More and more small things are crossed off my list.. and many more things that I find along the way that never was on the list to begin with, but should probably have been there…
While preparing the body for painting, I decided to fix another small thing that had bothered me a bit. It seems that my frame was not 100% straight at the top, making a slightly larger gap between the dome ring and the frame right where the shoulders attach. The gap here was about 3mm, while it was 1mm around the rest of the body.
So, setting out to fix it, I started with adding a smaller strip of styrene around the top of the frame, outside the rockler, but quickly scrapped the idea, fortunately before the glue had set permanently!
Instead, I reinforced the top frame ring with 2mm styrene around the shoulders!
2 pieces of styrene added, time to trim it flush and mark where to sand..
This was done on both sides, and I spent a good 45 minutes outside with my detail sander smoothing these out, but once I was done, it looked great and smooth. I test fitted with the rockler, found 2 more areas where a little more was needed to take off, once the rockler was sitting flush all around (which it wasn’t before, let me tell you) I mounted it again and put the dome on top.
The gap is now nice and flush. You can still see the old gap in the gray area above.. I’ve got a 1.5 mm gap all around the dome! I may remove a bolt inside and use washers instead to make this gap even smaller, I haven’t decided yet.
When I was working with the rockler, I also removed a few of the acetal bearings inside to make it run smoother. I also gave it a good sprayng of teflon spray while at it.
Now, I’ve removed the Pittman dome motor while sanding, but without the motor, this is how freely the dome now spins…
I feel quite happy with this change, and without the gap, it feels even better!
I celebrated the new spinning dome by getting another item dome on my list: I fixed and finalized one of the battery boxes! bondoed, sanded, everything!
