some old guy's G5

[61mg73]

Back in business ..... used a piece of scrap as a template to drill out filled holes . Used a #33 bit , first in a Dremel, later in a 1/2"drill , which worked much better .

Did some measuring on the fan grille and used an olfa cutter to cut a circle in a piece of mat board . Made sure the hole in the pattern was snug in the grille and poked holes in the pattern through the threaded holes in the grille .

Aligned the screw holes in the pattern and screwed the pattern down on the case . Marked off the hole with a marker , removed the pattern and cut out the fan hole . Used a cylindrical carbide burr to start the cut and then a bayonet saw with a 24 tooth blade to cut the rest .

Had to do a fair amount of filing to get the grille to fit . Masked everything off and sprayed 1 coat of primer and 3 of silver .

And here's the result .

Gonna wait a few days for everything to harden up totally and wire brush the excess from the back . Then on to the inside....

 

[slv335i]

Looks great. Keep up the great work.

 

[D-an-W]

I bet you are really pleased with that? I would be!

 

[minihack]

Nice job, looks really good!

 

[bones123]

Wow thats really nice

 

[61mg73]

Wow thats really nice

Nice job, looks really good!

I bet you are really pleased with that? I would be!

Looks great. Keep up the great work.

Thank you all , Yeah ... I'm pretty happy with it but let's see how the insides work out.

 

[gouedi]

perfect measurement... are you going to paint it.

 

[gdtrfb24]

Wow, that turned out great!! Can't wait to see how the inners turn out.

 

[61mg73]

perfect measurement... are you going to paint it.

Actually .. it is painted .. I used 1 coat of grey 2 part automotive primer and 3 coats of Honda Arctic Silver auto paint . It's a pretty close match with the original anodizing , which was my goal.

 

[61mg73]

Didn't accomplish a whole lot this week ... was waiting for parts .

Made up some HD mounts from some aluminum angle , along with a template for a front fan mounting point.The idea is to put a 2.5" HDD under the top shelf for use as a Time Machine drive .

Drilled corresponding holes in the top shelf and epoxied in some 6-32 nuts . Also pulled off the latch for the air deflector as I won't be using it and opened up one of the holes in the shelf for a bit more wiring access.

Shelf with template and HDD mounted.
Also got a couple of new fans for the HD bays and case back . The HD fan is a thermally switched one . I figure that the Apple engineers had a reason for putting thermal sensors in the HD bay, so I'll take their hint and thermally sense my fan too. The rear fan was mounted in the cut down fan grill via left over fan mounts from the original top shelf fan . There mounts fit nicely into the space between the fan body and the rear of the case.

Should have more pix in a day or 2.