A few people requested in my build thread that I put up a small write up showing how I got an Uniden RT into my helmet/race car. I figured this was the best place to put it.

First off. I know I am going to get smashed for cutting into the polystyrene in my helmet. I have only taken about 3mm out and it is surrounded by aditional padding so im not worried. If you can drill into a helmet to install hans posts, surely this isnt as bad......in saying that. I still dont recomend it and will be looking for some smaller speakers for my new helmet.


I used UH036SX RT that was lying around for mine. Different models will be slightly different.

This is how it looked before I hacked it up.

This shows the power from the batteries.


This shows the speaker


And this one where the normal Mic is


What I did was removed the speaker, the Mic and the power wires and soldered new ones onto these and ran them out the side of the RT.

This shows the power and talk button wires (note I left the normal talk button in place so it will still work)


This is a close up of where I added the wires for the talk button


This is where it got a little tricky. This shows the holes where the normal mic posts went through (the next photo is the other side where you unsolder it from/solder the new wires in)


This is the underside of the mic posts showing the two solder points


This shows where the two speaker wires connect


So I now have the power, speaker, Mic and talk button wires running out of the RT. I cut a hole in the side of the case and heat shrunk them all together.
It now looks like this:


I then wired up some plugs to go onto my harnesses that will plug into the wires from the helmet for the speakers and the Mic


Now for the power, Mine used 3 AAA 1.5v batteries, so I got a 12v DC-DC converter that I had lying around, set this to 4.5v and soldered wires into it for the power from the car and cut the plug off the other end so it can be joined to the power wires that are now comming out of the RT. This will be wired in out of sight behind the dash, more likly with plugs so the RT can come out easily.



So that takes care of the RT and how to power it. Now comes the helmet part.

 

I had a cheap set of headphones lying around that had a Mic on it. I chopped this up and took the mic and the boom it was attached to and ditched the rest. For the speakers, I just used the ones that came out of the RTs....these work AMAZINGLY well in the helmet and are CRYSTAL clear!!!

To install all this, I stripped the helmet right apart bar the shell.

Here you can see the Mic attached to the boom. I made a slit in the cover and just pushed this through. It sits tight in there so didnt need to glue it or anything. NOTE: the sponge over the Mic is a MUST!



This is the part that people are going to hate on. It looks deeper on the pics then it is for some reason.
You know how polystyrene is made up of little ***** all glued together? I took off about 1 layer of these with a knife and sunk the speakers into the hole. There is still a good 2cm left between the shell and the speakers. The RT speakers are exteamly thin so this worked out well. I just used a tiny dab of hot glue to stick them in. They dont need much as there is a good layer of foam over them, then the normal black inner of the helmet. In all honesty, I probly didnt need to cut into the helmet at all they are so thin.




I then ran all the wires out the helmet and put the opposite plugs on these wires as the ones that are going to get tied to the harness sholder strap.



Connect the dots with the wireing and this is the BEST RT in a helmet I have ever used (and ive used proper teratrip ones). Its crystal clear both in hearing and in the mic pickup for the other person....even with HEAPS of background noise...like my stero playing a incar vid of me racing up full noise. The neibours even complained

And it all cost be about $10 worth of plugs and some things I had lying around the house. Heres hoping it has enough range on the track

 

Very nice write up let us know when you try it on the track!

 

Pretty crafty indeed.