Tips for an 8480 rebuild?

[JaredE]

I was about 11 year old in 1996, doing a twice daily paper round and saving my, I guess near £20ish a week, wage from it when I bought the 8480 Shuttle set.  It was something I had coveted for a long time when I first set my eyes on it in the Toys R Us Lego aisle.  I had been indoctrinated with Lego from a young age, so the 8480 wasn't especially daunting, but it was exciting.

 

I'm now 34, and I don't buy Lego half as much as my 11 year old self, but recently I bought the 42096 for Christmas which I'm near finished with building and it brought back the joy I experienced as a youngster.  Having gone back to my childhood home for Christmas, I headed to the attic to look at my large stash of Lego and specifically 8480.  

 

I found it, still built, missing the odd plate (a flap plate), though perhaps the gearing not working exactly and my woolworths batteries still keeping the motors whirring.  it was also yellowing pretty badly.

 

I was never very good at applying stickers, even on my 42096 build, my stickering is pretty poor, so many bricks will have stickers that overlap to other bricks.  I'm thinking of bringing it back to London, cleaning it up and giving it a rebuild.  What advice would you give me?  I don't think any major parts are missing, and I'll have spares of quite common parts easily available.  Can I de-yellow it?  

 

https://twitter.com/jarede/status/1210524288857657344 memories.

[Maaboo the Witch]

Bricklink is a great place to start if you need newer parts. You should be able to find replacement sticker sheets there as well. Other than that, just take it apart and rebuild it.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Maaboo35

[Oliver 79]

I am currently experimenting with soaking white parts in hydrogen peroxide to de yellow them. Unfortunately it needs sunlight to work. Living in the UK sun is not around at the moment. 

Apparently if you soak the parts in 3% hydrogen peroxide for a few days in the sun, it brings the parts up like new. 

[JaredE]

1 hour ago, Oliver 79 said:

I am currently experimenting with soaking white parts in hydrogen peroxide to de yellow them. Unfortunately it needs sunlight to work. Living in the UK sun is not around at the moment. 

Apparently if you soak the parts in 3% hydrogen peroxide for a few days in the sun, it brings the parts up like new. 

Ooo awesome information.  Thank you.  Let me know how it goes, I probably won't bring the set back to London till Easter time anyway.

[howitzer]

I'm so envious of you, I really wanted that set as a kid but never got it. I still might want it, but even the used sets are quite expensive and I can't justify spending such a money just for nostalgia...

You should be careful with the wiring, as apparently the plastic in cables might crack and fray after so many years. Other than that, it's just taking it apart and rebuilding, most likely there's nothing wrong with the bricks. There is a topic in general discussion about making your white parts white again:

 

[mortenm]

5 hours ago, Oliver 79 said:

I am currently experimenting with soaking white parts in hydrogen peroxide to de yellow them. Unfortunately it needs sunlight to work. Living in the UK sun is not around at the moment. 

Apparently if you soak the parts in 3% hydrogen peroxide for a few days in the sun, it brings the parts up like new. 

I have used that trick a few times last summer - it works very well.

It works best with white and grey bricks - I have tried with blue and red, but they got even worse!

[Tazmancrash]

15 hours ago, Oliver 79 said:

I am currently experimenting with soaking white parts in hydrogen peroxide to de yellow them. Unfortunately it needs sunlight to work. Living in the UK sun is not around at the moment. 

Apparently if you soak the parts in 3% hydrogen peroxide for a few days in the sun, it brings the parts up like new. 

Yes this works a treat. I've used it on yellow as well when I rebuilt 8862 back hoe. 

I regerlery rebuild old sets. I usually replace the old 1/2 bushes with new ones & swap out the 14 teeth gears for the better 12 teeth ones.

There's a theard on replacing old wiring with new. You will need to do this as the cables will have their insulation falling off.

I never put the stickers on mine, but was able to buy all the parts with stickers on them from bricklink. (Still have the sticker sheet in my desk)

There is a Ebay seller who sells repro stickers for lego sets. 

Check the fiber optics still work. Replacements are available on bricklink. 

Good luck.

[ludov]

That was a great set. I have a ton of "old" LEGO that is never used, but I keep it just in case some day I want to rebuild 8480, 8868 or 8880... I doubt it'll ever happen though.

If I understand you correctly, the set is currently assembled and you intend do disassemble it, clean the parts, and then build it up again. Some parts have likely become brittle and might break easily, so my main recommendation is to be very very careful during the disassembly. In my memory, especially the old-style bushes (full and half) and the axle-pin connectors are easy to crack (but you also might have replacements for them if you own more sets from that era):

The clips holding the micro motor are also all broken on my set, and I have a number of the wheel hubs broken, but I don't know if they came from this set or from my first ever set. 

The cables might be fragile, but if they haven't seen any use for all those years, there's a chance they're not frayed yet. The cables had different types of insulation over the years, some holding up better than others. I don't recall which type was used on 8480,