| Are you crazy? | We've already answered that one.
Special thanks to Greg Mitchell and James Taylor for their help, both in terms of parts, assistance, tools and reassuring me that this wasn't a totally fruity idea. |
| Why? | Simply because we thought it would be cool and we wanted a portable machine for LAN events. Like many people we just got sick of the same old square boxes and thought we'd do something a little out of the ordinary. |
| How much did it cost? | We haven't totaled all of the parts and the time that went into building the GTR. Some parts were obtained free or recycled. Some things had to be imported from the US. Most everything else had to be made specifically for this mod. |
| Is it for sale? | Everything is for sale, if the price is right. But with so much effort and expense going into this, it'll take a pretty big offer before we'd part with it. |
| Will you build me one? | Maybe, but it wouldn't be cheap. There's an awful lot of work involved in building one of these and the RC parts aren't cheap. If you want to commission a special build, I'd consider building one for somewhere around $2500 US. |
| Why the GTR? | In short, it was the only 1/8th scale body shell we could fit a KT7A under. If we'd used a smaller motherboard, we could have done a Corvette, Lancer, WRX, Porsche or numerous others. |
| Why not use a MicroATX board?
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Mainly because we had the board and CPU and AMD MicroATX
boards don't have any overclocking features. Apart from which we wanted to make a top notch machine that you'd be proud to have in a desktop, with the added advantage of being portable and very cool. If you check the picture, you can see how a MicroATX board would have easily fitted, and removed the need for a lot of the mods we did to fit the PC into the shell, like cutting the wheels away, soldering the video connector to the back of the Video card etc.... Too easy.. :) |
| No CDROM or Floppy? | There isn't really room, apart from which the plan was the
machine could access these devices across the LAN. If needed, the cables
can be connected to the motherboard to run these devices, or external
USB ones can be used. We have a slimline CDROM from a Laptop, and a future project may be to add it into the GTR. |
| How long did it take? | All up, the project was in the pipeline for 4 months. There were long periods of no work, and some periods of lots of work. It all depends on how much thinking was needed and how much beer was available. |
| How big is it? | As far as PC's go, the GTR is a pretty small machine in
keeping with the original project goals of making a portable LAN PC.
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| How hot does it get inside the case? | As you can imagine, packing all of the components into a
small package such as the GTR did raise a few thermal issues.
We upgraded the power supply with an 80mm 4900RPM fan which draws air from under the car and blows it directly into the Thermoengine on the CPU through a cutout. The wheels act as exhaust vents, and you can feel the hot air coming out of them if you put your hand near them. It's enough to warm your beer (an important thing to keep in mind during LAN events). Under 100% CPU load, the temp of the CPU is around 51 degrees. It idles at around 45, and can go as low as 40 if the car is raised off of the desk, or the rear is hung over the back of the desk, increasing airflow into the power supply. The temperature inside the body shell is a toasty 37 degrees under load. The 7200RPM Hard Drive also gets a little warm, but the heat is transferred to the chassis, which the drive is directly bolted to. |
| Does it still move? | Not enough room I'm afraid, the motherboard juts into the wheel arches preventing them from turning. Of course that's assuming that there was enough room in there to mount a motor and transmission. |
