So i took it upon myself to to try and upgrade my Falcon using both my old 75105 Falcon and the First Order transporter (and some of my kids lego but dont tell them!).
I saw an excellent MOC done by 2bricks as shown at the bottom of my post, as I’m not a moc builder or someone who has ever modded lego before i decided to try and make the Lego set look as similar as possible.
I tried to update as much as possible to get closer to the actual Falcon using some reference shots, oddly there are quite a few differnces in the design. Some are rounder while others are more elongated. I decided to go with the slightly elongated version as this is what the UCS looks like (to my eyes at least).
So what did i do,
1. I tried to close the gap between the mandibles and dish section, I just built up the area under under the dish as opposed to thickening the mandibles. While this less accurate it did make it pretty easy to close the gap.
I also plugged the huge gap by the canopy. It turned out to be really easy to fix with a couple of small angled plates.
2. I took the slightly angled plates off the escape pod tunnels and replaced it with a straight edge. This allowed me to get a more accurate look to the tunnels. I also filled in the gaps as much as possible between it and the cockpit tunnel.
3. The escape pods were tweaked to better reflect the UCS model. Owing to the height of these i decided to use upside down pistols. While totally inaccurate i think they give them a little more interest. I also totally copied the 2bricks design with the bits of red showing. I liked it on his and i like it on this one.
4. The right hand side has an updated dish (copied from 2bricks) i also added a little detail coming down from the dish area. I added the 2 pipes that go to the holes in the madibles as well.
5. The mandibles, these were fun, first off i smoothed them up a bit using tiles. I then set about adding the pipes. i basicaly attached 2 pipes together with a lightsaber hilt and attached to a 1x1 brick with hole in.
6. The back - I spent a long time wondering about the best way to approach this. In the end i decided to use square bricks and live with the gaps. I built it out to match the existing engine covers and then removed the originals. Im still in two minds whether to reduce the length by one stud or leave as it is. I then decided to use (what i know as" flick fire missiles for the actuators that attach to the fins. I made sure to leave the hole facing up to approximate that there are 2 of these on the (real) Falcon.
7. A very important detail I wanted to capture was the fanned section on the back. The top down view shows this best and was achieved by using 1 stud wide long tiles.
Other than a bit of extra tiling and funny bits added here and there that is the extent of the changes. It took me a huge amount of time to do this and I’m really happy with it, is it perfect, no, but in my eyes it looks more displayable.
The only drawback is that it’s harder to get to the interior, now it’s easier to remove each segment. As I’m not concerned about the interior this isn’t an issue for me.
2bricks version below
