This is an interesting project. I be watching to see how this pans out.

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Wow this helps a ton. So support for the din would be off the stock pullout cupholder. Also like his idea of one 4" duct off the plenum and then splitting it at the vents. That also makes it easier to find a collar to connect the duct to the plenum. So now my plan would be to make the vent plate in the stock din spot, put vents in. Make a box behind that the duct attaches to. Have enough flex duct off the back of that so that I can connect it to the collar in the plenum with the bezel not attached and then button it up.

I'm leaning more towards a screen floating far enough out to clear the dash lip (good point on making sure that clearance is there). That is easier imo than trying to do the extensive fiberglass fabbing that one guy did. Would probably still have to do some depending on if I do a single or double din. This also allows me to use a bigger (probably going to go wider) screen. I'm okay with sacrificing an oem look and covering my hazards for that. I want to keep the fabbing as simple as possible since I've never done it before.

Okay so the TTOAR thread pointed out something to me I hadn't realized. The side vents still get air on defrost. So likely there is a damper above that air box directing air to three center vents. Still a little confused how that works but I don't think it will be a big deal, basically that means I would lose the selector options that direct air to the front which I actually think I might like. Then I could select floor and defrost and get air to all three zones. Definitely going to research this more to make sure there aren't any pitfalls (only one I can think of is I would lose front only option for using AC).

As far as I know the two outside vents on the dash by each window get airflow in every air flow selection.

You are correct on that. I did a little experimentation and found that out. Basically if I do this mod I can put it on front only and it will act normal as front only but in every other setting all the front vents would get air, not just the side ones. This is no big deal at all though and nice to know I can retain the front only option even if it will kind of work differently. If I don't want air coming out of the center front vents then I just simply close them.

To update on this though I managed to pick up a 96-98 bezel from Clearock (holy smokes his project is awesome, I won't spoil anything though unless he wants me to). He helped me with an issue I was having with my whiteline bushings and while I was out there he offered to see if he had a bezel for me to use for this. Turns out he had a base model with no clock bezel (never even knew this existed lol) so I've got my donor for my project. Almost kind of like the no clock thing as I can custom cut it for an outside temp monitor. That and I don't have to take anything off my current bezel so it will probably be easier to flip it when I take it off.



Getting to really hold it in my hand I definitely see this as doable. The cupholder slot is quite sturdy and should be able to easily support a lighter double din. I'm leaning right now towards the Atoto F7WE. Doing a double din will probably require me to try my hand at the fiberglass stuff or I could be lazy and just not cover it lol. Still trying to figure out what I want to do for cameras. I did manage to find one that actually advertised "shockproof" that has some really good reviews (although none of them assessing the ruggedness) but I'm not sure it works with any other head units besides their own. Amazon.com

Once I get a head unit in then I can start the fab work though which really shouldn't be much. Cut the vent up a tad bit, I'm leading towards cutting down that way I can possibly get the brackets for the double din resting right on the cupholder. I'm kind of wanting to speed up the timeline on the project too as my alpine single din head unit is acting really finicky lately on connecting to my phone and the mic went out ><

That headunit looks like a good bang-for-the-buck.

Not taking credit on that. Seems like many on here have had really good luck with Atoto, not only with the product but surprisingly good customer service for a Chinese company. I asked them some questions about this head unit and they just got back to me in a day and a half to answer them. Probably going to pull the plug and grab it here soon.

I have an older Atoto A7 head unit in my daily driver and other than it being a bit slow from not enough RAM, I have no issues with it. Probably going to pick up a newer version soon for the DD and put this one in my pickup or 4runner

Might have to change plans slightly here unless I want some heavy fab work. So I took off my bezel and poked around a bunch thinking of ideas and seeing if I still had a factory amp (and also seeing if my mic had come unplugged from the Alpine that I currently have, pretty sure it's just dead). The only way a double din works is if you have something low profile (like ideally no deeper than 1.5"-1.75") on the components in back of the head unit. The reason why is even if you cut all the way down to where the bezel curves in to the climate control faceplate you only get about 3.5" up till you start having to chop BOTH the top clips that hold the bezel in. I think with both of the examples they had low profile units that were 7" screens and they just built the shrouds to give it structural stability as much as for aesthetics. This would be a smidge trickier with a floating screen 10.1" double din unit like I'm looking at. Possibly doable but I would have to hack up the double din mount plates to clear going inside the bezel. Also that's a lot of fab work and I wonder how tricky it will be be to piece it all together.

I'm now leaning more towards this unit Amazon.com that is a 10.1" screen on a single din. The screen mount looks very sturdy (if I do buy it I will double check that sturdiness before I build this up so that I can return it and rethink things) so I don't think that will be an issue, plus I can adjust the screen up and down to my liking if I have any other clearance issues. As it stand the vent's are almost exactly the size of a single din anyway, only a half inch wider which I can easily work with. The price difference probably isn't a big deal if you factor in all the other stuff I would need for fabbing the double din. In fact I think I might be able to buy a single din plastic shroud and hack it up to the profile of the bezel and plastic weld or glue that on for a decently clean look (color probably won't match but I'm a bit ambivalent on that). I'll post pics in a sec here.

Here's the measurements I took.

As you can see not much room to work with and that's with partly cutting into the cupholder tray which will reduce the sturdiness of it.




Just cutting out the vent's however is really close to a great fit.

Drat, looks like all the plastic under dash mounting boxes are going to be just barely too wide for this, anyone have any ideas on that? I would love to find a seamless solution that would minimize any fabrication work. Seems like something like this Amazon.com would work perfect for anyone doing this on a 99-02 since you are relocating the buttons anyway. I'm going to double check with them what the dimensions of the box are though as I have about 8.25" inches to work with from the very edge of the hazard light to the inside edge of the bezel on the other side. It might JUST fit.

Amazon.com This one might even work better as it's tapered towards the back. Perhaps if it's the right size I could cut a din opening in the back and install this from the back. I keep some of that flang on there too to help with mounting.

Just put a single din where the factory radio is and call it good. That's what I am going to do. The screen can just hang out there.

Or a double din in the factory location and call it good...

It's not worth the hassle to move the vents.

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IMO it's totally worth the hassle lol. I really don't want to have a navigation screen so out of my normal driving FOV. Also my plan is to also use this with one or two front facing cameras for spotting. The Atoto remote has buttons that you can switch between normal android auto screen, front view and back view very easily. Just have to find a video splicer if I want two front views. Going to try just one at first and see if guidelines match up pretty close to where my tires are for spotting purposes. Honestly though I'm having fun with this project and I'm just in the research phase. To each their own though, I actually find working on my truck relaxing in the grand scheme (even if I might get frustrated on individual parts of a job). If I can find a really straightforward way to do this without custom fabbing stuff then it would be nice to give to the community. Honestly if my ideas work out like I'm imagining someone could do this mod in probably 4 hours, if that, with clear instructions. I'm contemplating a 3d printed part too at this point, just have to find a way to get a an accurate measurement of the bezel curvature.