And nearly 3 years later with planned upgrades...finally progress!
All it took to kick it into gear was:
-for me to drop it at a convention, have the counter LEDs get damaged, and bend my stock.
-It got rained on coming home from the convention so the steel parts started rusting up.
-The paint started wearing badly (I just painted over the top of the factory olive drab, so my top coat of brown bess started scratching off revelaing not shiny aluminum, but rather just OD paint. ugly!)
So the rejuvenation project is under way full swing finally
-Stripped it all down and re-bluied the steel.
-Stripped the shrouds and repainted. Pretty cool to see them bare.
Attachment:
20180118_132408.jpg [ 213.3 KiB | Viewed 6057 times ]
-Upgrading the handle to wood. The quality of wood was actually pretty poor, and after the mods, it will look pretty much the same as the old plastic handle. But hey, at least I'll know it is real wood, right??? It also got thin enough to blow a wall in the front. I gave the inside a coat of JB weld epoxy to reinforce it.
Attachment:
20180710_154551.jpg [ 222.64 KiB | Viewed 6057 times ]
-For the lower, nothing fancy. I used a 'scothbrite' type pad to scrub as much of the chrome as I could off. I then used an 'etching primer' and black paint. The match is good enough. Not sure how well the paint will hold on but so far its pretty good.
-For the damaged counter...wowza. So I actually lucked out and got Majenko at a time his v3 boards were in stock. I promptly burnt it to a crisp. Not sure what I did exactly, but I did modify it so I am sure it was my fault. He installed these quick connects on the new boards so that you didn't have to solder directly on to it. The problem was the quick connects made it thicker, so I pulled them all off and soldered direct to the board anyways. I must have pulled something else important off too because it fried.
Back to Majenko I went. Turns out he had fixed the issue of the thickness of the quick connects by making them downward facing in the latest batch! Problem solved! Only the 2x CR2023 button cell batteries I used to use on the v2 boards werent strong enough to power it! So with his guidance (great guy that Majenko!) I got to sourcing a rechargable 3.7v lithium ion battery that was the same size as my old battery pack. It would last longer, have more power, and be rechargable so that I didnt have to remove anything to replace batteries.
That is where I am at now. The battery was cheap (like $8 on ebay). The control board with USB hookup for that battery was also dirt cheap ($4 for 2).
I tested it out with the USB on the old v2 batttery just to make sure I didnt fry anything. I am ready to install, but finding a place for the control board was a pain.
Best I could figure was the bottom of the mag base. It was out of the way, but easily accessible. It required some heavy dremeling to make room though. I have my charging board next to my mag switch now.
Test on old (board complete with LED that shines red when charging and blue when done)
Attachment:
20180703_141929.jpg [ 110.34 KiB | Viewed 6057 times ]
Location of charging board
Attachment:
20180703_145054.jpg [ 216.48 KiB | Viewed 6057 times ]