Project Candy Apple Red (car theme) 6/01/05 *Painting started*

Ok, I am home for a month and it is time to mod again. This comp is being built for my lovely girlfriend, Jana. She loves cars and drives a candy apple red Miata. She also loves computers. Lucky me . The case I am starting with is nothing special though. Its an old chieftec case that I bout here off the forums for shipping. It had be modded by the past owner and needed a lot of work to get it to a usable state. Well I will show some pics to show what has been done so far and get some ideas from you all.


This is a pic of the top. Looks like the case used to be watercooled with Rad on top. I plan on putting a hoodscoop up there and fiberglassing it to fix the rest of it. More on this later.


This is the bottom part of the front. As you can see the grill was cut out before I got to it. I did some bondo work to fix it because the cuts were ugly and had huge scratches.


This is the door part of the front. I forgot to take a pic of the original, but this is it after lots of bondo work and priming. It has been sanded, but still needs more primer and lots of sanding.


This is a full pic of front with door on.


This is a full pic of front with no door. You will see more bondo work on the drivebay and buttons.


Close up of drivebay bondo work. You can see I have a lot of sanding to do and I need to add more bondo to smooth it all out. Just a sample of what is to come. All led holes and buttons were covered.

 

Backside of drivebay. You can see that I put the bondo on top of the drive covers. I will do the same to the back for added strength.


I am also bondoing the back part of the door to smooth it out. I would hate the back of the door to stay ugly and unmodded.

Thats it for now. I am thinking of putting mesh in the lower part of the front, but I really would rather do a custome design down there. Anyone have some paint skills that could give me an idea of a design that would look custome carish? More will come later. Feel free to comment.

 

Don't everyone post all at once now. Well on with a quick update. I was messing around with paint for about a minute and did a quick idea of what I was thinking about for the bottom part of the front. See what you all think. I really need some advice on what to make it look like to give it that custom car look.

 

a recent issue of maximum pc has a great guide for painting a case, and there are also lots of them on the internet. A high gloss automotive style finish always looks really cool.

 

it's going to take a lot of work to get a really nice candy apple red coat to really pop. you're going to have to take a lot of time to make sure everything is smooth and you have to have a really shiny (silver or gold metallics w/ some flake are usually used) base coat to shoot that candy apple red over it. definitely take your time w/ it comes to painting. shooting candy colors is pretty difficult.

 

Ok, I have done a fair bit of work today. I have been doing a lot of sanding and fiberglass work. I will post some pics here soon when I get a chance. It looks rough right now, but will be silky smooth by the time I finish. It will definatly be a car finish when I am done. I only have about a month to do this, so all the fiberglass work is a little rushed. Should turn out fine in the end. I know chieftec modding has been done many times, but they are great cases to fix up for someone.

 

Ok here is the work done today. Does not look like much, but fiberglass and bondo work takes a long time. As you can see there is still a lot of sanding to do and I need to make the sides a little more even. Soon it will be smooth though and ready to cut on for the bottom design.





Enjoy

Here is a pic of the lovely girl who will be recieving this

 

Hey can you give me the guy's number?



LOL

 

lol the guy is me....

 

And I'll take the girls.. ;p


Good looking case so far.. I can't wait to see the rest.

 

More bondo work and sanding done to the front. I will edit this post soon with pics.

 

Looking good.... I plan to be doing some bondo to the front of my chieftec as well soon so i'll be checkin in for some tips


Happy Modding!
-Brad

 

Nice start, Candy apple red would look pretty sweet, good luck!

Bradish, are you hiding from XFN now? Haven't been on forever.

 

hot candy apple red w/ a smooth cheiftec.. nice

 

Ok lots of work done today. I made my design and began to cut it out. It is basically cut out right now, but needs to be cleaned up and the top part of the triangles have to be sanded out some how (too small for even tiny file). I also got my power switch.

Middle hole drilled then filed down


Side hole being drilled


Filed down

 

Other side hole done



Full shot


Back side has more work to be done.


New on switch.

 

Ok, as you can see there is still a lot more work to be done and a lot of smoothing out to do. The project is starting to take shape though. I think the front intake came out well and looks carish. Any opinions or suggestions are welcome.

 

lol key power buttom

 

this is cool, cant wait to see the paint job!!

 

I like having key switches for power buttons, i have had that for 3 of my machines. However, i used a small relay in a self-locking circuit powered from 5VSB, so i turned the key and the relay enabled power and reset. then if i pressed a NC momentary switch, the relay was de-powered and you needed to turn the key again to be able to use it.

I used a relay with 4 NO contacts where one contact was in paralell with the key switch, but in series with a NC momentary switch.