Project : FX-57 MaxPC RotM, Sept.2006!!!!!

Nov.28th - A scoop is born....

I'm back from turkey day binge... (ugh, that hurt) and am back on my modding wheels...

The pics you are about to see are *only* the rough out of the sheet aluminium template for the hood scoop.

I plan on taking this rough shape, covering it with "Great Stuff" foam, and shaving and sanding that down to the desired shape. Then I'll use fiberglass to lay over it and sand it down to the shape I want. After sanding, I'll prime it, and commence to painting the outside of the case!!!!

Here are the prelim scoop shots:

Looking from the side, front of the case is to the left:


Looking down the scoop from the leading edge:


From the side:


And after I unfolded the pieces and took off the tape, I'm thinking that this should be just about the perfect sheet shape to bend and attach it all together:


These are just so you will get the idea of where it is headed.

The sheetmetal cutouts will actually have bottom tabs cut so that they extend off of the bottom attaching walls of the scoop. I'll then cut slits in the top of the case roof for these tabs to fit through, then I'll bend them and JB Weld them into the roof (underside of the top) of the case.

Then start up the foam treatment!!

I saw a guy do this for his rig for some body work he was doing. This looked like such a cool way to get the desired form, I applied it to the hood scoop!

 

prototype built out of alum with the bending station that I built earlier:

Here is the cut sheet loaded into the bender:


After bending it into submission:




I also disected a UV meteor light. Removed the acrylic tube and the acrylic cube ends, so that I only have the little LED strip. I plan on using this in the machine, but it will actually be burried in the side next to the 5.25 bays, but firing out into some UV reactive acrylic that I plan on having a little light show with...

 

Wondering "Why?" I would want to pull out the guts of a metor light?

This is why....
Active lighting
More Active lighting...

I plan on embedding this effect next to the 5.25 bays, long ways down the side. The UV LED's will be firing into the side of the Orange acrylic and the effect will be seen on the inside of the case!!! And I have not even polished the edges yet! This is the straight acrylic and the effect is much more noticable in my garage than in the capture of the camera.



To quote Stimpy... "Joooyyyyyeeeeeee!!!"

 

Dec.1st - eyes closing

Too tired to post pics, but here is what I did tonight:
1) Foamed the hood scoop. tomorrow I'll cut it down and add in more foam in the low places.
2) Took my CoolDrive3 that I bought (older model drive cooler, and it looks kida retro too!), removed the blue LED's and replaced them with White. Now there is a nice even white glow that matches the fans, that emenates to the edges from the front center.
3) repainted the fan exhaust port on the mobo. Remember it used to be a optic green arcylic. Now, it is a gloss black, and the power lead is sleeved.

Foam is drying, and my eyes are trying to close...

night night all....

 

Dec.1st - evening productivity...

Picture update from last night...
not much text, as I need to get out into the garage and shave the scoop into shape!

Painted the fan shroud from UV reactive green to a gloss black, and sleeved the power cable:





Seems that we have had this discussion once before... and because of our debate, I was able to locate these bad boys for less than Radio Shack!!!




The CoolDrive started blue:


and changed to white:


And I have a whole slew of gross jokes and commentary on "what" this looks like... let's keep it clean folks... ok?



It has hardened today, solid foam (*tap* tap*, *thud* *thud*...) so I'm stepping out to cut it down now! Hopefully there will be some cool pics forthcoming tonight!

 

Dec.1st - still productive!!

Yeah, it aint the cleanest stuff... but I sure to like what I am getting right now!

I just spent about 30 minutes shearing off the crap, and fleshing out the basic form of the hood scoop. I did one side flush with the edge, and the other side like a traditional hood scoop. I'm likeing the flush side the more I look at it.

I have a big, freakin HYOOJ air pocket that was in the middle of this foam, so I have touchup to do tonight to fill in that spot, then run another bead on the side that I stripped to make it perpendicular to the surface.

Here are some quick pics:

Looked a bit like a turkey here...


Started with the coping saw and sheared off the top:


This is not half of the mess I made, lots more in the trash bag to my left (not in the pic):


Starting to take shape, and I'm figuring how bad the air pocket was... ugh...


This is a decent view of the side that I sheared to make perpendicular to the surface of the case:


This is a shot to try and show the "flush side". This is the style that I am leaning towards.


A few top shots to show the general shape and orientation:





I could not be happier with the initial results. Only thing draging it down is the mondo air pocket.



Headed back out into the garage!!!

 

Dec.2nd - unexpected score!!!

Heheheh... I just think it is a great accessory! (and I do think it's kinda purdy too! )




This will be positioned over the cpu fan, mounted on the fan grill... at least... that is what I'm thinking!

 

I'm getting ready to get out in the garage and cut the base off of this thing... but here is a glimpse of what I'm looking for:




It is just resting on the bottom of the filter there, I want to get the base of the housing on there for authenticity, as well as the integrated mounting post that comes with it. Will allow me to wing nut that top of the filter housing.

 

Dec.3rd - working on the "manifold"

From tonight:

That is the 92mm fan grill legs that you see sticking out from under this dude... damn near a perfect fit! I could not have been happier!



So, I hear the question, "How did you get the grill to stay on down there, Craig?" Well, I'll show ya, if you promise to respect me in the morning!
Zip Ties. 2 of them, that will never be seen, because they are smack in the middle of the air filter. I can live with this.... can you?



Test fit in the case... making sure I have not done all of this work, only to have it not fit... criminy! I'm going to likely have to shear the bolt down and get some sort of nylon centered lock nut for the top! While I had the grill off, I pulled hte fan and sleeved it's power/signal wires in a black sleeving.






The scoop is shaping up nicely! Very nicely I might add. Not done with this by any stretch, but the bulk of the basic work is done. Shape a bit more, then I'll fiberglass it tomorrow. While the fiber glass dries, I plan on filing down the side window to it's final level, and work on painting the out sides the Orange color. (Sand, prime, sand, paint, more sanding... more painting...

 

Dec.4th - Respect the fiberglass....

Quick pic update.... a little text to show what all has happened in the past .. uh... how long have I been outside?

No lie, I think (in hind sight) I used a bit too much resin, as I think my 2 layers of fiber glass with the resin worked in to saturate the fabric, I think I made the 2nd cousin to ballistic kevlar or anti missle armor! JEEZUS! I went through 4 qty/80 grit sander pads sanding the fiber glass down to the initial shape in the 2nd pic! 3rd, 4th and 5th scoop pics are the first layer of bondo, then 1st layer sanded, then the 2nd touchup layer applied.








Took the front grill emblem out for the first time in a while! Put it to my dremel polishing attachments and wire wheels to get the years of dust and crap that were embedded into it! Much better now!



This is just to show the placement of the hood ornament, and also that the very top and very bottom of the bezel have little tapers. Turns out those are part of the back plastics of the front bezel attachment framework. I can paint the top and bottoms of the front bezel something to accent the work I am about to put on the front.

I've got a cool idea for the paint (I think... we'll see, I've test painted something tonight to see how it comes out later tonight.), might be a two tone matte black/deep smoke grey gloss anodized paint on the front, with the edges being the side panel OSHA orange.




I've got another paint scheme in my head, (my original one) that I'm thinking will work as well... more on that later!

 

Dec.5th - debate

That intake has been a serious pain in the a$$... I like it, but I dont. I don't like it because I see what I did wrong with it, where my fabrication was errored.

However... I'm not beating myself up over it too badly... after all, it was my first time using fiberglass, my first time to create something *this* "from scratch"... All of my mods previously have been stripping stuff away in hte form of cutouts and such. Not used to building up things that did not exist in the first place!

So, in that sense, I'm pretty happy with it.

Also, my last tech piece arrived in the mail today. A Plextor 712SA SATA DVD Burner. It is not the slot load (wanted one of those badly, but did not want to the price premium those were carying), but I wanted my hard drive and my optical to both be SATA devices, as I have orange SATA cables that same with the board! That was some good karma! So, I'll have no PATA "flat ribbon" cables t hide in the rig at all, and the SATA cables that are used will be in the same color scheme as the paint job!!!

 

Dec.6th-Throwing on the orange...



happiness!
scoop is almost flawless (externally) and I can live with the crap on the inside of it. I think I have a way of disguising it though! We'll see...

2 pics to show where I am as of 10 minutes ago!



Took a boatload of pics today to show all of the other things that have led up to this point, and I'll get those in later... but when that orange hit the white primer... my heart lept!

It is *sooo* the perfect shade!!! I purposely used the white primer to try and brighten up the orange. I was afraid that if I used grey or dark primer as a base, it would dull out the orange. So I used grey high fill primer on 2 layers 1st, then sanded, then 2 layers of white primer, then sanded *very* carefully.

I've also begun on the front bezel and the drive bay covers and the cool drive unit. I came up with a cool color for the center that is not totally black. I'm keeping my streak alive of finding a way to incorporate Duplicolor Metalcast in each of my mods thus far!

More in a bit!

WOO HOOO!!!!!

*fumes in my garage were making me loopy!!!*

 

Dec.6th-2nd coat... MMmmmmmm!




And the 1/2 painted front bezel:



The black is actually transparent, Metalcast Smoke color! All of the 5.25 bay covers are this color as well as the brushed alum front of the DriveCooler 3.

 

Dec.6th-Night time, fighting the temps...

Hopefully it can get dry enough before the freeze rolls through tonight.

I am tempted to leave a heater running in the garage on concrete just to keep the area where the parts will be @, a bit warmer.

 

Dec.8th-test mount the power...

Test mounted the PS with the spacers in place so that the fan fit properly, yay!!! Also looke d pretty cool too!






Having to rethink the power cabling.

Not getting rid of it, but I underestimated the space left after the power supply and the optical drive were added in (plus the drop of the cieling due to the blow hole fan firing in to the scoop...)

So... I have to relocate the cable attachments. And since I will not have anything located in the lower 5.25 bays, I'm going to take 2 of them and build a minimalist drive bay attachment (think like a bay cover for the front bezel, except it will face the back) 2 bays used space. I'll cut a hole into the side of the 2 lower 5.25 bays and feed the power cables through that. Solder them on, and have my plug panel facing out into the open area, and cables will be run from there to their respective devices.

This placement will also put the mobo 4pin Molex (next to the PCI-E slots) and the 4 pin AUX connector within easy reach and it should proove to be an entertaining cable path!

 

Dec.9th-Power routing experiment..

Work done tonight. Remember, I'm going for a vehicle type of feel.

Taking a page from Lupine, I was soo happy with the cabling redirection, I think I'll use a similar technique here. Except this time, the ATX motherboard power bundle will stay out here and not get fed through.



The individual bundles ranked according to where they are on the cable hole of the power supply. I tried to back trace all of the cables and order the various bundles according to whether or not they returned to the top or the bottom of the bundle @ the power supply.



Looming on the cables and routed back to the hole. I'm not trying to disguise anything here. I wanted it to have a "piped" feel to it. Maybe sparkplug wires, or the vacuum tubing that is all under the hood.



And the cascade of cables on the back side of the motherboard.



some will be kept as is, and others will be butchered and reallocated to other power needs.

 

Dec.10th-Front bezel work....

Trying to get some paint to dry tonight so that I can get some of the long "time" items done while I grab a bit of shut eye in a bit.

1st thing that I knew I had to get done tonight was the front bezel.


When I pulled the tape, I realized that the left side was not masked properly. Missed it on the pre-paint inspection. Now I have to re-mask the grey/black area, and paint this stripe, without creating a run... grrr....
Oh well...

Other than that, and a few oversprays that hit the tops of the grey areas from behind (another numbskull moment, I masked for paint from the front... totally did not cover the holes for paint coming from the back side! *headsmack smiley* )


Both of these should be easily fixable.

 

Pics are down again!

 

Not from here

 

What type of product have you used after modelling the foam?
Is a reinforcer for the foam?

Amazing works boy