MR speeder cockpit mod article?

[ralphee]

Hey guys

Mods please move if im in the wrong neck of the woods. OK a while back somebody did some mods to the MR snowspeeder, mainly in the cockpit area, any idea who did it? Im looking into putting figures into an MR and just want to know what the canopy is like to yank on. Any pointers in the right direction will be rewarded with a smile lol.

lee

 

[Talisen]

MoffEaton did an amazing repaint of the factory paint off his master paint job. He hype-detailed the interior as well.

 

[GKvfx]

I'm part way through one of those as well - figures, air brakes, and the exposed panels.

It can be done, but you pretty much throw the MR warranty out the window. The cockpit canopy is just a piece of ABS or Styrene that it glued down to main body. The glue seams pop pretty easily since the glue was applied on top of the paint. The problem is at the rear of the cockpit as the canopy is trapped underneath the big engine boxes and won't just pop out. I wound up hacking it out with an Xacto saw.

The other route you could go is to separate the body halves. There are some screws on the bottom of the ship. Once those get uncovered and popped out, the bottom comes away from the top. Of course, so do all the cooling fins at the rear, but those again are ABS and only tacked in place. (I broke a few off just getting the thing out of the box and examining it when I first got it.) The screws are in there with some really good glue - so you'll need some power assistance (I had a crew head actually break before the glue would loosen.)

If you want to get the gun cannons off, those are relatively easy. There are no screws, just glue. I was able to slide a thin chisel Xacto blade under the smaller box and tap it with a hammer till I got it free. Might have to do this along the body of the gun cannon between the two boxes.

A Dremel will cut through this stuff like butter if you use a carbide cutter bit. The dust get everywhere. Would recommend some sort of assistant with a vacuum cleaner to suction out the dust as you go. And a respirator. Definately a respirator.[attachmentid=12036][attachmentid=12040][attachmentid=12039][attachmentid=12038][attachmentid=12041]

Well, shoot..... Not the most elegant of formatting for the pictures. There's got to be a guide for posting images around here somewhere. Will post more if I can figure it out. But ..... you get the idea.

Gene

 

[ralphee]

My god Gene, thats some work there sir. Hats off to you, and many thanks for the assistance, i and a buddy pretty much want to fit some figures in there, so i guess popping off the canopy would suffice. If i had got it damaged (my original plan) i wanted to cut off the engine boxes, fit RC to the flaps and generally go nuts, but seeing as i got her in prime condtion, carving her up brings a pain to the chest lol.
Would you be so kind as to keep us updated on yours?
Thats a great project.

bests.....lee

 

[moffeaton]

My god Gene, I would love to get a set of those figures..

I did the mod Ken is talking about, yep. Here's a few pics - I have plans to do this one more time, for my personal Speeder:

Found a few more:

 

[ralphee]

Looks killer Jason thanks for posting , and yeah what he said, are the figures your using one off sculpts Gene or heavily modded kit figures?

lee

 

[Emeldahay]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(moffeaton @ Jan 11 2007, 07:32 PM) [snapback]1395325[/snapback]</div>

My god Gene, I would love to get a set of those figures..

I did the mod Ken is talking about, yep. Here's a few pics - I have plans to do this one more time, for my personal Speeder:

[/b]

Holy Sheet of styrene.

I cant stop staring at the floor in that cockpit.

 

[moffeaton]

It's photoetched metal

I figured the Rebels would have made a mod on these since the people were in snow gear - something that would be raised off the floor of the cockpit tub to allow snow to melt/pass through. Treated it more like a tractor and less like a car, if you catch my drift

 

[rmschneider104]

Holy smokes... those are some great adds to the MR Snowspeeder. Great to look at. Great talent.

 

[GKvfx]

The figure (singular at this point) is a modified Tamiya 1/12th scale driver. The helmet is modified with the aforementioned Dremel and some Tamiya A+B putty. Also had to add the collar and the bib and some spacers on the arms to get them spread wider. I will likely redo the bib - the chestbox is a separate piece and is just tacked on. Looking at the figure outside of the cockpit, the head appears out of scale with the body. Part of this is the bulking up of the helmet with the putty as well as the fact that the early large scale Tamiya cars do seem to have disproportionate figures in them. But it works once you get it in there. I took a side shot of the the figure in my cockpit with the canopy in place and Photoshop'd it so so it was the same size as an identical view from ILM and they lined up. Anyways, it looks like a scaled down pilot from the ILM model and is a damn sight better than the ape-like proportions of the MPC kit.

I forgot to mention in my last post that the seat bottoms and maybe the backs also have to get Dremel'd in order to accomodate the figures. Not a drop fit by any stretch. I thought about getting someone to mold them and offer them up (swpropmaker) but because of the effort involved in just getting the Snowspeeder open, I figured no one else would be insane enough. Yeah, I know.....don't under estimate the denizens of the RPF.

As for the scale of the thing - I found one measurement on one of the blueprintsin the "Art of The Empire Strikes Back" for the full sized set. Based on that, I calculated the rough scale as being 1/11.75 - close enough.

The whole project is in the MR box it came in. I haven't had a chance to dig it out since I had to move this summer. I'll have to get back into it now....... Jason's efforts will serve as in insiration of sorts. I also have plans for it to be in the orange scheme. I really like embellishing it a little bit - adding stuff that might not have been there....but should have. The way I see it, it isn't a true Studio Scale Replica due to the size issue, so we can pretty much do what ever we want to it. Even if it were a true Studio Scale Replica (size-wise) - if it makes you happy to embellish (and clearly Jason knows what he is doing) - then, by all means, embellish and damn the naysayers.

Gene

 

[3D-builder]

[attachmentid=12199][attachmentid=12200][attachmentid=12199]<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(moffeaton @ Jan 11 2007, 07:32 PM) [snapback]1395325[/snapback]</div>

My god Gene, I would love to get a set of those figures..

I did the mod Ken is talking about, yep. Here's a few pics - I have plans to do this one more time, for my personal Speeder:

Found a few more:

[/b]

Michael sorry ended up posting twice trying to post some pics.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(3D-builder @ Jan 22 2007, 04:18 AM) [snapback]1402270[/snapback]</div>

[attachmentid=12199][attachmentid=12200][attachmentid=12199]<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(moffeaton @ Jan 11 2007, 07:32 PM) [snapback]1395325[/snapback]

My god Gene, I would love to get a set of those figures..

I did the mod Ken is talking about, yep. Here's a few pics - I have plans to do this one more time, for my personal Speeder:

Found a few more:

[/b]

This is a great job awsome work indeed.. I scratch-built my speeder, I think the seating arrangement in the speeder is a problem.Only becasue the pilot and the gunner share a basicaly a integrated seating assembly.It's impossible to change the pilots orinetation to his instrumentation with out effecting the gunners positioning.If the gunner or the pilot have to reach the front consoul they would need monkey arms thats what happened in the small model kit. If you position the pilot so he can realisticaly reach everything aound him in his space then the gunner gets the monkey arms, and visa versa.If you split the difference of the tub they both get monkey arms to some degree. The only solution is for the two crew members to have threre own seats, and even then you would have to build something in between, but at least they would look like they could reach everything with ease which is pretty important in battle. Here are a few pics of my humble attempt. I used grain of wheat bulbs as a change over the fiber optics, don't ask my why :unsure
Regards,
Michael
[/b][/quote]