Sunday, May 5, 2013

Modifying the frame for the COM-8 Rear Door

Today I received the Rear Door Assembly from COM-8 down in Texas.  COM-8 (James) makes frames and accessories for them.  The frames are very similar to the ones offered by Jerry Greene (JAG) a couple years ago.  JAG passed the frame building torch to him and COM-8 offers R2 builders some nice, bolt together packages for those who prefer aluminum frames for their droid builds.

While the frames are similar in lineage, my JAG version 5 frame needed some minor tweaks to install the Rear Door Assembly (RDA)

The RDA will give me a swing out door, essentially.  Also, the space that is currently left open for a flip down electronics tray, I can utilize to mount things into this new structure.

The parts come anodized blue and COM-8 includes a detailed instruction manual.






The best tip in the manual is keeping track where the engraved "H" is!

Assembly goes along pretty quick from there






For the JAG frame, the vertical rods in the back will need to be removed since the included ones will replace them.

The JAG frames use the Inner holes in the frame ring....

The threaded rod needs to be removed from the JAG frame.  The hole below it is what the COM-8 frames use and we will use to install the RDA


Once the threaded rods are out, I countersunk the hole so that in its place, a 1/4-20 flat head screw could be installed.  It has to be extremely flush as the hinge of the RDA will go over it.





Thankfully the holes were already there on my frame, with the exception of one, which took my friend a few moments to drill out, then countersink


Now it was time to install the RDA assembly...



The larger spacer goes up top while the lower part sits flush on the frame ring.

....and here it is, aligned and works fine!