Art Deco Zenith 5-s-29 Radio Case Mod

Front Dial Lighting

I ran into a problem with the lighting of the front dial. I had bought and wired up six 10mm yellow leds for the front dial. They are mounted in a piece of smoked acrylic attached to that back of the dial area.

There were two problems however. The LEDs simply weren't bright enough, and the light from them wasn't diffused and made 6 spots on the dial. I ordered a 48 LED flexible light string from Ebay. I used a piece of 4in acylic tubing cut 1in deep, and cut two layers of fluorescent light diffusers to mount to the front inside of the cut tubing.

I took the smoked acrylic LED mount, mounted it to the tube, and painted the inside of both gold to help deflect light forward through the dial. I used RTV silicone to attach the LED light strip to the other LED lights mount.


I am very pleased with the way it looks. The dial now is completely illuminated evenly.

Pump

I originally planned the case design to use one MCP350 pump. I altered that design to accommodate two MCP350 pumps for redundancy. I made mounts for them and wired them up. After using the dual pumps undervolted on a rheostat for a couple of months while waiting to make final fixes to the lighting and grille cloth, I became increasingly dissatisfied with noise level.

I got into watercooling in the first place for quiet/performance. I have looked at the Aquastream XT before as it is said to be a very, very quiet pump everywhere I read, but have never wanted to shell out $150+ for one. I found a deal however on a new unused XT Ultra on a forum for only $105 shipped including a soggy sandwich and G1/4in adapters, so I bought it.

The only way I could figure to mount the pump is vertically, so I made a stand/mount out of sheet metal for it. At first I put the rubber foam from the soggy sandwich under it and behind it. I couldn't fit the entire soggy sandwich, so I put the foam alone to isolate vibrations. I however went back and ordered some Petrastechshop.com gel stuff. This stuff is incredible in that it completely isolates all pump vibrations from the case and is only about 1/4in” thick.


Since the reservoir was originally dimensioned for an MCP350, the tubing loop was necessary to get the water from the reservoir to the pump. This really isn't ideal, but it will work for now. In order to really fix it, I would probably need to make another reservoir so that the outlet would line up with the pump inlet and not be so close to the inlet.

Drain Fitting

I soldered together a fitting for the drain. This fitting was a pain in that in order to save space, I used an insert to go from 1/2in to 3/8in copper, and soldered in a 1/4in barb to 1/8in NPT fitting to be able to attach the drain tubing to. I had to really work to get the barb fitting soldered in, and had to go back and resolder the 1/2in to 3/8in joint as it didn't completely seal the first time. Thankfully the resolder worked. I pressure tested it at 25psi with an air compressor to make sure it didn't leak.


The 1/4in tube branches off, goes through the floor of the case, and has a length under the case capped off with a 1/4in barb and a rubber auto vacuum cap.


This is going to work really nice in that to drain all I have to do is take the drain line loose and it hangs about four inches down under the case. I can just put the front part of the case off of a countertop and drain away.