[MOD] 75102 X-wing S-foil, rubber band, and landing gear fix

[Flandy]

Hi all, be kind, this is the first time I've actually started a topic here, and shared pics of my lego fumblings. I've been away from lego for 20 years, and then my GF bought me the lego millenium falcon for christmas, and it's totally rekindled my love (for Lego, not the GF, I loved her already...).

Like many, I found the S-foils on the most recent T-70 X-wings rather underwhelming. The X-wings in the movie look so cool, aggressive, dynamic, and the new engine pods and the way the wings fold to become one single plane in cruise mode is very slick indeed. The Lego version is significantly less slick in this regard, and this bothered me. As is well documented, the wings don't even meet, let alone combine into one, the lower wing is studs down, which means the ugly plate underside is on show, and the dreaded blue rubber bands, both look out of place at the back of the engine pods, and pull the wings at an angle. I will say that I like the folding mechanism as a play function, and did not want to loose it.

So first off, the closed position:

When they're closed, there is no gap, no angle difference, and to all intents and purposes, it appears as though it's one single wing, just as it should.

And now, open

Again, no angle change due to rubber band tension. The bands are still being used, but I found a way to integrate them such that they pull the wings closed as they should, but not unevenly, and within the forward profile of the wings so that they're not obvious. In fact they now look like some kind of power cables on the engine undesides.

Here's some close ups:

I'll go into more detail on this tomorrow if anyone's interested, but essentially the now studs up lower wings have some 2x1 modified plates with pin loops with pins going into 1x1 technic bricks as the method of attaching them, with one of the pins sticking out for the bands to locate on. The bands then go around the back of another pin that replaced a cream coloured short pin on the body of the ship, then go up inside the upper wing engine where there's one of thes guys for them to hook on to:

It has as much tension as the original system, but looks alot slicker, though i will admit it is a bit trickier to put together. the bands also seem to hold the lower wing onto the engine a bit too, which is nice.

The rear landing gear is rubbish on the original, and i wanted something that would retract cleanly. The real ship has landing gear that emerges from the slopes between the curved engine and the wing. This seemed impossible to duplicate at this scale, and with the stuff for the new folding mechanism, so did landing gear on the engines too, so i mounted it to the body, at its widest part.

It folds up and becomes part of the body curve at the back, which is nice. I apologise for the crappy lighting, again, I'll get better pics if there's interest. I may swap the grey part for black, but I don't have any at the moment.

Elsewhere on the ship, I moved the cockpit back one stud, and started playing around reprofiling the nose a little. This is the next area for my attention and is a work in progress.

Please feel free to comment, I'm open for any constructive criticism!

Edited September 4, 2016 by Flandy

[Brickweiser]

Wow! That is amazing! Not sure how anyone can offer negative critiques. Your rubber band solution is very innovative and creative.

[Juke]

Wow! This is one of the best mods I've seen for this set. Great job

[Hold0511]

Excellent job - looks really effective and very neat.

[Calanon]

This is a really wonderful solution! I am very impressed. Now I am very keen on modding my x-wings to have this too!

[Arthur Schopenhauer]

Impressive, your clever rubber-band mechanism deserves really to be taken into account for future MOCs! It transforms a drag into an aesthetic feature! Also, very good work with the shaping of the wing and engines, and that landing gear is very nice and well integrated.

By the way, have you considered to design a classic X-wing MOC yourself? I'm sure you would obtain great results

Edited July 15, 2016 by Arthur Schopenhauer

[Midlife-crisis]

Don´t like this fighter at all, but thats not your fault.

The rubber band trick is very effective and smart! congrats!

[Dameronian]

Excellent! Nice and refreshing departure from how others have eliminated the external bands, very inventive!

[nymmerod]

I love what you've done with the wings. God, that's so much better. Beautifully done. I may have to attempt to steal your ideas as I build my LBG/Blue version this weekend.

[Bbafett]

I love it. I would like to get some more detail on this so I can mod my own 75102 to this with the rubber band part.

[Flandy]

Thank you guys, these have all been very positive comments! I did a partial strip down of one side just to take pics last night, so you can get a guide as to how to mod the wings. It should be noted that if you are doing this to a completely stock X-wing, the changes are solely in the wing/engine units.

Shaping of the wings I'm sure you can work out from the pics, you'll need 4 12x3 wedge plates and from there it's fairly simple. The first part I'll go into is the arrangement on the end of the lower wing to get it studs side up. I'll let the pics do the talking since i took plenty!

The pin left protruding is the one the rubber bands will pull on.

The 2x1 technic brick acts to transfer the load to the pin which then has the 2 1x1 bricks on it, meaning what would be one stud holding it on turns into 4, plus the one from the previous assembly giving 5 studs in an L shape. It's not as many as I'd like, but for a display odel, it's nicely swooshable.

The lower engine assembly looks externally much as the original, but for a few curved slopes to smooth it out, but the internals are mostly different, to accomodate the new wing.

The upper one is similarly changed inside to fit in the 2x2 bearing element: http://brickset.com/parts/design-4488 It should be noted that it's important to fit the rubber bands before you fit this part, then build up the plates around it.

The engine can now be fitted to the fuselage of the ship. I added another narrow technic beam to the back of the wing hing pins in order for the long blue pin to be properly located. The rubber bands need to go behind this blue pin which is a little tricky to do.

Now add the engine for the bottom wing, but use the wing to hook the rubber bands, before stretching them, and fixing the wing to the engine

Job done!

I'm not going to make any claims for this being the sturdiest construction ever, but my 8 year old nephew was playing with it and failed to break for him, so it must be fine for display. The rubber band tension is working along the plane of the plates on the lower wing, so there's minimal force pullin the wing off, and the lasers on the ends of the wings seem to fall off alot more easily than the wings themselves.

One confession I will make is that the 2x1 plates with loops that hold the lower lasers to the underside of the lower wings are painted black, as they only seem to come in grey and they looked out of place. I shall hold my head in shame...

[Hold0511]

Smashing - very helpful sets of pics - when I get round to opening mine I'll defo follow this mod. No need for the shame - little pieces off colour drive me nuts too!

[rollermonkey]

Any chance you have a parts list of what's needed in addition to the original set?

[Flandy]

I don't I'm afraid, but to do the rubber band change most of it is assorted standard plates of 1 and 2 stud widths, a few L shaped 2x2 plates, the two plates with the axle pin, all of which can be any colour that works with the model, a pair of black 12x3 wedge plates, six 1x1 technic bricks, two 2x1 technic bricks with 2 holes, eight of those 3 stud long technic pins, six 2x1 plates with horizontal hole (6089147), and a pair of 6030286 levers.

Off the top of my head I can't think of anything else that's needed to do this mod. I just raided the spares box, and another 75102 I bought cheap without the figures, though mostly that just supplied a few orange parts and the extra 12x3 wedge plates.

[fatum]

Thanks for the detailed pics!

I'm going to see if I have all the parts needed to do this change, looks a lot better than the original.

[Flandy]

Used up some of my VIP points to pick up the resistance X-wing 75149 this week, I also put in a bricklink order for as many of the parts as I could think of to do the conversion on that set, plus some of the more cosmetic tweaks. Turns out i still need a few blue tiles, a couple of inverted curved slopes, and I might think of some other things too, but for now I built up the set to replicate the mods on the black and orange x-wing.

With the lighting being better today, I took a good few pics as being grey, it's easier to see some of the modifications:

[Martini26]

Super MOC! I'm really impressed! Only pity that there is no detailed instruction (ldd) and extra parts list how to modify like this ;)

[Flandy]

Yea, I'd love to be able to do that for those who want to, but I'm more hands on, sifting through the spares tubs builder than a virtual one. From the pictures you should be able to work out most of it. The first one, i built as a totally standard x-wing, then pulled one upper wing/engine off and reworked it until it was where i wanted it, then mirrored it for the other side and repeated the process for the lower pair.

[Willsy]

This is an incredible mod, I just integrated it into Poe's X-Wing and plan on integrating it into the Resistance X-Wing when I hopefully get it this week. It was difficult to get the rubber bands behind the blue technic pin but it works flawlessly. Thanks for sharing. :)

[Flandy]

Yeah it's a lot of fun getting the band behind the pin! I made a sort of two pronged fork out of plates for the second x-wing.

[Willsy]

I just got 75149 today, and decided to modify it during the build (it's a lot easier than tearing it apart and having to put it all back together again!). I've mainly used Flandy's mods which is why I'm not cresting a new thread for this, but I have come up with some of my own changes.

I was able to squeeze in some rear landing gear on to the bottom engine pods but they do stick out. I'm happy with them though.

The ship can now also facilitate an astromech droid other than BB-8. There are two 2x1 sections which expands the 2x2 gap into a 2x4 one. This is why there are a steeper wedge plate inclines behind the cockpit, to form 'walls' for when a droid other than BB-8 is in use.

The droid rides a tad bit high but the only way I could fix that is to replace the 1x4 modified bricks with 1x2 modified bricks but I'm not sure the SNOT fixtures would be sturdy enough without it, and BB-8 would have to ride a bit too low. There's probably something I can do but I'm satisfied with it for now.

Huge thanks to Flandy for his mods though. :) I really like both sets but the wings were majorly distracting. Problem solved now!

[FTG Prime]

Wow this is a great MOD !! The way you made the Lego T-70 look is briliant i love it

[Flandy]

Thanks guys, I'm really surprised by how positive the response to this has been! I've been tinkering again in order to get the rear fuselage a bit less square. I've lowered the rear deck 1 plate, used some of the long slopes that are on the sides to gently taper the profile, moved the twisty knob to the back of the ship much like the UCS x-wing, greebled the top and rear sections, and added some slopes to profile the lower half of the fuselage below and to the rear of the cockpit. I tried to give the impression of the proton torpedo launch tubes too.

I'm not done yet, there's other tweaks to do, like trying to get the gap between the fuselage and the engines, making the front of the engines more shaped (probably steal the same idea as others on that one), and getting the nose more shaped, without losing strength. I don't want to turn it into a fragile but accurate representation, I want to maintain as much playability as possible. The wings are no doubt less solid, but I think the trade off on looks with those is worth it, and the other mods so far don't make any difference to strength.

[Juke]

I'm still really impressed with this MOD. I'm glad to see you're still doing work on it. Keep it up ;)

[Dameronian]

Great mods!

I did the rear landing gear this way some time ago: