Supplied by 2cooltek

Why you should consider it: I'm looking at my sleek and sexy aluminum case the other day and I can see nothing but the CD face and floppy face sticking their beige tongues out at me. I'm thinking....that's pretty damn ugly. Get down to the ghetto lab and stealth that drive and give the floppy a new face!

A note before the song

First off I have to give inspirational acknowledgement where it is due. Macro over at Bit-tech has done some awesome mods in additon to the ones I'm about to show you.

Are you ready? Then we'll begin.

I'm looking at my sleek and sexy aluminum case the other day and I can see nothing but the CD face and floppy face sticking their beige tongues out at me. I'm thinking....that's pretty damn ugly. To the best of my knowledge aluminum faced components aren't readily available. So what to do? Get down to the ghetto lab and stealth that drive and give the floppy a new face!

First let's have a look at the the victim...errr...computer. You see what I see? That CD in the top and floppy are just screaming "BEIGE! I'M BEIGE!"

So to flash forward before all you scroll junkies get to it here's a preview of the solution in the finished form. Please not that there are no temperature comparison charts and conclusion at the end of this article to go directly to..heh heh. :)

Arm yourself.

You may be thinking you need a dremel and you may not have one. You don't want to go buy one yet and want to get modding right now. No problem. All you'll need is a pair of sturdy wire cutters, pliers, philips screwdriver(s), X-Acto knife, scissors, and a paintbrush or two. Don't go down and grab one of those 3 inch wide brushes either. That's a little on the overkill side. Also the brush bristles should be a bit on the firmer side.

Next phone over to your local hobby store to track down a product called Bare-Metal Foil. Not every store carries it so don't be driving around like a madman expecting the first store to have it.

Bare-Metal Foil is a sheet of very thin foil, like aluminum foil, with a somewhat self adhesive backing. It's easy to accidentally tear so handle with care. It also comes in a variety of other finishes like chrome, metal look, gold, etc. This one sheet (12" x6") cost me $8.50 Canadian. It's basically very thin aluminum foil material.

Next run over to the local hardware store and grab yourself (and pay for it too) some double sided foam mounting tape. This cost me $2.96 Canadian. This particular one is 1/2" x 75".

You can also hunt around Home Depot in the maze of aisles like I did to pick up some self adhesive vinyl pads. They are like vinyl circles with a self adhesive backing. You put them on the bottom of speakers that sit on stands or on the bottom of something that you don't want to have mark up the surface it sits on. I chose the flat topped ones instead of the round top ones mainly because if I had to put two together...it could be done. Total cost of that package...$2.89 Canadian.

Now fully armed with my tools and good intentions I set my eyes on:

Giving the floppy a new face.

I've got a Lian Li PC67 so the bezel just yanks off. If you've got an aluminum case without the easily removable bezel then just rip out that floppy drive any way you can. I chose the screwdriver method instead of a crowbar.

There it is...the nasty beige faced floppy. (Soon to be extinct I hear) You'll want to pay attention to those dark squares towards the front of the face of the floppy.

Down in those squares you'll see a screw in either one...two screws in all. Turn out these screws carefully as to not strip the heads. The face place will easily come right off after that. Pardon me as I shot this pic after the mod was done in afterthought to show you the close up of the area where to remove the screws.

The naked floppy. That pushbutton will have to be covered later but that's what it looks like without a face. I guess we'd be looking that way too. Just bones and a tongue sticking out. Ewww.

Rapping with the floppy.

I've really got to stop these late night article writing sessions. The section titles are becoming a bit weird. Regardless take the naked floppy face and put it on the sheet of Bare-Metal Foil to give yourself an idea of how much foil to cut for the job. Think of it as wrapping a Christmas present but you don't want to have the paper cover the bottom; only the face and the sides. (with a little bit of overlap...don't be too precise.

After I committed and made the cut it looks something like this. You're only cutting a piece that's about 5" x 1.5" so you'll have plenty more Bare-Metal Foil to work with if you make a mistake. I would think about 10 tries before you totally used the sheet up.

A hint about working with this Bare-Metal Foil. Use the X-Acto knife to begin lifting up the foil from the backing. Don't use your fingernail as you'll just end up wrecking the foil. Next peel the backing away from the foil. Don't peel the foil away from the backing. If you lift the foil away from the backing you'll make it curl and it will spring into a roll after you separate it from the backing. Could be touch and go to smooth it all out again. Just try not to pull the foil or backing at a right angle away from each other to avoid too much curling.

Watch those fingers on the backing! Lay the foil, adhesives side up, on a flat surface and centre and place the floppy drive, face down, onto the foil. No need to hammer it into place and don't worry if the foil looks "crinkly" like below.

Take the paintbrush and work the foil from the centre of floppy drive out. The paint brush allows you to gently work the foil to adhere to the plastic floppy drive face. Do the long sides first and trim off any excessive excess on the ends and wrap the ends like you would a Christmas present. Work all the corners and edges with a paintbrush forcing the foil, as best you can, to be flat.

You use the paintbrush as it won't accidentally tear the foil at this stage. After you finish carefully putting the foil into place you can use the backing to smooth out the foil even more. Think of it as gently polishing the face plate with the foil backing.

You'll end up with something that looks like this. But wait! Where do you stick the floppy and where's the push button hole and light? Just take your X-Acto knife and run a line down the centre of the floppy hole lenght wise and the same for the push button hole.

The drive light will take a bit of VERY careful cutting and itty-bitty scraping to expose. Easy...just take it slow.

Run the cut down the centre thusly.

Flip the face plate over and pry up the door plate. You can use the X-Acto knife to help and hold the drive plate door open with your fingers.

Flip the floppy face plate over and use the brush to work the foil to wrap around the exposed hole. You may have to put a slit on either side of the longer "ramp" to get the foil to lay down properly. The "ramp" I'm speaking of is between the drive light and push button hole in the picture below. A small slit on either side will take care of that.

It'll end up looking like this. After you'll initially used the paintbrush to work in the foil you can use whatever else at hand to smooth it out. By now you'll have experimented and gotten the hang of things.

But wait! Again! What about that door plate? BEIGE...My god it's BEIGE! Simple...cut a piece of the foil a bit longer and wider than the drive plate door...flip the floppy face plate over and hold open the door. Peel off the backing and slide the foil into place to centre it over the door and use the paintbrush to work it into place...Same procedure as what you've done with the whole face plate except on a smaller scale.

Ta Dah! It's done with the exception of one last piece.

The floppy eject button was wrapped with two pieces. First a piece that was very narrow and wrapped from side to side. The finishing piece was just a little bit wider than the width of the eject button and wrapped top around to bottom. Smooth it out using a chunk of the backing and you're done.

Shove the floppy back into place and you've given a new look to a beige floppy drive.

That Beige CD

Well...there it is...beige.

Now this is a mod where you don't have to remove the cd at all. In other mods people have quite cleverly chosen to remove the whole face plate of the CD and do a bunch of other things. If I weren't so lazy maybe I would have gone that route but this is a "quick stealth mod" that requires only a bit of talent which is just right for me.

You should have kept the drive bay face plate that you removed to install the CD. If not...go find one or you can stop right now.

Before we begin. Be careful of the front plate of the aluminum drive bay piece. It's easy to mark up so careful you don't scratch it.

You can use a dremel for this step or do it ghetto style like I did. Use the wire cutters to score the metal of the aluminum drive bay plate. The cut lines will be on either end on the tabs. You're wanting to cut those tabs off to leave only the drive bay flat rectangular piece.

Now don't think you'll be cutting through that plate. You won't be able to. Just squeeze like hell to score the metal.

Next a gentle fold and the aluminum, which is fairly soft, will snap off on the score line. Use a file or some sandpaper if you wish to take off any burrs.

Loosen the screws for the CD and push it back to the width of the now cut plate. It's a starting point...not a finished setting point.

This shot is looking down from the top at the eject and play button area of the CD with the cut drive bay plate positioned. Use a felt tip marker or good old memory to mark the area where the eject button is.

Stick on one (or you may discover you'll need two) of those vinyl buttons thusly. When you push on the front of the door these vinyl buttons will push on the eject button to open the drive.

Next grab the double sided foam tape and cut a strip that runs the length of the door. Centre and apply it but ALWAYS leave the backing in place. Why? Because when you want to check how the door is aligning then you can do so without it sticking.

You'll end up cutting a few strips and layering the tape. At each layer you can remove the backing to the already adhered layer and apply the next. Only the top most layer should have the backing left in place to allow you to check the door alignment.

You see below what I mean. One rubber stop wasn't enough so I used two over the eject button. Those two created too much distance so I had to build up the foam tape layers to make things sit right. This is at the stage where I discovered that I didn't have enough layers.

See what I mean...lotsa layers. And I'm ready to put it all into place so I've removed the topmost backing. I've already done my final adjustment of the depth of the CD prior to this and tightened up the screws.

Now I put the bezel back into place and I'm ready to do the final positioning. It was at this time that I discovered the drive bay door now new face plate rubbed just a bit in the opening. This wouldn't do. So I took a hammer and firmly wacked the ends and bottom of the drive bay cover now face plate to make it a tad smaller. Ever so much smaller but it did it. Call it a bit of tweaking on the fit. Make sure the other drive bay plates are in place correctly.

Next just position the plate over the hole and push it firmly into place to stick it to the double sided tape.

So does it work?

Woohoo!

Look ma...I did it!

Summary and Conclusion

Just a recap of events in case you forgot you can take your aluminum case with those ugly beige component faces shown here.

And here on a close up.

And that ugly floppy.

And do this...ooooooh!

Pretty slick huh? A couple of things I will advise you on. The Bare-Metal Foil isn't a perfect match to the aluminum of this case. It won't blend perfectly but at least the floppy drive will have an aluminum look to it instead of the beige eyesore.

You can do this mod with the plastic drive bay covers too just don't do the wire cutters trick. You'll probably end up cracking the plastic. That's a good excuse to use the dremel for cutting and removing width.

If I had a dremel perhaps what I would have done is created the face plate cover out of the drive bay plate I removed to install the floppy. That would have been a perfect match. Maybe one day I will.

Finally this is just another way of stealthing your drives. Others have been far more in depth and added small bits of fiber optics to bring the drive light to the front cover area and removed the actual face plate. If you want to go that far...go for it. It's an even cooler mod. Call this the lazy man's stealth.

Total project cost was under $20 bucks Canadian and took an hour and a half to do including taking pictures...so you could probably do it in 40 minutes to an hour. This doesn't include the running around to find the Bare-Metal Foil and swinging by the Home Depot.

Now get out there and mod!