Frame finishing

It took whole moday evening of work, but I think the El Jefe case is now ready for assembly.

What I did was to drill the mounting holes to the cover panels and the motherboard backplate.

I pre-fitted the fan mount and the backplate.




The fan mount was OK, but I somehow managed to drill the backplate holes somewhere else than where they should have been. So I clamped the plate on the frame and drilled new holes. After that I had to grind the holes so it would look even a bit more decent and remove the sharp edges.


I set the damping plates under the frame and punched holes so that I know where to drill.


I bolted the drilled plates on for measure, so I could cut off the excess and have somewhat straight corners.






With the wheels on, I have this much of ground clearance. I will have more, because the rubber plates are not as long as the damping plates.


I used wood drill to drill the holes in the rubber and it worked very well. I should've started the process doing the back plate first, but unfortunately I made the front panel first. After I did that I realised a better way to measure the places for the holes to have the rubber tight and straight.


So I just might need a new front plate. I'll find that out after I bolt the plates on. I decided to use the original end plates because I got an idea to make the corners look good without decoration lists. I got some nice 40mm wide black plastic tape and I'm going to use that for the corners.

I also polished the grills. I didn't go for mirror finish, but I got all the dark spots and scratches off.

After all the panel work was done I was ready to paint the frame. Unlucky for me that the paint had stuck inside the spray can. I could not hear the rattle when I shook the can and all that was coming out was a colorless spray which didn't even feel sticky. So I had to delay the painting to another day. Yesterday I got to a proper paint shop and got a decent can of red paint. Just after maybe 15 minutes the can was empty and my parts were painted.


Now I'm ready to build the radiator mount and replace the 120mm 230V AC fans with 120mm 12V DC fans which I bought from Tehomylly.net forums. The Scythe fans were a bargain at 12€ each. I'm going to use the packaging foams for the radiator assembly, because they're light, easy to work with and I have plenty of it.





I used the plastic tape to strenghten the foam. I'll be putting the foams, radiator and fans on next time I get to work with the frame.

I should be ready to test the water cooling this weekend later.