Tuesday Tip: ProtoThrottle Holder Mod

I ended 2021 by finally getting down to the basement and picking some low-hanging fruit. The first thing that I decided to tackle was to modify the throttle holder for my ProtoThrottle.

You see, I'd attached the "love handle" in a location on the back of the throttle that I found comfortable - but unfortunately, it wasn't until the adhesive was firmly secured that I realized that the throttle wouldn't seat all the way in the holder. UGH!

No worries though - I figured I'd make short work of modifying the holder to accommodate the throttle & handle.

First step was to figure out how much material I'd have to remove. This was easily determined by seeing how much further the throttle would have to go down if it was firmly seated. The handle is7/8" wide and there was a gap of 1/2" between the throttle and the bottom of the holder.

So I marked off those dimensions . . .

. . . and used a cut-off disk in my Dremel to make three quick, straight cuts.

The cutting created some melted plastic around the cuts themselves, which I trimmed off with a chisel blade in my X-Acto knife.

Then it was just a matter of filing down the corners to make things look a bit nicer.

Here's the finished product, with the throttle firmly seated and the handle adequately accommodated.

Since the holder was finally finished, there was no longer any reason to hold off on installing it. Unfortunately, it didn't come with any mounting screws but I had some suitable ones on-hand (would've been more suitable if they'd been black though).

And here it is in place along with the other electronics under Middletown.

After a few days, I realized two things: 1) I'd mounted the throttle a bit too low on the fascia and figured it'd look better up higher. So I moved it. . .

and 2) I could probably have saved all this effort by just moving the "love handle" about 1/2" further up on the back of the throttle.

Ah well - at least this little project got me back in the basement after a long hiatus and kicked off the Winter 2022 modeling season. I suppose motivation sometimes arrives in mysterious fashion.