I have one of those cheap Chinese in-car DVD/Sat-Nav/Radio thingies in my Land Rover and it also has the ability to pair with a phone via Bluetooth. I find it convenient to load music to my phone and listen to it through the car stereo. So I wanted to make a neat solution to keep the phone handy when using it like this.
As you can see in the first picture I have removed the ashtray and use the resulting hole as a convenient place to hang the Sat-Nav antenna out of the dashboard. It looks pretty gash.
Using a foam block I got cheap on eBay I cut a piece off and shaped it to fit in the ashtray aperture.
Once I'd trimmed it down so that it was a nice snug fit I marked and cut out a slot to stand the phone in, making sure it was very slightly smaller than the phone so it would be gripped securely.
And here we are:
However, I still needed to do something with the Sat-Nav antenna so I made a small bracket out of some aluminium sheet offcut and angled it so that it would line up with the metal frame of the dashboard in the hole.
I then drilled a hole in it and where it touched the dashboard frame and screwed it into place with the Sat-Nav antenna attached to the forward facing side with a number plate sticky pad. This meant that I had to trim a slot on the foam block to accommodate the bracket as it squeezed the phone slot smaller when fitted into the hole.
And all done:
Just thought I'd share as it's pretty cheap and easy to do. You could cut the slot to suit what you want to put in there, it doesn't just have to be a phone.
As you can see in the first picture I have removed the ashtray and use the resulting hole as a convenient place to hang the Sat-Nav antenna out of the dashboard. It looks pretty gash.
Using a foam block I got cheap on eBay I cut a piece off and shaped it to fit in the ashtray aperture.
Once I'd trimmed it down so that it was a nice snug fit I marked and cut out a slot to stand the phone in, making sure it was very slightly smaller than the phone so it would be gripped securely.
And here we are:
However, I still needed to do something with the Sat-Nav antenna so I made a small bracket out of some aluminium sheet offcut and angled it so that it would line up with the metal frame of the dashboard in the hole.
I then drilled a hole in it and where it touched the dashboard frame and screwed it into place with the Sat-Nav antenna attached to the forward facing side with a number plate sticky pad. This meant that I had to trim a slot on the foam block to accommodate the bracket as it squeezed the phone slot smaller when fitted into the hole.
And all done:
Just thought I'd share as it's pretty cheap and easy to do. You could cut the slot to suit what you want to put in there, it doesn't just have to be a phone.
