Homebrew
New Member
- Joined
- October 23, 2003
- Messages
- 2
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Clinton, MD
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2000 XLT
I hope posting this in this forum isn't inappropriate, since i'm not selling anything as of yet. What I am doing is gauging the interest in a custom mount for 95-2001 explorers/mountaineers. If this is still considered in the wrong forum, if a mod would move it, I'd appreciate it.
I have a mount i've been fabricating from fiberglass for my now deceased 2000 mountaineer. It's been sitting nearly completed for a while now and I recently was debating on what to do with it. Around the same time I was reading a little on mold making and have been thinking of trying it on something. I got to thinking this mount would be something that may be worth reproducing. Basically i'm wondering if there is anyone that would be interested in one of these. After doing the calculations on the materials I would need to mold this piece, it would cost me around $250 or so to make the mold. If there is enough interest, I may give it a go. Now the piece is designed to mount on top of the cubby hole panel at the front of the console. It may fit on top of the trip computer as well, but I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure. It would need to be glued or epoxied to the original console piece, or similarly affixed. I'm sure someone will have a less permanent solution. I didn't plan ahead for that, since I was oringally fiberglassing right on the original piece. It just happened that the fleece i was using for shape, allowed me to pry the fiberglassed part off the original. So I know have a piece that could be reproduced to fit directly on the console bezel. The one big drawback to the mount is that it will only hold a Xenarc 700 series monitor unless you're willing to cut the monitor bezel out and fabricate your own. As it stands now though, you can remove the front faceplate from a Xenarc 700 series monitor and mount the monitor directly to the bezel. To give you an idea of what i'm talking about, here are some pictures. Please note that some more smoothing is left to do on the piece, it's not finished, but it does give a good representation of the finished product.
Here's an angled pic of the fiberglass part mounted on the original console trim.
Another shot of the fiberglass part mounted, you can see the original console trim inside.
Here's a shot of the fiberglass mount sitting next to the original console trim piece.
Now the molded parts reproduced from this fiberglass piece, would not be fiberglass, instead they would be formed from plastic resin. They would be limited to the Xenarc 700 series of monitors that has about 6 different models. The models don't vary greatly but you can get touchscreen monitors for those thinking of carputers, vga screens, and rca input screens. In order to install the screen you would need to remove the screen's original faceplate as the faceplate is molded into my mount. The mount would need to be affixed to the console cubby bezel(possibly the trip computer). It would only fit 95-2001 explorer/mountaineers. It's not going to be the quality to you see from a high production an item, but quality would be what you'd expect from hand made item not professionaly produced. At this point I'm just curious if it's worth trying my hand at molding it since it would involve a good size cash outlay. I was thinking around $60 would be a fair price for the piece, but I honestly haven't completely crunched the numbers, so $60 may or may not be realistic. I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts on the idea and the price point. I'm not looking to make a business out of this, just maybe make a little extra cash on the side and as well as not letting all the work I did on the original piece go to waste. I can get some more pics if people would like to see more angles and the inside. Unless I can convince someone else with another explorer to let me use their explorer for a few minutes, i'm unable to get shots of it mounted in the truck since I no longer have mine. I'll see what i can do on that front though. Thanks for reading.
-Kevin
I have a mount i've been fabricating from fiberglass for my now deceased 2000 mountaineer. It's been sitting nearly completed for a while now and I recently was debating on what to do with it. Around the same time I was reading a little on mold making and have been thinking of trying it on something. I got to thinking this mount would be something that may be worth reproducing. Basically i'm wondering if there is anyone that would be interested in one of these. After doing the calculations on the materials I would need to mold this piece, it would cost me around $250 or so to make the mold. If there is enough interest, I may give it a go. Now the piece is designed to mount on top of the cubby hole panel at the front of the console. It may fit on top of the trip computer as well, but I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure. It would need to be glued or epoxied to the original console piece, or similarly affixed. I'm sure someone will have a less permanent solution. I didn't plan ahead for that, since I was oringally fiberglassing right on the original piece. It just happened that the fleece i was using for shape, allowed me to pry the fiberglassed part off the original. So I know have a piece that could be reproduced to fit directly on the console bezel. The one big drawback to the mount is that it will only hold a Xenarc 700 series monitor unless you're willing to cut the monitor bezel out and fabricate your own. As it stands now though, you can remove the front faceplate from a Xenarc 700 series monitor and mount the monitor directly to the bezel. To give you an idea of what i'm talking about, here are some pictures. Please note that some more smoothing is left to do on the piece, it's not finished, but it does give a good representation of the finished product.
Here's an angled pic of the fiberglass part mounted on the original console trim.
Another shot of the fiberglass part mounted, you can see the original console trim inside.
Here's a shot of the fiberglass mount sitting next to the original console trim piece.
Now the molded parts reproduced from this fiberglass piece, would not be fiberglass, instead they would be formed from plastic resin. They would be limited to the Xenarc 700 series of monitors that has about 6 different models. The models don't vary greatly but you can get touchscreen monitors for those thinking of carputers, vga screens, and rca input screens. In order to install the screen you would need to remove the screen's original faceplate as the faceplate is molded into my mount. The mount would need to be affixed to the console cubby bezel(possibly the trip computer). It would only fit 95-2001 explorer/mountaineers. It's not going to be the quality to you see from a high production an item, but quality would be what you'd expect from hand made item not professionaly produced. At this point I'm just curious if it's worth trying my hand at molding it since it would involve a good size cash outlay. I was thinking around $60 would be a fair price for the piece, but I honestly haven't completely crunched the numbers, so $60 may or may not be realistic. I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts on the idea and the price point. I'm not looking to make a business out of this, just maybe make a little extra cash on the side and as well as not letting all the work I did on the original piece go to waste. I can get some more pics if people would like to see more angles and the inside. Unless I can convince someone else with another explorer to let me use their explorer for a few minutes, i'm unable to get shots of it mounted in the truck since I no longer have mine. I'll see what i can do on that front though. Thanks for reading.
-Kevin
