Lego Cargo Aircraft Restoration

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 06/13/2020 at 15:48 • Filed to: Legolopnik, Planelopnik

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Yes, I know that the numbers are backwards. We took the fuselage apart far enough to swap the sides, so they are now leaning in the appropriate direction.

We bought this Lego cargo plane (7734, released in 2008) years ago, and over time it got broken up and all the pieces distributed into three massive buckets of assorted Lego. As a quarantine project, my son and my wife have been painstakingly going through the buckets of Lego and sorting them by color.

Then, to rebuild the set, it’s a matter of looking at the directions, either from the instruction book or online, and sorting through the buckets to find each piece. One. By. One. That is often a team effort.

My son also rebuilt these two Jedi star fighters, again searching piece by piece. We have probably 100 Lego sets (or more) that have been bought over the past 15 years, and are now in pieces. No idea on how many we will reassemble. It’s a rather arduous process, but I think it’s worth it to resurrect these sets. God knows we spent enough money on them.

Bonus Sopwith Camel Restoration Update

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I finished the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the Sopwith Camel a couple of weeks ago, but sadly, it’s not airworthy. I am missing two critical hinge pieces for an aileron, so I had to swap some pieces from the elevator to get the set finished. I need to search through our collection of black pieces to see if I can find the hinge, or order the pieces from Lego. The control surfaces don’t work quite right either, so I am trying to decide if I want to unbuild it far enough to correct that. I think I do. What else am I doing these days??

RiceRocketeer Extraordinaire > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 15:56

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I have a Black Seas Barracuda disassembled in a bag that I really should get around to rebuilding.

Heck, I have a Porsche GT3 that didn’t have the gearbox put together right the first time around and ended up in a state of half-disassembly on my shelf after attempts to fix it.

Funny that I have even less time for myself these days ...

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 15:59

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Good work. Rebuilding a dissembled  set is indeed quite arduous. I actually have nearly finished rebuilding my Tatra model with an extra 3/4 inch in the wheelbase but I’m stuck on a certain point about hanging the side detailing and how I want the trunk lid to close. I can either have it be slightly tilted up and have the side be a more visually pleasing one stud lower or raise the window line and have the trunk close correctly. 

ttyymmnn > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 06/13/2020 at 16:02

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It’s even harder to rebuild a set that is partially built. You really have to disassemble it to a point where it matches the instructions, and go from there. Some major subassemblies are easier to take apart and put back together in order. The Camel was actually kind of a pain in the ass, but I’m glad I got it back together.

Now I have to get after my big Tantive IV. It took some damage in the engine nacelles during its last encounter with the Empire, and one of the engine assemblies is behind my dresser, which will require moving the entire dresser to reach. But like I said, what else am I doing these days?

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 16:06

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Haha. It’s difficult to partially disassemble a set where you can still put it back together. Sometimes the delicate detail work has to be redone entirely if the major structure is altered. With the Tatra, I had to disconnect the front and rear ends from my chassis and lengthen it, which really messed up my side detailing, though I ended up putting the chrome in a more accurate place but displacing the door handle location while I was at it. It’s just a domino effect of how can you put things back. Every tiny change requires adjustment everywhere else.

ttyymmnn > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 06/13/2020 at 16:09

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Domino effect is exactly right. And we’re not even modding anything. As you can see in the photo, we got the fuselage sections reversed, so the numbers were leaning the wrong way. It required a complete disassembly of the top fuselage to fix it. My son got very frustrated by this point, having spent hours finding the pieces and building, so I fixed it for him. 

jminer > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 16:25

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I’m impressed by your lego organization project! We went through a bunch of big tubs of loose bricks in the basement recently and they were filthy. Spent a week soaking them in the tub, washing, drying, and then sorting out any non-lego or megablock parts.

Sorting by color seems like a good idea but that’s a lot of work!

ttyymmnn > jminer 06/13/2020 at 16:28

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Going through the buckets really makes you understand what they meant by “Relics” in the Lego Movie. It’s all the non-Lego crap that gets into the Lego buckets. We found tons of that.

Fortunately, these were mostly clean, having been kept in bins with tops for many years. We got a bucket from a family friend at first, then our own Lego acquisitions over time amounted to two more large bins. So this was really a massive undertaking.

Sorting by color seemed to make the most sense, since we wouldn’t know how to sort by shape or purpose. At least this way, when building a set, we have a starting place for our parts search.

jminer > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 16:31

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Makes sense and I’m impressed by your progress - the lego pros sort it by color too.

About half of what I went through was garage sale acquisitions and the rest has a lid that had a hole in it left in the basement so they were also dusty and had dead bugs in it.

ttyymmnn > jminer 06/13/2020 at 16:37

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We did find a mummified cockroach in one of the boxes from the attic. Euw. 

ttyymmnn > jminer 06/13/2020 at 16:38

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If we had enough bins, or enough gumption, I’d sub-sort the colors into general sizes or shapes. But this will do for now. 

shop-teacher > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 16:41

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This is excellent. We've been doing a lot of Legoing ourselves.

jminer > ttyymmnn 06/13/2020 at 16:51

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That was what held me off.  It took like 8 hours to simple go through the bins and pull out the non-lego.  I was afraid organizing into just color wouldn’t do it for me and I did not want to buy the tubs and spend the time to organize it all to that level.

ttyymmnn > jminer 06/13/2020 at 17:04

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In a certain way, looking for a single white piece in a bin of white pieces can actually be more difficult. You really have to dump it out and comb through a handful at a time. That said, I’d rather do that with a smaller bin of like pieces than the giant bin of hodgepodge.