PreFace First off i'd like to say Hi everyone! This is the first project log that im posting on this forum (and the second post of all time for me). The point of this thread is to share the adventures of me within the casemodding world for the past 5 months. I haven't really posted anything on the BT forums before because i've only recently discovered that BT as a giant modding community. My log shall be posted below. Keep in mind that the following 10 posts are transfered from another forum and span a time period from may 2009 to october 2009. In total, this project has lasted 5 months, out of which, i've only worked on it 12 days. The rest of the time was spent making craploads of money to fund the project and screwing around because of my lazyness. Because this project is already finished, there will probably (definately) be no comments between my log posts or "days" so please leave any comments good or bad about how i did what i did or how it turned out. So here it begins: Link to finished post: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=2113514&postcount=10 Introduction: Hello all! this is.. my FIRST case-mod thingy done from scratch. I'm not buying a case, but simply turning an every day vehicle (not really) into a computer case! I'm not sure how many of you know what a pocket bike is, so I'm going go ahead and explain. A pocket bike is basically a miniature motorcycle that resembles a sport bike except its about 40 inches long and 10~20 inches wide. They are not street legal and run on 39, 49 or 50 cc engines. Some may also classify Midi bikes (bikes with 110-120 cc engines) as pocketbikes. Anyways, I'm a pocket bike enthusiast who likes fixing up bikes and riding them around, often annoying my neighbors with the massive amounts of pollution from the exhaust and the extremely loud engine sounds. I also like the new i7 920 processor, so i decided to combine them together. I HEREBY WELCOME YOU TO MY i7 POCKETBIKE WORKLOG!!!! THE BUILD (original) Corsair tx750 Intel i7 920 C0 stepping Asus P6T OCZ 3gb ddr3-1333 @ 7-7-7-24 EVGA 9800 GTX+ 1x WD 1TB HDD A furry pocketbike TRUE120 + Scythe Ultra Kraze's Lots of lights THE BUILD (Finished) Corsair TX750watt PSU Intel i7 920 d0 batch# 3845b260 Asus p6t OCZ 6gb DDR3-1800 @ 8-8-8-26 XFX 8800 GTS (my 9800 gtx+ died) 1x WD 500gb HDD 1x Samsung 1tb HDD Furry pocket bike True120 + tricool Lots of lights and led fans. Reason: First up I have my pocket bike. I have 2 pocket bikes. One is a 50 cc Banshee Sho which is a liquid cooled pocketbike that runs up to 110 kmph. My other one is my first bike which i bought in 2006 from a guy who modded it (ironic) to be furry. The bike was built in 2003 and currently is a pile of scrap metal waiting to be thrown out. When i was cleaning out my shed, i noticed it lying around in a puddle of grease so i decided, HEY! why not? I have some new i7 parts so i might as well use them. Heres some pictures from 2006. ______________________________________________________________________ DAY1 After lying around for a good 3 years doing nothing, it doesn't start up and requires about 200 dollars worth of parts to fix to get up and running again. Hardly worth it considering i bought it for 130 dollars. So i decided to take it apart and see what i could do with it. Taking it out of the shed today, i noticed not only was it covered in grease/oil, but also spider webs and rat poop. Anyways, i started disassembling it. I was looking around and i saw that the engine + clutch + exhaust + everything was held up on a small little metal platform... Hmmm... this could be used: SO i removed all the fairings and gas tank. This left the engine assembly + exhaust + pull start + clutch exposed. I decided to be lazy and not take them apart separately. Instead, i flipped the bike over to loosen the bolts holding the engine to the support plate. UGH GREASY!!@!@ And now, i removed the engine! wooooo. the entire bike frame is exposed and now i can start washing/repainting it. and here's the platform that i plan on using to hold the mobo tray + mobo + everything. BTW, i also began cleaning and painting it with a light coat of gold. it was dark outside so i was spray painting blindly lol... i'll post pictures of the paint job tomorrow. oh yea, heres my i7 stuff that arrived i7 920 Asus P6T (plain) 3gb OCZ Platinums ddr3-1333 @ 7-7-7-24 I already have a Corsair TX750 and a Evga 9800 GTX+ sitting around with 1.5 tb of harddrives... so my computer needs are all done.. Other than that, i'm just waiting on my TRUE to arrive before i being overclocking the hell outta the 920 and sticking it in my pocketbike.
For those of you wondering: "can you ride it when you're done??" Yes i an, it will support my weight. It will have no engine though. it was too greasy, didnt wana risk something gettin dirty on the motherboard. its basically gona be an i7 system on two wheels with brakes someone actually gave me the idea of putting an electric engine in... its a good idea but i dunno how much i could get an electric engine for.. plus, i cant use liquid cooling... the liquid for the engine comes up as like 130 degrees celcius! i dont really plan on riding this bike after i mod it :[.. btw its gona be air cooled ;P Day 2 Mini update: Painting and getting new parts. Cant do anymore due to lack of parts :'( Today is victoria day!... overnight, i coated the frame of the bike with a golden gold (lol) paint... unfortunately, i was spraying blindly with the spray paint because it was dark outside. i got some on the wheeles and brakes :'( Anyways, i started peeling the "skin" off of the actual plastic fairings of the bike. To my dismay, the inside was covered in GLUE! and had all this dirty crap stuck to it after 6 years of sitting there and soaking up leaked gasoline and oil. it was horribly disgusting BLAH! the other part, the seat, however wasnt too bad considering my clean a$$ was sitting on it all day long. So i painted the frame and the seat. I'm going out later today to buy new fairings for the bike... i cant work with nasty rat-poop and glue covered fairings... .... Still waiting for my TRUE to arrive and a good deal on a cheap case that i can use to cut out the mobo tray from
Day 3 CPU case arrived + fairings. Mobo tray removed, bike put together Today (yesterday) i spent a long time doing this mod... I finally got a case (for 10 dollars ) and pocket bike fairings (40 dollars). The case was actually pretty nice. it was pretty much brand new (except for a bit of dust on the inside) and painted beautifully with no scratches or anything. The front bezel was pretty good. it had a start/restart button + 2 usb ports and auto i/o. I actually kinda felt bad for cutting it up afterwards. Poor case... i took it apart.. here come the pictures O_O... there are like 5000 of them lol. so anyways, i began removing the bezel and taking apart what i could with a screw driver. you can see the power button/reset button removed and the usb ports about to get ripped out heres the back of the bezel. the auto i/o and the usb ports are here. it looked pretty easy to remove at first. two screws.... but the screws hardly did anything. i ended up breaking the plastic bezel with pliers to get the i/o chip out lol.. Success!! the important guts of the case have been removed!. now its time to cut up the metal. So i removed all the screws i could from the frame... and then... DISASTER STRUCK! There were RIVETS!@!@!@! and i didnt have a drill so i decided to come up with my own method: so here: Welcome to my Ghetto Rivet Removal Guide W/ Primitive Tools I had no drill at all in my house/ i did most of this work outside in my back yard so i wouldnt get aluminum dust everywhere. anyways, removing a rivet takes ~3 steps. its quite easy once you get a hang of it. Tools needed: Metal File BIG hammer A Strong nail So first, i have my victim, a rivet. Then i start filing it down as far as it goes, untill its practically flat. heres the rivet after being filed down. And then you take a nail and give it a GOOD SMACK (with a hammer of corse)! It should go right through the rivet Then you pull it out and walaaaa.. a hole without a rivet!! Congradulations, you have successfully removed a rivet! __________________________________ Anyways, so theres my guide on how to remove a rivet. i pretty much tore my case apart and removed ever rivet (there were like 30 lol... took me ~2 hours) So after a bit of fiddling and fondling (not really) with teh case, i got the entire side plate of the case out. Unfortunately, it was too big so i cut it down as you can tell, im not too good at using a dremel. heres the before and after pics of the dremel cutting disk lol.... anyways, eventually i got the motherboard tray cut out. i forgot to mention/take pics of the pocketbike parts that came. anyways, i basically spraypainted everything. the plan for the pb is a blue/gold and black paint scheme. Up above, you can see the entire bike frame + fairings put on. I also tried sticking the mobo tray in, and as you can see, its kinda visible :[ i removed the top fairing to show what the motherboard tray looks like inside the frame of the bike. Unfortunately, its very very squished so it looks like i'm gona need to modify the frame... woo... steel cutting, here i come (time to bust out the angle grinder) Heres the end of day 3. Later on today i'll be busting out my angle grinder and cutting some steel pocketbike frame (im not gona like it at all. last time i got metal pieces in my eye)
DAY 4 Angle Grinder cutting and securing the mobo. I went to home depot and asked the guys there how much it would be to rent a welder ... firstly, they had never heard of welding a thin piece of aluminum to a pocketbike frame, and secondly, they did not recommend me to weld aluminum (aparently its really hard to hard weld alum)... Third, the welder cost ALOT!!!!! Instead, they recommended i use a combintaiton of screws rivets and brackets with some JB weld epoxy (i think thats what it was called) to attach the mobo tray to the frame... so thats what i did. and regarding the eye protection... i dont have any specialized goggles so use the following: A motorcycle helmet!! ! it blocks the sound and keeps my eyes protected.. and if you notice, i dont have a c-clamp or a vice either.. so i use my shoe Anyways, on with the log update...: Today (actually this is a combination of two days of work. Basically what i did was i removed the "obstruction" present in the last build log posting and then i secured the motherboard tray to the frame of the bike. As stated before, i like to use a full faced motorcycle helmet as eyeprotection , so i got that prepped up and started cutting. Yes, i know i look young... i'm only 17 anyways my friend didnt know how to take pics of me with my Nikon D80, so i told him to cut and i'd take pics anyways, i ended up removing the entire engine mount because the entire thing was obstructing the motherboard tray. After cutting, all the metal shards stuck to my magnetic screw driver. i thought this was pretty cool so i took some macro shots of it (^^,) Anyways, so now that i cleared the area for motherboard mounting, i went out and bought some supplies. Originally, i had planned on making metal brackets to attach the motherboard at weird angles... but luckilly, my friend, who has also done some casemodding (he built a P3 into a wheeled suitcase with a monitor included lol... he eventually disassembled it because the monitor heat was overheating the case) suggested i use steel strapping. Aparently it works very well, so i went out and bought some and decided to give it a try. While at the hardware store, i also found these cool self-drilling metal screws, so i bought some of these too. now i dont have to drill into metal and then put a screw in (^^,) A shot of the raw attaching materials i went out and bought. Anyways, i started attaching the mobo tray to the frame w/ various amounts of steel strapping. There were two points on the tray, however, where steel strapping didnt seem sensible. There was one point that was basically touching the frame, and another point that was really really really really far away... and using long peices of steel strapping isnt very strong.... so i decided to use part of the case aluminum i'd cut off earlier and use it to secure the part that was really really far away. I used a screw for teh part that was close to the frame. Anyways, i eventually finished attaching the mobo tray to the frame. This is all for today. i'll be probably modding the fairings abit so that the mobo tray isnt touching them so closely, and attaching the mobo to the tray in the next update. Stay tuned
DAY 4.5 A mini update... So... from my last update, i already got the motherboard tray up and everything securely attached to the pocketbike frame... but what kept bothering me was that... it wasnt finished! my fingers kept itching to keep on going even though i didnt know what else to do. I was personally really curious as to what the bike would look like and whether i did the right thing or not.... so as i lay tossing and turning in my bed, i suddenly woke up and decided to mount my mobo onto the tray (LOL!) Though it looked alright, there was one BIG problem. Up untill now, i've been running my computer outside of a case with random parts scattered across my desk, yet stlil connected. I had a TRUE120 attached to the thing... and i realized that (****IT) there was not enough clearance to fit it... so i had to remove it (guess i'm gona be angle grinding abit more of the frame later on lol). anyways, i proceeded with my randomness and tried to fit my videocard in. and yet again, another problem. THe videocard is friggen massive (i never knew it was so big, even though i've owned it for about a year now lol) More work to be done: Cut holes in the fairings to allow the 9800 GTX+ to stick out lol >.< so anyways, i was itching to see what the bike MIGHT look llike so i decided to take off half the bottum fairings (so i could attach atleast part of it) and see what the bike lookse like. Here are the results. List of things to do: Cut away sections of the fram Cut away sections of the fairings Repaint everything (shouldnt have painted them at the beginning. it all got scratched up anyways. do some special modding to the fairings (secret lol... you guys will find out when i get around to it) More work to be done tmro/day after/whenever i have time. Exams for me are commin up next week so the next update might be either this weekend (if i dont feel like studying for exams) or in 2 weeks lol.
Well guys. Finally another update. I havent updated this in nearly a month... First i had end of year gr 12 exams .. which was two weeks.. then i had graduation and crapload of parties LOL ... and then there was a recent week of rain which hindered my ability to do anything outside/in my backyard wit this project. I bet lots of ppl thought this proj was flopping lol... But now that summer has started and i'm a self empoyed loser goin off to university next year, i finally got back to it... Here we go guys! DAY 5 More metal frame modding and commencing work on the fairings! So.. throughout the past month where i have not posted anything about my project, some things have changed. 1) I tried to sell my entire i7 kit because i was gettin frustrated that it would get so hot on an open bench. I didnt really put too much effort into trying to sell it and my thread is still open now, so if you wana go do a quick search for it, go ahead. I dont really care whether i sell it or keep it. 2) I shorted out my 9800 GTX+ with the damn metal TRUE120 fan clip. Im currently running an 8800 GTS while i wait for my 9800 GTX+ to return from RMA. Also, i realized that i havent really been heading anywhere with this project. I never really had an idea what it would look like when finished so i've been kind of running around blindfolded. I Finally decided to actually design this project properly... More to come on my design drawings later on. For now: here's the updates: ANyways, so i was trying to fit my TRUE120 into the chamber, and as you can see, it wasnt fitting :'(.. I had but one solution... TO CUT THE FRAME SOME MORE!!! As recommended, i bought the re-inforced dremmel cutting disks. They looked pretty cool so i decided to take a few pics So i began cutting... and i realized: *ZOMG* the friction from the disk and the steel frame created an induced magnetic field causing all the shavings to line up funny. i was pretty surprised when this happened cuz i was like *LOL i actually learned something in physics 12*!!!! So heres the picture of the ugly frame with a big steel chunk cut out of it lol. it was like 1" thick :S Anyways, with the frame done, i started working on the fairings. Unfortunately, i was taking pics of me cuttin the plastic fairings with no SD card... And i just realizd that right now LOL... so sorry for the bad pics. I coudl only get pics of the fairings after they were cut, and not while the designs were draw in, etc etc. i basically removed all the screws holding all the fairing pieces together.. and began cuttin with the dremmel. Heres what i have: I kinda screwed up the bottum half (and i havent finished it yet) Heres what the fairings look like when they are put together at the moment. Next update: Hopefully sunday july 5th... It will contain my logo designs and maybe even finished fairing cuts Sorry to keep everyone waiting so long >.< Btw happy belated canada day!! :canadianwave:
DAY 6 Waiting for a logo design and installing harddrives. So... as promised, i did some more work on my project today... I asked a friend whos an animation and design major to help me with a logo... but unfortunately, he couldnt get his idea finished today so i'm going to pick up his work tomorrow... which means my original idea of finishing fairing cuts today is a flop.... Instead, i decided to work more on the guts of my machine. i have the mobo and everything ready to mount... i just need space for the HDD's / Optical drive and PSU... So i decided to do the HDD's. Lookin around for ways to attach the HDD's to the bike, i decided the best place was probably where the gas tank was. My original plan was to put the PSU there, but there was no space for it... so my harddrives are going there. Now with this build, there are TWO hard drives, so i'm gona make space to accomidate both of them. Originally, i was thinking of just using steel strapping to attach the harddrives, but i realized that the holes didnt line up with the screw holes on the HDD... so i was left with one choice. Making a hdd cage. ON WITH THE PICTURES::!!!:: So remeber that old case i had from before? I ripped the drive bays out of it and i was pretty much left with two separate metal "sheets". In an effort to reconnect them, i had to get the distance between them right, so i stuck a harddrive between them. So... LET THE CUTTING BEGIN! (i finally got some eye protection lol) And yes, i did get mugged on saturday so i have funny scars on my arm. jk jk. I went paintballing last week... and my friend dared me to go in a wife beater.. so i did... and now i have scars on my arm LOL. Yes, that is a harddrive in the bays while im dremmeling it. O_O I'm crazy enough to do that... Not afraid to let it die in the name of the POCKETBIKE MOD! Actually, it was an old 40 gb WD IDE HDD that was already dead so i figured i might as well put it's mass and shape to use lol. Finished product of the dremmeling. I realized that having one connection wasnt very secure. the two metal plates were very flimsy so i put the steel strapping i bought to good use... And then... i decided to attach it to the pocketbike frame. There happened to be a metal flat bar thing across the bottum of where the gas tank was suppsoed to go.. it lined up perfectly with the one piece of steel strapping i had on the bottum of the bays so i put two screws in there... then i realized the entire thign was really flimsy so i added another steel strapping thing to the front to make sure it doesnt wiggle around :] Theres the finished product! More to come by next weekend. I'm workin full time so i'll see if i can squeeze in some time durin the weekdays to keep this project moving along.
Day 7 & 8 Mounting PSU and cutting fairings. Well... to my dismay, sometime between my last update and my current one, i've seemed to misplaced my Nikon D80 SLR :doh: I've been going to too many drunken parties :whistle: Regardless, i persevered and kept working. Unfortunately, from now on, all the pictures are going to be cr@p due to my cr@p phone cam. Day 7, i mounted the PSU. I actually took pictures of myself working on it but.... their on my SD card which is on my D80 which is somewhere.... Dam. So i took two pics of the finished product. and then on day 8, i finally chose a logo (out of three that were presented) Heres what it looks like and what happens after i cut it into the fairings. Now you guys are all probably going "WTF??!?! isnt that the nVidia logo thing?!?" you see, i'm not very creative so i like to take other ppl's ideas and add onto them to make them better. Its natural for humans to do this. Take the helicopter for example... it was derrived from the shape of a dragonfly LOL!. anyways, my logo is NOT the nVidia logo (even though i will be using a nVidia card)... pfff.. i wish they sponsored me so i added on two extra strokes: And here's the original logo after its cut out (this is what it's supposed to look like ) So i stopped drawing and got to cutting (took me 2 hours to draw out the logo... had to keep covering up my permanent marker mistakes with more tape LOL!) I learned something about cutting plastic. It's really simmilar to going to the beach... But instead of getting sand in unexpected places, you get plastic dust/shavings in un expected places h34r: SO anyways.....:whistle: i started cutting with safety goggles... and i realized i was getting loads of plastic shavings stuck up my nose... so i decided to wear my helmet for this one. Heres the progression. AND ITS FINISHED!!!! Luckilly i wore a helmet for this one... when i took it off... the front visor was covered in plastic dust lol. but that wasnt the worst >.> by the time i went inside to take a shower.. i discovered a hidden cache... :shok: Anyways, thats all for today. Up next will be reinforcing the fairings and whatnot (their kinda flimsy now). :canadianwave: UPDATE I'm now working fulltime. havent started day 9 yet... (its been 5 days since last update). Lost my damn phone on the bus two days ago... so now i have absolutely nothing to takep ictures with...FML :doh: Will post anohter update on sunday maybe... if i can getsome sortof image capturing device, :shok:
DAY 9 Cutting holes for graphics card in fairings. ALLLRIGHT... so i havent worked on this in a while and i finally got one day off. i also got a new phone (n0k1a 7510) so i can take pics now. unfortunately, im fulltime workin in ottawa while my bike is in toronto... im gona be living here for a while.. and i may occasionally get one or two days back in toronto... so anyways, i finally got one day back in t.o and this is what i worked on. cut some 'stylish' slots for teh graphics card. short update. sorry, wont b doin another one for one or two weeks -.-
Finishing up and Finished Pictures Well guys, i really have not updated this in almost two months. I actually finished this project on september the 6th, which was ONE DAY before moving into residence at the university of waterloo. I really rushed the last 2 days working 9 hours straight a day. In total, this project has lasted 5 months, out of which, i've only worked on it 12 days. The rest of the time was spent making craploads of money to fund the project and screwing around because of my lazyness. Most of the work was done the last 2 days and because of how hard i was rushing to complete the project for university move in day, i only have a few photos. Things i did since the last update: - Sanded fairings with 80 then 200 then 1000 automotive sand paper to make them shexy (this took sooooo long) - Re-painted fairings with automotive paint (this cost me a good 30 dollars) - Re-Painted frame with gold paint - Cut off another section of the fairing because it was blocking air from the TRUE120 - Found mesh material to use on fairings - Painted mesh material to flourescent green - Attached the mesh to the holes i cut in the fairings. - Installed motherboard + components - Made a custom fan bracket to reach to the pwm section of the motherboard (because it was really really hot) - Securely mounted PSU - Securely mounted HDD's - Sanded wheeles to make them pure BLACK and waxed the rubber. - added 5 CCFL's, 1x LED spot light, 2x under-car neon lights (pulled these from a junk yard lol) - added a total of 6 fans - assembled everythign together. stable 24/7 oc of 4.41 ghz ht on @ 1.4vcore. Here come the few pics i have. Picked up a B batch 3845b260 for OC'ing (aparently these are good) Re-painting the frame The mesh stuff i got was actually roof gutter covers to prevent leaves from getting in. Picked up a pack of 20 giant sheets for 20 dollars. i only used one and a half sheets. Here you can see i used clips to attach them to the fairings. Then i used epoxy to securely cement them onto the plastic fairings to ensure a good bond. Heres the finished result of my epoxying. clips removed. Insert missing photos here:________ Thats all the pictures of me working on the bike. I pretty much did everything else without taking pics. Assembled the bike and whatnot. Then i moved into residence. FINISHED PICTURES By the way, i just started screwing around with HDR pictures so heres some HDR pictures. I took them like this so you can see both whats going on inside and outside of the case while the case fans/lights are on. For full sized, click here For full sized, click here. THE END
This is seriously cool!!!! Something even Cheaps and I wouldn't have thought of. Well executed. I like the lighting a lot too. +rep from me john
that is quite a slice of awesome you have right there! Maybe you could build a mini-trailer for this one, you'd be the king, emperor and god of every LAN you go to even before you left the parking lot
Very cool mod, I love the blue bike with the green mesh You should have tried harder to hide components like the PSU, it would have looked even better
While reading the worklog I kept having this "too fast too furious" beat from that movie in my head Seeing someone gliding around on that, chasing girls Nonetheless great project a way cooler finish than what I would have expected !
