Well, this one's been neglected by me for some time now. But after seeing
Miniatureart's excellent work on the Hoth Speeder Bike Patrol, I hauled myself upstairs to sit at my desk and continue on my Speeder Bike Chase Diorama.
This diorama was inspired by Starshipmodeler member Schweinhund's dio of four AMT/ERTL Speeder Bike models. This guy really went all out in modding the troopers on those bikes. I thought: I can do that too with Hasbro's and Kenner's bikes.
You should know, the Speeder Bike scene in ROTJ is one of my favourites in the whole saga and Hasbro has really let us down so far by not upgrading the speeder bike toy. Sure, we had the really good Clone Wars Speeder Bike (which is terribly hard to find for a decent price), but somehow some dr. No-Brains there thinks it's better to keep using the practically unaltered Kenner mold from the early 80s
So, I started to work and this is what I have so far:
What did I change so far? Well, this:
- removed the steering vanes, replace them with custom ones made from .5mm styrene sheet
- cut out the closed sections of the outriggers
- removed the cross bar, filled up the hole with Fixit
- drilled holes for the handlebars (I've sent a pair of the CW Bike ones to a fellow customizer to make casts of)
- removed the pedals completely, replaced them with custom ones made from styrene tube and rod (the pedals themselves will also be cast)
- disabled the highly entertaining explosion feature and replaced the blanket with a piece of styrene with some pleather on top
- drilled tiny holes in the blaster cannon (hey, I just bought a pin vise, so had to try it out
)
That's it so far. Now I need to work on the scouts' hips so they can sit properly on their rides. Maybe I'll add a Luke and/or Leia as well, who knows.
Feel free to comment and critique, it's always appreciated!
-Incom