug it in it plays the Spotify radion which is on my phone. What I’d like to do is keep the navigation running on the screen but play music from the car radio - but I can’t seem to figure out how to get access to the car audio system with Android Auto is engaged. Any help?
Are you referring to a nav system already in the car, or the nav app on your phone?
I have Android Auto as well, and the phone’s nav app runs constantly when it’s connected. The only difference is whether I choose to display it. I think (sorry inside and working from memory) the settings for what runs are handled via the Android Auto app on the phone. In my case I had to turn the vehicle off so I had access to the settings. If yours works the way mine does, you might need to inhibit Spotify this way (via phone app).
This might be vehicle specific though (2022 Ram 2500).
The nav system on my phone. The car doesn’t have a built in nav system.
When I plug my phone into the cable the nav system automatically runs, like you said. I can choose to display it or not, I can choose to set a destination or not. But it ONLY takes audio input from my phone, which in my case means Spotify. I can turn off Spotify on my phone and then I get no audio. What I want to do is switch the audio to get input from the car’s radio, but once I connect my phone I seem to lose that option.
If I unplug my phone I can still get calls via Bluetooth, but I lose navigation and audio from my phone.
The talk of infotainment systems reminded me of this story that showed up in my Facebook feed the other day. A Tesla owner invented a modification to add actual buttons to his Model Y. Tesla fanboys hate it.
It looks like Rivian is going to be able to fix the problem with an over-the-air update. Supposedly only 3% of vehicles were affected.
The problem was human error—somebody pushed the wrong updated, which contained a testing certificate which was invalid on the non-testing vehicles, or something like that.
Can I just use this place to complain about the change in meaning over time of “bricked.” At first it meant a device, which going forward would forever have only the functionality of a brick. Perhaps it could be used to hold a door open, because it may as well be a brick. Now it has come to mean “something not working” or “something I don’t know how to fix.”
The old meaning headline could have been “OTA update breaks Rivian infotainment system, yet to be determined if it’s been bricked”.
Not sure where to put this, because it could fit into the GPS bridge tragedy thread, or maybe dig up some old Tesla bashing thread, so I’m putting it here.
My car will automatically close the garage door when I get far enough away from it. It did that as I was backing out of the driveway. Then it opened the garage door, which it should only do if I had pulled close enough to the garage door to trigger the open location, but should not have happened as I was in the street by that point.
I pulled over to use my phone to close the garage door, and the car started routing me a strange way to work. Sometimes that can happen if there is an accident on the primary route, so odd, but not alarming. Then as I started driving the directions it was giving me to take the back way were wrong, too. For example telling me to turn left when I should turn right regardless of which route I’m on.
At that time I noticed the map had me a few blocks from my actual location, and the compass was upside down. It was showing me going south, when I was driving north.
I rebooted the map and nav system, and when it came back everything was fine.
It just occurred to me to look at my map log the car keeps, and at one point near the start of my trip it had me 5 miles from my actual location. No wonder it was sending me a different route and calling out bizarre turn directions.
I red an article in Reuters or The Economist some time in the last month or two about drivers in Moscow, Russia having severe GNSS problems. Suddenly their map system has them 20 miles outside of town, or in the next province, or just 500 meters from where they know they are.
In an era when lots of ordinary drivers are totally dependent on their navigators, and things like the local equivalents of Uber or FedEx are totally dependent on GNSS for route planning and finding unfamiliar addresses, this is a major problem.
It is also snarling air traffic for the same reasons.
The Ministry of Defense is apparently jamming all that at random times with random severity to preclude Ukrainian drone attacks. But it’s snarling their own civil operations.
The article didn’t mention it, but I expect their local law enforcement folks also have a decent amount of GNSS dependency. And won’t have access to the military grade systems that might be able to work past that.
I didn’t realize that Daihatsu was completely owned by Toyota. But this scandal is pretty awful. It’s one thing to cheat on emissions tests like VW, but these were safety tests.
halting all vehicle sales - that is some SERIOUS ship for a business to do …
they most likely find themselves with 1000s or tens of 1000s of vehicles that they cant guarantee are fit for sale … now that is some serious crap going on - you have all the cost put into the good and cannot get it out again … in times with extremely high interest rates … if they have to be retrofitted with something, that will upset the whole supply chain like covid or worse.
Chances are those cars will be later sold off at a good price in Africa, Asia and LatAm.
IMHO Daihatsu is history … my guess is Toy is buying themselves some time to take a decision, but that will cost a lot of top-brass’ career at toyota as well. that is a mayor earthquake
