Another try at the pocket vent, started front coin return

I had an hour or so of time to do a bit more work on R2 tonight.

The pocket vents are my latest frustration. Mounting them is tough because the frame, an older design, has frame rails in the way. Since this is a curved surface, its no easier to work on with the skins on the frame, or the skins off.

My first thought was to use silicon to simply glue it on. But that idea went sour when I tried doing that, then realized if I ever removed the skins, chances are they warble off. They are on the end of the skin, so they get the brunt of the "whip" when the skins are unscrewed and "pop" off the large data port.

I was toying with the bag of parts and pieces I bought last night and realized that due to the frame rails, one side has less than a 1/2 inch til it comes into contact with the rail. (See pic, left side of piece)


I measured and figured out that if I cut the included mounting tab in half, it would ft and make contact with the skin, perhaps "bracing" it into place.


That actually works, but allows for a bit of vertical movement. Not much but enough to drive me nuts. I then cut up some scrap metal, scraps from the skins, and siliconed a piece under the tab. While it did hold it snugger, it still had a wee bit of movement. I cut another tiny piece of material and taped it on top of the first. That worked better. Its not perfect, but its holding it in there. Until I can sort out a better method, I'm going to stick with this for now.



My next battle was with the coin return.

Since my skins are not perfectly lined up, its a real battle to line up this piece into the cutout allowed for it in the skins. Up too high and the bottom isnt sitting on the bottom any more. Too low and it just looks unbalanced. Argh!

I tried to do this with the skins still mounted up but there just wasn't enough area to use clamps on more than one side. So I removed the skins, stood them up to help maintain the curvature, gobbed on some silicone on all 4 sides and clamped away.

I really hate it when I get frustrated and hurry through something. That's how I felt about this piece. I know there has to be a better way to mount it up but for now, I wanted to see if silicone would suffice. Optimally, I should use some sort of tab method like the vent. But we'll see how this turned out.

So that's how today went. A bit frustrating but one little step forward.