Among these untouchable, integrated dashes is the one found on Infiniti's 2004 G35. Carlos Hickman of Los Labs Automotive Firm in Fort Wayne, IN, recently swapped out the stock AM/FM cassette player with an in-dash six-disc CD changer for JVC's KD-DV5000 DVD/CD Player and 6.5-inch monitor.

The remolding and reassembling of the center dash alone took him a month. Hickman said it was something he felt he could do thanks to his background in electrical engineering. Before opening Los Labs four years ago, Hickman worked as an electrical engineer after completing his studies in electronics engineering technology at Purdue. But the lackluster office environment eventually led him out of his cubicle and into cars.

"I just decided to do something more hands-on," he said. "I've always liked cars, so I just started working a little bit out of my garage down at school, then I moved it up here to Fort Wayne." His shop, of whlch he is the sole employee, specializes In custom fabrication for SUVs and high-end vehicles such as Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. So when he took a look at the Infiniti G35, he knew the job wouldn't be easy.

"Nissan actually said that a system couldn't be put in the car because the alr conditioner and heater controls were integrated with the radlo," Hickman said. "I had never done that to a vehicle before, but I had done similar jobs in different Lexus and BMW models, so I just used some of my electronics background and went to work."

Undoing and Redoing the Dashboard
Since the dashboard's fascia was one undivided panel, Hickman had to fabricate a whole new panel for the dashboard using two-part epoxy and fiberglass to house JVC's KV-MH6500 6.5-lnch wide-screen and the KD-DV5000 DVD/CD player directly below it.

"It wasn't like the radio was a separate unit that had the air conditioner controls in it," Hickman explained. "The whole thing from top to bottom was one piece, so I actually had to take the radio apart, take the air conditioner control apart, and take the climate control apart completely because the display is up top on the dash."

The majority of the factory radio, made up of two circuit boards - one behind the buttons in the dash and the other underneath the center console - was disassembled, but Hickman kept parts of it in the vehicle. "They're hidden." he said. "They don't work, but I tied into those: I essentially took the factory unit, took it apart, extended a bunch of wires, and made it think that it was still one piece, and I hid it inside the car."

The dashboard panel assembles in eight different steps. Hickman first molded the shroud of the 6.5-inch JVC screen onto the dash. Then he molded a Metra regular DIN pocket beneath it to fit the KD-DV5000. But to assemble it, Hickman had to flip the mold over and reassemble the buttons for the JVC screen, reassemble the screen and then put the PC board in for the air conditioner controls. He then put the CD/DVD player in and reinserted the air vents.

Hickman molded the air conditioner buttons onto the fabricated panel, which was sent to local body shop Collision Revision to get painted silver to match the rest of the dash. The factory panel housing the display for the climate controls just above the clock was also painted silver.

"I did a lot of troubleshooting." he said about the electronics. "Basically, I used my multimeter a lot and it took me a while to figure out how to bypass a lot of that stuff because it was one PC board and it had a lot of buttons on that that were actually above the radio. I disassembled that and then I took some ribbon wire and made a lot of my connections. I actually had to de-solder a couple of the controls and reinstall those."

Space was limited behind the dash, so Hickman made sure to pre-plan before getting started. "I had to use some wire management." he said. "I couldn't just ball a whole bunch of stuff up. That's why this car was really difficult because of the way I had to reassemble it. Most times you can just slide a deck in and then with the wires, wherever they fall, they fall. But this one, there were components and heater controls all the way up to the back where the deck was. So for me to reengineer a lot of this stuff, it was just time-consuming."

Hickman said his ESD training (electrostatic discharge) training came in handy in this install and put him more at ease when it came to working with the electronics and delicate components in the vehicle. "I was a little nervous." he admitted.

"The hardest part of the front dash piece was getting everything to fit and figuring out the actual electronics behind it." he continued. "Just getting it to work period, before I even made the mold, because I knew I had a limited amount of space to work with." Even though Hickman was able to replace the radio and fit a screen in the dash, the audio controls on the steering wheel were lost. But Hickman plans on integrating those into the system in the future.

Don't Step on My Blue Suede Panels
The G35 was a gift to its 16 year-old owner from his parents, who also footed the bill on the finished system, which came to around $22,000. One of the mother's requests was for Hickman to ensure that the DVD player and screen installed in the dash only played movies when the parking brake was engaged. "So he can't play movies while the car is in motion," Hickman said.

When it came to amp and speaker selection, Hickman said he talked the customer and his parents into going with JL Audio. The brand the customer originally wanted, he said, was more aimed toward a teenage crowd and didn't fit in with the luxury look and feel of the G35. "He was concerned about whether it was going to be loud enough, but they didn't restrict me on anything." he said.

Hickman replaced the factory door speakers with JL Audio's XR650-CSi 6.5-inch components, running all new wiring. The XR650s were mounted in the factory locations with no need to modify or cut the speaker openings. The one-inch accompanying tweeters also fit in the factory slots located on the inside panel of the side mirror. In the rear speaker deck Hickman mounted JL Audio's VR690-CXi 6x98, covering them with factory grille cloth.

Highlighting a rather stealth-looking interior, Hickman wrapped the top of each door as well as the inserts next to the armrests in dark blue synthetic suede to match the vehicle's exterior Daint. He also upholstered the headliner, visors and rear deck in the same blue suede. "I covered everything that could be covered - outside of the seats - including the doors and the rear inserts." he said. "I didn't want to mess with the airbags. I don't do major upholstery work, just little minor stuff. But once you start getting into suede, it starts getting a little pricey."

Ready to Tailgate
The trunk lid is Hickman's favorite part of the install because "you can't see any screws or anything. I've always liked the idea of an LCD in the trunk lid," he said. He chose to install a home television screen (Sharp's Aquos LC- 10A3U-S 10-inch LCD) instead of a mobile video screen because it had better picture resolution.

He took the Sharp 10-inch LCD apart and molded its trim onto the trunk lid panel. He also relocated the monitor's phototransistor behind the latch on the trunk to keep the TV's remote functional. "The TV runs on 12- volts, but I used the power supply it came with," he explained. "I cut all the wires and ran them through the boot. That's why you don't see any wires anywhere."

Hickman made a fiberglass mold off of the bare trunk lid and cut his MDF rings and did the framing for the JL Audio TR535-CXi 5.25- inch coaxials he mounted on either side of the screen. He stretched grille cloth over the whole panel and laminated it with fiberglass. Finishing touches were done with body filler before sending it out for paint. "That's all relayed in so that when you close the trunk, the TV turns off and so do the speakers." he added. "So if you're having a tailgating party and you pop that, if you're watching a DVD or something, you have your highs. But once you close the trunk, the highs and the television will turn off. They work with the stereo, but they're just relayed in off of the trunk trigger."

When it came to the actual inside of the trunk. Hickman admits he had very fittle room and very high expectations from his customer. "The customer told me how he wanted the trunk to look to a certain extent," he said. "He wanted two subs to be facing him, two 1000.1 amps and a 300.4."

Hickman proceeded to build a sealed subwoofer box according to specs to house two JL Audio 12W7 12-inch subwoofers. "The whole trunk is just one piece of fiberglass." he described. "The sub box is sealed, so the reason I put the ports in there is so the bass can get back into the cab, because it was all one piece."

The fiberglass trunk panel, built completely inside of the car, stretches from the trunk walls to the floor and isn't removable. The only part that isn't fiberglass is the plastic panel holding the trunk latch. That piece was wrapped in blue suede. Two hidden flaps allow access to the taillights so the bulbs can be changed out. Hickman made a custom JL Audio W7 emblem out of Indiglo paper powered by the same transformer used for the neon. The emblem was laminated in overhead-slide type paper, and mounted in an oval opening directly above the two subwoofers.

Hickman mounted three amplifiers -two JL Audio 1000.1 and one 300.4 on acrylic plates bolted onto the fiberglass trunk floor and accented with turquoise-colored neon underneath. The 300.4 powers the door speakers and rear 6x98, while each subwoofer runs off of one 1000.1 amplifier. In order to fit all three amps, Hickman had to build a fiberglass pedestal for the 300.4. "That's why the 300.4 is floating." he explained. "It gives it a cool-looking effect, but in reality, it was also done out of necessity."

To avoid the headache of figuring out the wiring after the fact, Hickman made sure to run the wires through the mold as it was being built. "I dropped a bunch of 24-gauge wires down through a lot of the holes and then once everything was painted, I used those wires to pull the four-gauge through the holes." Two Xstatic Batcaps were hidden behind the rear seat, along with a Stinger distribution block.

The trunk enclosure was painted blue to I match the vehicle's exterior by local paint shop Collision Revision, then it was given another coat of paint by airbrush artist Paul Harrington from The Airbrush Shoppe who added a storm scene. From start to finish, Hickman estimates the G35 install took him about three and a half months to finish. But just a couple of months after delivering the I car, he was envisioning the addition of TVs to the headrests, and molding in an Xbox.

"The biggest part of any kind of installation, anything custom, is troubleshooting. You're always going to have some type of problem or obstacle, but if you have a system to the way you troubleshoot situations, then it makes everything a lot easier." he said. As for what his 16 year-old customer and his parents thought of the install: "They were like. 'Oh, that's cool.' They didn't even know what they were looking at, especially when I was doing the dash pieces and taking everything apart. But they're really happy with it." he said.