First things first: this is over 1 year old, I started this project last year about this time and had it to 70% at jan, then school started and work full time so it just hauled as I would work on it after work few hours, all the engineering and manufacturing on the spot
I do not take credit for the idea of a carPC in the wheel as its has been done in the past, but I do take all the credit in creating this design
Since then I have thought of a lot of modifications, and also technology has jumped greatly, esp in the ITX area.
Modification required to trunk area:
*Wheel cover will have to be chopped in the center for clearance and for ventilation purposes.
*Optional: the foam wheel support will need to be shaved about .50 -1” it is quite thick and you will save some space, your tire will drop lower in the trunk yet you will still retain the cushioning for the tire.
*Replace the wheel plastic retainer, get a hex bolt and use the metal part from the retainer, this will give even more clearance
*for good motherboard fitting, the corners of the motherboard hit the sides of the plastic wheel section, thus requiring of using something to deform little lips, or simply cut out the area, note some motherboard are less than 9.6 and might fit on one or other side
Specs WheelPC Case
Fits standard microATX 9.6 x 9.6 sized motherboard
Specific room for 2x 2.5 laptop HD’s
Specific area for DSATX DC PSU (220W)
Enough room to fit all the slots, note that height is limited to bracket size
Current design has 2x 120mm fans under the unit, to suck the air under and from the sides of motherboard
Construction material is all Aluminum
This is still in prototype stage
I had personally came up with a fuse/relay section that is in my trunk for carPC and other future components, I also routed power from the PSU to the front of the car 5v and 12v rails fused of course
I was in the works for creating a plug and play for other misc wire connection such as power, reset and so on, everything should be able to disconnect and take the whole WheelPC out in under 1min depends how the power is connected, I used a regular Molex 12v connection for the power coming into the PSU, so everything that I have can be disconnect fast
The unit its self is strong enough for you to stand on it, the support rails on the carpet area could be removed, as right now it causes a little hump
Future plans and upgrades
I am thinking of designing a slim form factor, as they have a number of devices including video cards, tv tuners, sound cards that all could fit in slim form factor reducing the overall height 1 or 2 inches, which would require less modding in the trunk
I am thinking of designing some kind of locking mechanism that would lock the WheelPC to the wheel were you would have to unlock and get access to the WheelPC and the Wheel its self
Different layouts for more peripherals, such as more room for HD’s or SSD or even CFM ide/sata cards
Thinking of using smaller but more fans either on top and bottom combo, instead of 120mm as they are pretty thick and require clearance at the bottom, 4x 60mm or other sizes could work
replacing all cooling solutions with a custom water cooling kit, mounted together
Tests, I had the WheelPC in my trunk for a little less than a year, while driving around with it, the mobo and all the components worked just fine
I could create more prototypes, but it would require me to design this in CAD system, and since I have no access to CNC’s yet it would be all manual and slow processes, with CNC I could take the solid and add other features maybe even material strengthening and weight reductions as well as better clearance and fitting
I would probably need 20-100+ people interested in order to go the CAD and CNC route, and the costs are still unknown at the moment, but should cost some place around a high end computer case
» Wheel & Tire Center