The saying goes, "sometimes you're the hammer and sometimes you're the nail." Today I was definitely the nail...
I had high hopes for today to be a productive day and it started off that way. I drilled the holes on the mobo for the Alice frame and then marked and drilled the frame.
Because the carriage bolts I'm using are squared off at the base I wasn't too concerned with the initial hole being slightly off center. Without a little extra work the bolt wont seat correctly.
I took to it with a file and squared it off, now it's centered and a perfect fit. I have to give credit where credit is due, I picked up the idea from here
http://jimmmcshane.com/ghostbusters/proton-packs/ I then mounted the mobo to the frame and threw it on just to make sure it felt right. I was going to take a picture but then I thought, I'll just do it after I do the L-brackets and mount the shell. And from there is where my day goes down hill...
After looking at references pictures for ever I noticed that the rivets on many of the packs were not all neat and straight. Below you can see Rays pack has them pretty much in line but Peters pack has them at a slight diagonal. So in that spirit I drilled all my L-brackets a little different, giving them different angles and spacings.
For some annoying reason all but two rivets were snapping with a huge chunk of shank left. I've never had this issue before and it was very frustrating. I had to clip all the shanks and then file them down, I'm not sure if i'm going to drill all of them out and redo them or if I'll let it slide and see how it looks when they're painted.
I decided to press on and drill out the brackets so I could mount the shell, it would all be worth it if I could put this thing on finally. Drilled out and tapped the first bracket no problem, started on the next and snap...
After getting the other half of the tap out I decided today just wasn't my day and put everything away. I'll get at it again in a few days, once my new tapping bit arrives.