License to Drive

Spent the weekend doing various things on Artoo. First I took him all apart, so he's not standing on his own legs anymore. I'm going to do some work on the skins again in an attempt to get some white painting done before the heat of summer gets here. So they're screwed/clamped back on the frame at the moment. 

I looked through my box of blue painted parts and wet sanded some of the ones that needed touchup. The first three pieces turned out good, then the next three looked pretty cloudy and flat, so I'm holding off till it cools down a little this evening to do anymore. It was in the low 80s this afternoon, but felt a little warmer in the garage while I was painting.

After re-reading every post I could find about center foot casters, I proceeded to order a couple sets from Lowe's website yesterday since they weren't available at any local store. Hopefully one, or a combo of these will work.

I decided to tackle the foot drives this afternoon. I followed this tutorial, so I can't take any credit for originality.

Here's the steel foot shell and foot drive.

I took the large wheel out to get access to the screw holes, then placed the mount inside the foot shell.

Then I took a blue sharpie and marked all 6 holes. I also took a pencil and circled it around the hole too. The angle makes it look like the outer marks are off center, but they are not.

I center punched the marks and then drilled a small hole first just in case.

They all lined up just fine after putting the bracket back in for a visual inspection.

So then I drilled the holes out larger. First I used a 1/4 inch bit which should be large enough. I was having a little trouble getting them all to go in with ease, so I went ahead and used a 5/16 inch bit to help loosen it up. I wish I didn't have to and that they had lined up perfectly with the 1/4 inch hole, but it should be fine. Then I put the large wheel back in the foot drive bracket and screwed the whole thing in from the top/outside with the 1/4-20 screws Jerry provided.

Like the tutorial I followed, I may end up getting the low profile flush style screws and countersinking them. The bulky screws take away a little in my opinion.

One thing I noticed after I had the drive in was that the smaller back caster wheel in the drive needed to be lowered because the foot wasn't sitting level. I figure I'll fix this one later since I'd have to remove it to do so, but I went ahead and leveled out the other foot drive. It was fairly easy. I loosened the two screws using a T-bar allen wrench through the two holes in bracket. Then I sat the whole drive upside down and put a metal ruler across both wheels. Then, I used my trusty Dollar Store level to check the position of the small caster wheel and then tightened it down.

One foot drive down, one to go. With the new center casters coming this week I'll hopefully have all the wheels figured out and done soon. Then I'll have to go ahead and order the NPC motors and get busy on some electronics side of things. Can't wait for that first test drive!

99 Problems

And Center Casters are one. Since I have the Foot Drives in now, my next plan of attack was to tackle the whole drive system and get R2 on wheels. The main problem I'm having right now is with the center caster wheels. I got these below from Rockler after reading up about how much better skate style wheels are. The issue I'm having is that they don't line up with the JAG mounting bracket very well. This is about the best way to mount them, but when you swing them both to the extreme outer position they are almost 2 inches too wide for the foot shell. I'm looking into possibly getting the post style casters that I could pop the wheels out and still use these. Its either that or devise a way to mount the casters over the plate's bolt holes after its installed. That may be what finally happens. I'm also looking at the one big McMaster caster that a couple builders have used, but it looks like it would require modifying the JAG plate a good bit.

Footlose

Finally received the infamous JAG Foot Drives! Been waiting one year, one month and 21 days on these bad boys, hopefully a record that won't be broken. They are very solid, pretty hefty and have a reputation for lasting quite a while with little issue.

Anyway, now I'll be able to get moving on getting R2 moving. I've been reading up on center casters again, just because the two I have don't fit the bracket too well, so I'll have to find different ones that I can put the skater wheels in, or something altogether different.

I guess its time to start looking into getting the speed controllers, batteries and remote control as well!

No Intelligent Life Down Here

Two parts in the last two days: yesterday the Periscope Lighting Kit arrived and today the Life From Scanner was in the mailbox. Two dome related parts in two days. Also, it looks like the Foot Drives will finally arrive soon! Been waiting over 13 months for those.

Artoo on the Side

Side Vents arrived today from Guy in Burbank, CA. These perfectly match the Pocket Vents he ran earlier this year. Painted portions of the Power Couplers this weekend. Still trying to figure out the best way to mask off the remaining ring around the center of the Couplers.

Begin again

Spent part of the weekend on Artoo! I stripped the paint or primer, not sure what it was, off the outer half moon details I purchased off the junkyard. Still need to do the inner ones. One of these was banged up a little and some sanding took care of the majority of it. Also stripped the paint off the coin slots. The original paint job I did flaked too much when I was taking off the masking.

Painted the blue portion of Pocket Vents & Octagon Ports. I tried it a little differently this time after reading up about painting techniques on the forums. Only waited about 2 hours after the primer coat to lay down the rest instead of 24+. Then I removed the masking around 2-3 hours after the last clear coat was down. The masking came off easy on the Octagon Ports, the paint was only around 2 hours old. Waited a little longer on the Pocket Vents because I had to sand out some imperfections on the clear coat and hit them again. I noticed that the tape was about to pull the paint  so I scored it with an Xacto and it came off quite easy. 

I think the quicker process will solve a lot of my painting problems. I went back thorough all the blue I've painted and about half needs some sanding and touchup on the clear coat. The biggest hurdle will be getting the Booster Covers painted. Two tries already and neither was successful.

Honey Bunches of Ohs!

PSI Surrounds + Diffusers arrived today. Really cool design by Michael Wheeler (mcwhlr). Haven't seen them actually assembled and lit up, but definitely the best solution yet for these. He even got the honeycomb pattern in there too!