Movie Optimus Prime build

[kingbob]

Right, life has been stupid busy lately. I work for the Fire and Emergency Services here in Western Australia, and being summer its fire season, so we've been a bit busy! Far too many on call callouts recently so have barely done any work at all on my builds.

BUT, i have a little bit of time now, so am back at it!

I'd been contemplating building a new leg setup for the trailer, so it can fold like the real thing, but being time poor I decided to just use the trailer kit legs. But because i lowered the trailer by about 12mm i needed to shorten the legs. Not wanting to hack them up, i had a play with them and found an easy way.

On the inside where the spring attached to the lower part of the leg, there is a screw holding a plastic ring in place to keep the spring from slipping. I noticed that the release lever would brush against this screw when extending/retracting the legs. So i replaced the screw with a larger socket head one, put it on a couple of spacers, and now the lever will catch on it and rest quite happily on the screw instead. This lowers the trailer when the legs are extended by just about the right amount.
I do need to add a little bit of styrene to the feet to make it just right, but was a nice simple, low effort fix!

Next up are mounting the trailer sides. I've found that the plastic side panels I painted have curled slightly as the paint has cured. So i've got some aluminium sheet which i'll cut to size, and mount the styrene to it with double sided tape. Should keep it flat.

Aiming to have the side on this weekend!