Some prep work

 Further to the last post, i have spent a couple of hours playing with some of my new toys. I don’t actually have any plans to do anything more than what I’ve done here but i was interested to see what could be done with them and if i could fix some of the issues with the models. I’ve only posted picture of the land raider here but i also had a look at the drop pod which had one of its doors stuck open. 

The land raider in its original form. In general the raider is in pretty good shape. The main hull is well built with no gaps, the assault ramp doesn’t quite close You can see on the picture below the front side doors are missing and there are some extra bits stuck on (clearer in the picture further down). Not sure what there’s bits are, I suspect there parts for different side sponsons but not sure. The crew are also a little lop sided and in need of some TLC. There is also a storm bolter missing from the rear model and I’m not sure what the front one is supposed to be doing? 

The extra bits on the front doors.

So, in a quiet moment, I decided to have a little look at the model and I ended up stripping don’t the model in to several components. The side sponsons came off relatively easily, as did the front heavy bolsters, which just fell off! The two crew took a little more persuasion but came away in one piece in the end. 

The hull of the Raider, as I said, is actually relatively well built and doesn’t need any work on it. I would like to have fixed the gap with the assault ramp but i think that’s going to take a lot of work and I’m not that bothered about it to try and split the whole side off the model and get at the mechanism. I will also look to see what i have on the spare sprues and look at switching over at least one of the crew for a different hatch. 

Luckily there were some spare side doors in the pile of loose bits, so they will be attached at some point to fill in the open doors on the side. I would have liked to switch the sponsons and the doors around but i think trying to break the bottom half of the sponsons off the main hull will be a little risky, so they will remain on the rear. 

In addition, i have also had a quick look at the drop pod and managed to release the door that had been glued in the open position. Unfortunately there has been a bit of damage to the bottom surfaces which will need some repairs or patching before painting, plus this door and one other door are no longer attached to the hull of the drop pod, so they will likely be glued shut, which leads to another problem as the death wind missile launcher inside the pod faces one of these two doors, so I may well have to sort that out, or I’ll just leave it as is. 

It will be a while till i actually get around to painting and sorting these models as i want to concentrate on my new models first rather than these second hand models but they will get sorted in the end.