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Submitted by: Gregg Geil; Austin, TX via Submit a Kludge!
Favorite Comment: Fixer Dave says, “I’d like to know who took the picture? Maybe it was the pedestrian they hit since everyone is so engrossed?”
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I guess the days of “license plate bingo” are long gone and have been traded for “Darryl keeps getting his head in the way!” and “I don’t wanna watch that!”
I think it was much better back when the only options were the local radio stations, a board game, a book or sleeping. I think the movies or games soundtracks would be too distracting for me.
We took a family trip across the country in 2002 for 3 weeks from IN to CA and back with 3 kids and 3 dogs (just so you know, the dogs were better behaved) without the obligatory DVD/game player. Even though the kids complained, fought (don’t look at each other! don’t touch each other! don’t breathe each other’s air!), and whined what seemed like most of the trip, they still tell us they are glad we dragged them across the countryside. They got to *see* what a lot of kids miss because they spend all their time watching a movie or playing a video game. One of my daughters decided to spend some time out in WA, and one of them wants to go back out to the desert just because it was so different from where they lived and grew up. We saw some incredible landscape and awesome wildlife.
Oh! I was also going to say that when *I* was young and traveling cross-country at night with my mom and brother, we used to try and catch Radio Mystery Theater. It was often a challenge to stay within a signal and catch a whole program, so we would be frantically twisting the dial up and down trying to catch the end of the program we were listening to, only to sometimes end up with a new program in another area. I really miss that program. It was so much fun as a kid.
We were a military family, so we got to criss-cross the country several times as we moved again and again. Two parents, four kids, and a cat or two in a stuffed station wagon….. Sometimes it was a lot of whiny ‘she’s in my space!’, but we also did a lot of stops for sight-seeing, reading out loud to each other, begging for stories of my parents’ childhoods, and singing along with the radio. My father must have known, and taught us, just about all of Woody Guthrie’s songs….. good times, good times. Thank heaven for the old days, and no DVD players in the car!
Xbox 360 on the road.
and hopefully under the tires.
xD
Who needs to see out the rear window anyway. No sense in looking at where you’ve already been.
The top of the screen looks to be mounted about shoulder height for the driver, which leaves plenty of visibility! This is 110 percent safe and logical, you folks are just grabbing at straws here!
thats great if u don’t live were i do…. looks like it couldn’t stand a bumpy road… or a hard hit speed bump…
If you look closely, you’ll see that the screen is hanging from bungee cords; they even put a couple of attachment points at the upper corners. Apart from that, LCD screens should be pretty well shock proof; it’s the same technology as a laptop screen, only bigger.
shock proof maybe but try watching something on it… escpiliy if its not full screen(smaller things in a movie)
No one is looking at the damn thing anyway.
That’s because they didn’t realize it runs on 110 volts (it took a 100′ extension cord and 1,200 trips up and down the driveway just to watch Lord of the Rings).
Actually, there’s 12vDC-120VAC converters.
Also, they’re looking at the controllers.
@AmEv: please get your funnymeter fixed, it’s broken.
Please look at my comment below.
Backseat racecar driving….
You’re doing it wrong.
Nice one, my laptop jams between the front seats for the same entertainment system use. Add in a headphone splitter and you get your tunes while they watch the movie.
This kludge makes me ask two questions:
a) Why TF is the TV rednecked into the car, as there are special gadgets intended to hold a TV safely during a ride on a bumpy road?!?
b) WTF is linked to the TV? as the wiring looks totally odd to me. O_O
Why? Because it’s on thereifixedit, that’s why. If they had used the appropriate gear to mount it, it wouldn’t be a kludge and it would have no reason to be shown here.
its hooked up to an xbox 360
What’s linked to the TV? Xbox 360 Component cable. The higher wire hooks up to the stereo.
I was about to say ‘how did you decide those were 360 wires’, but I don’t think anyone else uses that mouse gray color. Maybe on the Wii.
Well, we own two….
Doubles as a seismograph!
What strange game is this that all 3 players are staring at their controllers and not at the action on the screen?
Now that they’ve got this sweet set up, they’d rather play on their PSP’s and DS i’s.
Their Xbox 360 caught the Red Ring of Death. Time for the handhelds.
I’d like to know who took the picture? Maybe it was the pedestrian they hit since everyone is so engrossed?
Good answer – hilarious! I was wondering about the motivation behind the shot being taken from the center of the front dash.
1. Duct Tape (check)
2. Zip-ties (check)
3. Bungee Cords (check)
Bwhahahahaha the universe is MINE!!!
Can’t wait till someone cuts this guy off, slams on the brakes tv takes out the camera, camera go through window, flying camera go through other guys car and give em a concussion!
Not really far fetched. Had a local car wreck a couple years back which involved a car battery being launched out from under the hood of a Ford Expedition & crashing into the windshield of a Honda Civic, killing the driver!
I bet the Honda driver got a charge out of that. Was the Ford driver issued a summons for Breaking and Entering or Battery?
How do you do it dono1?
Actually, the Ford driver was running from the cops. I’m sure he was given a proper ass-kicking by the CHP. (Sorry, I can’t find a link for the story.)
I’m glad I’m not the only one whos done this… of course ours was a classic cathode ray tube tv
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs090.snc3/15756_632331555714_38307444_36334812_7178602_n.jpg
Looks like it was a fun trip:
“Dad, can we pull over? I really have to get something off my chest. Specifically, my legs.”
Funny you should mention that… The first of my 2 trips out west as a child was in a VW bug. My mom had removed the passenger’s and rear seat to make more room for camping supplies and we had a rack on top. My brother sat on the passenger’s “side” (remember, no actual seat) and I sat in the small space left behind him with my knees to my chest most of the time as the back cushion for my brother because I was the smallest. On the occasion where we picked up hitchhikers (not that unsafe back in the early 70′s), I would lay on top of the stuff in the back and my poor brother would have to “compact”. I was so glad when trip #2 was done in a VW station wagon!
I hope they’re playing mario kart.
These guys are giving the installation a silent boycott since mom and dad didn’t allow any XXX movies.
real gamers dont play on a sissy little 10in display when on a road trip.
they rip the 42in off the wall bungie and duck tape it in the car. then hook up the little 10in for the hatters driving behind them.
Probably the only way the mom and dad could get their boys in the van for church. And you wouldn’t believe what they promised the kids after.
Daddy spent nine hours getting that contraption all put together, and the three kids are STILL more interested in looking down at their cell phones.
My husband did this with a CRT television/VCR combo on an angle-iron stand, bolted to the Previa frame. It was bulky, but it worked well. We took the kids cross-country with it a few times.
So when they park and shop, one kid has to stay in the car to deter thieves (who are known to break a car window just to steal some CDs or a few coins lying around)…
Oh hell no. They electrified the car!
A low-budget Pimp My Ride custom installation.
Yo dawg, I heard you like to play games so we put a driving game in your car so you can drive while you drive
could somebody explain me, how the hell got this kids 110 AC Volts in a car with 12 DC Volts Battery???????????
Automobile alternators put out plenty enough amps to run the vehicle, recharge the battery and have enough extra for all kinds of electronic goodies. All this is accessible through the cigarette lighter socket. You convert the additional amps into 110 volts and apply a simple electronic oscillator to generate an AC circuit. You can buy these converters off the shelf for use in a vehicle. You can even charge a device to recharge your automobile battery through the cigarette lighter, even though it’s not generally wired to effectively start the car from the lighter socket. Many cars don’t even come with the lighters anymore, but keep the sockets for powering various portable electronic devices in the cabin. Most of these high-power stereo systems that rattle buildings for miles around don’t need any additional equipment to generate the electricity. Police patrol cars today may be an exception with the all the lights, sirens, computer, radar and communication devices. I think they install larger alternators for them.
I hope that helps.
My grandfather used to buy used cargo vans and build his own campers out of them from scratch. He was head of maintenance for a small college and would get first choice on all the scraps the students would leave behind at the end of the year. He never had to buy any of his wood, paneling, drawers, or anything. Any time the college made improvements, he’d keep whatever they were getting rid of and would use it to outfit his next camper. His entire shop at the college was set up with 30 years of kludging, and I think he had the cheapest budget for repairs during the time he was head of maintenance.
I think this is their attempt at the ultimate MiFi.
They’re all looking down because it’s not their turn. There’s one more kid running behind the car so he can swing that wiimote safely…
Notice how no one in the car is even looking at the TV. Priceless.
The kids are counting the seconds until they can move far, far away from dad who knows how to fix anything.
I never could understand why they put such small tvs in those monsterous SUVs
lol by the AV cords you can see that they belong to an XBOX 360 console… true americans never leave home without home entertainment
Used to do this on long trips with a regular 13″ tv, PS2, and inverter before LCDs, not from the ceiling, but on a cooler bungee corded to seats, saved my butt big time when my tranny went 100 miles away on the way home from vacation and had to drive the whole way at 30 MPH with 4 kids in the car…….