The one thing that bugged me is that because the end of the glass tube wasn't square, it meant the top of the res was on the **** and the gaps between the lid and the struts was both variable and that there was a gap. So since the tubes came in twos, I thought I'd work on the other and lap it flat and square:
Told you I'd messed with it! I think though the problem is simply that the tube is shorter so there's not enough squish on the o-rings. Loosening it all off there's only about 0.5mm of squish when they're fully tightened down so I need to take maybe 0.5mm off each of the struts to get it pressure tight again.
Because it's worth it in the end.Why did I ask for suggestions on how to make my life more difficult?!
Then I gave it a final buff with some pink. All on separate wheels so as not to mix the compounds. The wheels are mounted on an arbour in my lathe....which now needs a good clean too 
I intend the res to be 'mounted' in the pipework rather than screwed to anything. So there will be an input at the top that it will hang from and an output from the bottom that will connect to a pass-through to the rear of the case, down, under the shroud for a hidden drain tap and back up through the shroud with another pass-through. I also want to use Barrow D-Plugs for the connections to the res so that there is some form of vibration isolation in the form of o-rings. Might be unnecessary or ineffective but that's the plan. So the top pipework will be largely solid and cannot have any rotaries in some planes or it'll just flop. Started doing that and have it roughly figured out but need to wait for some more parts before I commit. Found that it'd be useful to have the plastic front part of the shroud fitted as somewhere to put the res down while I'm working on it. Already knew that it needed a notch to clear the rad. It's only 38mm thick, that's not unexpectedly chunky, right? It does seem they only allowed for really thin rads in this case.
Gas-fired soldering iron with a hot-air attachment as my tool of choice and now it fits It's a little over-cooked in a couple of spots - which meant I discovered that I could have done with better ventilation *cough* - but it won't be seen anyway.
Ok, so I've succeeded in making a mess!
The chunk of wood you can see is where I quite quickly made a jig to hold the bar while I lapped the sides. My fingers hacked one bar but there were three left to go! The slots to the side are to pry the bar back out again - no prizes for guessing whether this was an afterthought!
That's 320 grit using WD40 to wet it - which helped stop it clogging up quite so much. Should have then gone to 600 grit but thought I'd get away with it after a much smaller test piece.
I tried blue compound but ended up finding the brown to be more effective - certainly faster and that was really much criteria
Howzat?! Well, to be perfectly honest with you, it's not quite as good as the potato pics make it out to be. You can see some scratches where I really should have taken it to 600 before polishing....but it's pretty good for a first go, I've learned some and I don't think it'll notice once mounted to be honest so it's not worth starting from scratch.
Fully assembled and ready for pressure test - which I did before this pic was taken, so before swapping out the blanking plugs for the pressure relief membrane etc.....in case you were wondering
Initial pic on the left and 16 hours later on the right. That's what, half a psi over 16 hours? I'll take that! Also, well within the realms for temperature variation too - the first test before I lapped the glass actually rose in pressure.
Right, now I just need to start punching holes in the case for some pass-throughs....couldn't make the pipework easy for myself now, could I!?
Centre punch, step drill (normal drills tend to make triangular holes in thin metal) to 10mm and then a Q-punch (thing with a bolt through it at the bottom) to take it up to 20.4mm for the 20mm pass-through fitting. Then a spot of deburring to get rid of the sharp edges.
Oh, and I painted them black because they weren't black enough
Hadn't realised everything around it was black. Have you thought of black for the reservoir support struts?Ok, time to make irreversible changes by drilling big holes in things
The vertical post-it was just for layout marking. The horizontal ones were just to protect the surface. You can tell when someone needs a good roll of masking tape when...!
On to the duct tape next. That's there because you should ALWAYS strip all electronic components and wiring out of the case before making lots of tiny conductive metal chips inside your case.....but I couldn't be bothered. Duct tape dams back and front with the sticky side towards the hole to catch the swarf and then a good clean-up afterwards.
And one floating res with very little apparent suport. I would say that the top fittings won't be visible, being black on black....but once DISCO mode is enabled, all bets are off!
The screws in the pump heatsink are there just to blank off the mounting holes....they looked ugly!
Now I'm just trying to sort out the return pass-through that will feed the GPU. It'll be coming up in that solid bit of the PSU shroud and then S-bending over to the GPU. I could really do with a 60° fitting to make it work. 60° you say? Yes, they're unusual...but I have one....I've got pictorial evidence that I bought two of them for my last project (and only used one of them) too! Can I find it? Can I *&%^! I've got two 30° fittings which I can use but it's still annoying me. Yes, those are unusual too; they're rather old Koolance fittings. I expect the 60 will show up shortly after the loop is first filled!
It's a good job I remembered to carefully account for the length of that GPU when I was mounting the res or it may only JUST have it! Good job I didn't forget aaaall about it and just centre the res on the backplate behind it! There's 12mm....but as they say, clearance is clearance 
That tube carries on....
) connects to the outlet of the pump.
I've marked one of the struts slightly when I put the GPU in. It won't really show though.....MUST...RESIST...UNNECESSARILY...RE-POLISHING...IT!
)
Had some fun with the power plug for the Aquaero being just too high for the door to shut properly. Was massively overthinking how to fix it....until it dawned on me that it might just push slightly further into the socket! *facepalm*
Took me some stripping down and some swearing to work out what the problem was. Turns out that if the sense wires are plugged into the PSU, it has kittens and dies. With it unplugged and some recovery time or full power cycle, it runs nicely. I think that I've simply got the order flipped but it's not listed anywhere and Silverstone don't seem to have any support (that I could find on their website) so I've posted up in the PSU forum to see if anyone can confirm the pinout rather than risk guessing and letting out the magic smoke! That, would be the last bit and then it can go in its final place.....or at least it can once I can make it stop raining through the roof right above it 
