ARTICLES

MY KNIGHT RIDER
by Paul Todd
this is an excerpt from the articles appearing in the EAGLE

I am about 30 now and when Knight Rider first came out I was just entering my teen years (you know the age when almost every boy starts to become interested in cars!). I got my first car when I was in seventh grade, (during the second season of Knight Rider) and it was a 1956 Chevy Belair (4 door sedan, 6 cylinder, and Powerglide Transmission). I tried so hard to pretend that old boat was KITT, and let me tell you that was REALLY HARD!!! I even drew up plans for a digital dash to retrofit the factory dash for a 4-H club electronics project.

Now for the present. I bought a 1983 Firebird Trans Am from someone I knew back in June of 1997. It had a red exterior but the correct color interior, cross fire 305 engine, T-tops, Posi rear end, and power everything but mirrors. I had owned a couple of F-bodies before this one but none of them had T-tops and I did not have the money to convert them, (although it was always in the back of my mind). I had visited with Robert Louisell a couple of times off and on when I was in college and even purchased a voice sequencer and 4 step ignition sequencer from Christian Forget in 1991 (both still work). Now I finally had a car I wanted to convert, and I had some time to get the job done so I called Robert and he told me that he is no longer in the business and gave me the phone number of someone else, who I ordered my parts from. I've been working on my KARR every since. I farm for a living so I have a lot of spare time in the winter.

I decided to build KARR after I had gotten on the Internet, and had seen that other people had made KITTs. So I knew that there were several of them around, but I did not see that anyone had made a KARR replica. Besides, if you make KITT which season do you make and do you install all of the accessories up to a certain episode? To make an accurate KITT replica you would have to study hours and hours of video footage and then you start to see "mistakes" in the continuity of the character of KITT. Now KARR, on the other hand had only appeared in TWO episodes, and I had both of them on tape. I decided to make a KARR that appeared like KARR did right before he got repainted with the two tone paint job. Plus it would be easy to convert my car into a KITT if I want, just change a few M-waves and the scanner lens, license tag and the voice sequencer.

I have used my video tapes and my computer a lot in this project. I did a little customization, mostly in places that are somewhat inconspicuous. A lot of what I have done was speculation, "what would the original prototype look like if Knight Industries had actually built it and spared no expense".

I have added a lot of remote control accessories to make the car look like it has artificial intelligence. The doors open with the remote, windows roll up and down, hatch opens, doors lock and unlock, alarm arms and disarms, and engine starts up. I have completely gutted out my car (because it was red and it had some rust) and repainted it just as a steel shell of a car. Then while it was in that condition I wired up all of the accessories, so I had to put quite a bit of thought into it. The Video system consists of the two colors TVs in the dash, controlled by a radio shack A/V selector. I can watch the front camcorder, rear camcorder, VCR (for movies or TV channels), and even play Nintendo from either TV. The number one TV is wired to a FM modulator to broadcast the sound on an FM frequency. So I can hear my number I TV on my stereo system. Among other accessories I have included to give my KARR a Knight Industries touch, Digital Phone Adapter, power wench, radar and laser detectors and jammers. Police radio frequency scanner, driving computer (computes fuel consumption's and etc.) performance computer, (calculates G- force and etc.) proximity field alarm system. To run all of this electronic stuff I have installed a battery isolator and a secondary battery, as well as a built in battery charger. I also have a built in Voltage inverter and a 110 circuit for running the VCR and camcorders.

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