Mounting Battery Boxes to Feet

While I was at Lowe's I started puzzling over the battery boxes, and mounting them to the feet.
I picked up a small (13 piece) tap and die set. It's got from #6-32 to 5/16-18 taps. Turns out, the 10-24, which is in there, is the size I need. And, even better, I already have some 3/8" long 10-24 screws with nuts to fit. Only problem is they are philips head, and I'm thinking I'll be wanting some hex caps, so that if I can get my hand in there I can tighten them.

After some super careful measuring and marking, off to the drill press we went! For the 10-24 tap, I used the 5/32" bit, to make sure I had enough left to cut the threads into.

Here you can see my practice drill/taps:




There wasn't much difference between the 11/64" hole and the 5/32" hole, but the larger hole seemed a little more wiggly to me, so I went with the smaller one. Was probably in my head, but so is the whole project. "Hole project"....get it?

Anyway, after drilling and tapping the holes, I had to get out the trusty dremel, and grind down some welds on the inside of the battery box, so that the nuts on the back of the screws sit flat. On my first test fit, the welds were causing the screw to push over at an angle.

Here's pics...you can see the measurements on the boxes:



The pencilled in up isn't so I'll remember which way the battery box goes. It's because the removable door on the back isn't the same on both ends...just FYI :)

The left foot's battery box fit like a glove, once I had the depth of the screw adjusted properly.

The Right foot required a little 'adjustment' to fit properly...as seen here:



But after that, they now fit like a glove. See:







So, that's all for today, since it's starting to get a little dark outside.

Tomorrow (Saturday) the 501st is having a fundraiser at my local Buffalo Wild Wings. Last year we raised $550 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, with little to no advertisement thanks to the store donating 10% of their sales. This year, we've had PSAs playing all week on 2 different radio stations locally. And the store is donating %20 of their sales. And we've expanded to include 3 more stores in MS.

Fun to think that tomorrow could well be R2's last trooop with breakable feet :)

Primer for JAG feet

So, I looked up in the 'paint closet' to see what I had on hand as far as primer goes, and found 4 cans. One was empty, or close enough, and it was some no name brand I bought back when I was spraying my first E-11. There was also a can of store brand (don't know what store) grey primer that's been set aside as well.

The last 2 cans were Rustoleums, which is a good thing, because other than blue, it's all I use :)

There was a can of 'dark grey' primer, which is actually more like black, and the more common light grey, which we're all used to. Note the bargain sized can... :)



Decided to try the dark on the insides of the feet, here's how that turned out:







It's a little difficult to ensure that ALL surfaces have adequate coverage, so some other surfaces may have runs, but hey, it's inside :)
Plus, I seem to recall it's harder to cover the dark primer with white...

Anyway, while that dries, I'm gonna head to the store to pick up some more cans, since I'm pretty sure I'm out of white, and that light grey is probably at least half empty. Or half full. Whatever :)

Before heading out, I remembered I needed to primer the steel detail pieces too, and wanted them done when I got back:



***Back from Lowe's. Bought 6 cans, 2 light grey, 1 dark grey, 2 white and 1 clear.
Don't worry, not using the clear on anything white.



Anyway, more paint pics.

Now that the dark grey inside is dry enough to be handled, I started primering the bottom outside:



I used the cardboard trying to keep as much overspray out of the inside as possible. Let that dry some, then flipped it over, onto a brick with some more of that old T-shirt over it for a stand:



That pretty much did it for the old can of light grey.

After the center foot, I swapped to a new can, which is important, because as you can see in previous photos, I've been using that trigger handle. It doesn't fit the new tops, so I've been using old ones. Turns out, the new tops are pretty nice...

Here's before and after on the bottoms of the outer feet:

JAG FEET!!!

So, after 22 months of waiting, I finally have my JAG steel feet in hand!

They came well packed, and are fairly heavy. They will most likely be able to handle the punishment that I dish out to my R2's feet :)

They were sprayed down with some sort of WD-40 type grease spray, they bagged in plastic, separated by cardboard and packing peanuts.





Included were detail panels for the sides of all the feet.



Started off with the JAG recommended warm water and dish soap bath. This removed the still liquid grease, but there were lots of places where the grease had umm, coagulated? Maybe dried is a better word for that. My first thought was to sand it off, that didn't work, the dried grease was sticky and loaded up from the metal dust almost immediately.





Next solution was much more effective. I got out the ol' gallon can of acetone and poured myself a small bowl. I cut the arm off of a t-shirt (in fact, the same t-shirt that's been chopped up to make the poor man's fiberglass that I used to reinforce the A&A feet) and with a fairly easy washing, all the sticky is now gone.



Up next: Primer.