Project: Rat Rod/ Hell Crew mod -- June 21st -- Assembly Completed

Nice project, very well planned out, good work thus far! I myself also love the rat rods of yesteryear! 1960's were great! too bad i was born in the 80's! lol

 

Thanks for the compliments, next few items up for completion are plexi cutting, mesh installation, and led placement/wiring.

Look for updates a bit more regularly now.

A question for the more experienced modder:
What type of adhesive should I use to adhere the mesh to the plastic front panel?

I am currently thinking epoxy, but if anyone has a suggestion of something that would work a bit better I would like to hear it.

Thanks.

matrixops

 

Something better may be jb weld... I found that epoxy is rather difficult to mix, and won't hold right if not mixed just right...

 

I've thought about using that, but it seemed like a bit of overkill for the application. Now that I have the mesh cut and laid out, it looks like I may need something a bit stronger than epoxy.

Thanks for the suggestion wickyman.

matrixops

 

No problem! Overkill is better than nothing... I mean, better to have it be there forever (which is the planned I would expect!) than have it fall off along the line!

 

I have begun adhering the mesh to the front panel of the case. I have opted to go with JB Weld. I will know tomorrow if it works. Here is a picture of the door with the mesh clamped to it. You'll notice that one side has more clamps than the other. That is because I am adhering one side at a time on this panel.



Other events of the last week have been some preliminary test fitting of the radiator/shroud/fan/duct. While doing this, I discovered that the duct was too close to the motherboard at the SATA connector. Luckily, it was only about an inch too long. So, I had to drill out some rivets and re-bend some sheet metal. The duct openning is still larger than a 120mm fan, so I am not overly concerned about air-flow restrictions due to the change in size.

That is about all that has occured, other than drilling all the panels for plexi and mesh.

I hope to have the plexi cut this week and begin testing my silhouette idea for the Hell Crew logo plexi.

MatrixOps

 

The mesh for the front panel has been attached completely. It adds quite a bit of weight to the front panel, but it looks pretty good. I was able to keep the front door for the usb port.

I want to thank wickyman for the JB Weld suggestion, it worked perfectly.

Here is an image of the front panel now.




I also finished cutting the plexi for the side panel and testing the diode lighting. I hope to test the silhouette idea for the Hell Crew logo in the next couple of days.

MatrixOps

 

Looking very good so far.

Nice spoke rim intake. Matt black rocks as a color - it's what my car will eventually be painted (over black primer).

I look forward to seeing how this develops. My only plea is please don't let this take the time that a usual rod build takes (up to 4 years )

 

I hope it doesn't take 4 years, I have a lan party coming up in a bit that I want to have it ready for. Plus, I have competed the planning and rendering of my next case already so this one needs to get done soon so I can start on that one.

What car are you having painted?

MatrixOps

 

I've been working pretty steadily on this for the last couple of days. Looks like I should be ready for the "test fit" assembly by next week. I took a couple of shots with the plexi installed on both side panels. I think they are turning out pretty good.

I hope to finish the backlighting for the Hell Crew logo tomorrow.

Here they are:




Hope you like them.

MatrixOps

 

nice drill skills!
are you planning something else?
i think that it's too many mesh
i was put it just in the center of the panel.
paint the rim..

 

I admit, the mesh on the front panel (unpainted) looks like a bit of overkill in the pictures. But, trust me, in person it looks really good. And it will be painted to match the rest of the case.

I am not sure that I have any other plans for changing the looks of this case. Now, I am basically to the point of assembly and organizing the internal pieces appropriately.

MatrixOps

 

that front looks dam nice, and the grill, its about time that some one did somthing different with one of these cases

 

Hey everyone, I thought that it was about time that I get off my behind and get another update posted. I have been working on the case and taking pictures, but I didn't feel that I had made enough progress to generate a post. That was until last night.

So, without further ado...

For the last week or so, I have been focusing on prepping the lighting for the "tHC" logo on the right side of the case. This required testing led layouts for the lighting, creating led mounts, wiring of leds (where is my frickin' heat gun now?), painting of the plexi, masking and painting the silhouette, and ghosting a classic "Street Rod" logo on the right panel glass. Granted, if I didn't have to wait until my family goes to bed to work on this, I could probably get it done a bit quicker, but hey I figure the case should be done in about two weeks. In fact, the plan is to test fit all the hardware, leak test the WC loop, and start sanding for paint by the end of the weekend.

On with the photos...

I needed to create a way to mount my leds, so with a little bit of sheet metal I created these little things. They are about 2cm x 2cm.



Here is a little clearancing I performed on the motherboard tray. I did this to add some sheet metal. The funny story behind this is that while cutting the sheet metal with my RTX, a small piece of metal bounced off my dust mask, under my safety glasses and decided to embed itself into my left eye. Quite painful, as you can probably imagine. This little incident required an emergency trip to the optometrist to get the metal out.



Here is the sheet metal I mounted to the motherboard tray and crossbar. It is going to be used as both a place to mount led's as well as a light deflector from the intererior of the case.



I jb welded the led mounts to the panel. If your wondering, there will be 14 led's mounted on this side.



Temporarily putting the led's on for wire measurement prior to soldering



The wiring completed



A quick look at the back side of the logo plexi



And what the silhouette will look like when lit from the back. Your not getting the full effect here due to the masking tape, but hopefully you get the idea.



For the left panel plexi, I wanted to have a "ghosted" classic street rod logo in the lower left corner below the handle. So, for me, when I think vintage street rods, I think "MOON". With this in mind I scavenged around for a good image of their classic "MOONEYES" logo. With a bit of experimentation, I ended up with this. The image just looks a bit off. The eyes are almost perfect, but in the image they look odd. Sorry about that, but you get the idea.



Hope you like the update

MatrixOps

 

m00n

This is weet!!

 

Sweet. I love the mod so far. Its gona look awesome! :-D

 

The last mile has begun. I started final assembly last night and I should have everything finished by tomorrow night. For those that have been following the thread I have a few images of the pre-assembly and the "feature" of the SWiftech MCW-50 GPU waterblock on an AGP 6600GT (if you are in the market, beware of the 6 series hold-down kit). Also, I have an image of the beginning of the final assembly.

To get things started off, I began my pre-assembly over this past weekend, just to make sure that everything was going to fit. Most of the work centered around resizing the wires from the powersupply for the different devices I am installing. But, the other question that needed to be answered was clearance for the SATA ports. After a quick check, everything is golden in that department. I know that the following images don't show a lot of detail, but they give a quick glimpse of the layout prior to paint.



I you look closely in this next image, you will see the orientation of the GPU waterblock inlet/outlet. They are angled towards the back of the case at approximately 40 degrees.



continuing on the subject of the swiftech MCW50 GPU waterblock. I initially tested the clearances on the waterblock and mounting bracket just to make sure that it wouldn't interfere with anything on the card. I noticed that the
waterblock bracket hits the Nvidia bridge heatsink.



About 5 minutes with the RTX....



"Like a glove"....



After the test assembly was finished, I disassembled the parts and prepped them for paint. Lots of sanding and cleaning later, I began to paint the components of the case. This first image is of the DVD Burner and Floppy after painting. The floppy face plate was originially beige, so some vinyl dye was used on it. Although originally black, I used vinyl dye on the face of the DVD Burner for consistency.



I did have a picture of all the pieces painted, but it didn't turn out very well. If I get time tonight I will re-take the image. But, I do have the first image of the final assembly process. This one merely shows the motherboard and powersupply, what you might notice is the small red and black wires along the bottom and right edge of the case, those are led wires that I hadn't tucked away yet. Not seen in the picture are the 14 led's mounted on the other side.



Look for more updates tomorrow as the final assembly progresses.

Thanks for stopping by.

MatrixOps

 

The final assembly continues, although it is at a slower pace than planned. I would rather be slow, than fast and mess something up.

I started out assembling the fan duct and radiator shroud assembly. I decided to cut some cork/rubber gaskets for the fans. This should help dampen any vibrations, and prevent the fasteners from loosening.



Fan duct, fan, radiator shroud assembly completed



Installing the entire assembly into the case was a bit of an adventure. Mainly due to the fact that I wanted to refrain from mangling the header pins on the bottom right corner of the motherboard. Also, the clearance on the back side of the radiator shroud for putting the two fasteners in is fairly tight. Overall, I think I had to take it out three times for various reasons, mostly fastener issues.



With that assembly installed, it was time to put the front of the case back on. Note to anyone who may have one of those days where the brain isn’t functioning properly, be relatively careful with the wires connected to the power and reset switches. They are small gauge wire and can break if improperly handled. A couple of minutes with the soldering iron and it was good as new.



And a close up of the spoke intake painted.



It was getting pretty late, about 2 a.m., so I really didn’t want to trust myself working on the detail oriented parts of the assembly (wiring and tube routing). Instead, I started assembling the side and top panels. Pretty mundane stuff, but it needed to get done. I ended up running out of flat washers, something I hadn’t really checked with the pre-assembly.






Thanks for checking out my project.

MatrixOps

 

This is so damn sweet, I just love what you've done with the front bezel! Amazing work

 

Well, two days have past and the final build has run into a bit of a snag. The reservoir starts to leak a bit after the pump has been shut off. I have swapped out the plastic barbs for brass, used teflon pipe tape the first two times with no sucess. This third and last attempt with this reservoir includes using brass barbs and silicon sealant to seal the threads. I have to wait 24 hours for it to cure, so tomorrow night will be the earliest I can test it.

Other than that, I finished soldering the wires to the circuit board holding the resistors for the LED's, routed all the wiring into place, concealing as much as possible.

Needles to say, the last couple of days have been pretty frustrating.

If anyone has any other suggestions for sealing the barbs that I can try if the silicon doesn't work, I would love to hear them. Or, suggest a better drive bay reservoir to replace the dtek one I am having trouble with.

MatrixOps