Thanks for the comments! I’ll try to explain how I went about this and try to keep it short
Let me start off by saying it’s not a mod for the feint of heart. I ran into quite a lot of problems. One of the problems being that when R2’s dome was taken apart, the wiring came off the projector bulb. The wires on that bulb are super thin and weak and having to man handle the dome parts and mod it is going to guarantee that they will snap off. I was able to solder the wires back on and while wrapping up the mod and assembling the dome back together caused the wires to snap off at the circuit board! Had to solder them on there as well. There’s a lot going on under R2’s dome. Wiring, delicate pieces, and parts are all crammed up under there.
Periscope mod
The way the mod works on the periscope and the sensor is that I added a telescoping cylinder shaft to both. That way the periscope and sensor can have additional height. To get at the periscope and sensor, you have to cut off the spring housings for both (silver cylinders).
The periscope on R2 has two blue striped areas running down the stem and removed them by sanding. The new telescoping cylinder shaft is a 7/32 styrene tubing from Evergreen Scale models 1 ¼ inch in height. I used a groove and notch to enable the periscope to pull up the new cylinder base. Also added stoppers to the new cylinder shaft so it doesn’t pull out of the dome.
The periscope spring housing needs some work to fit the new shaft. There are gooves inside that line up the spring platform. I filed a bit of the upper area of the grooves to be a wider opening to accommodate the new cylinder shaft. The shaft also needed to be tapered a bit to help fit as well.
Sensor mod
Pretty much the same as the periscope, but the new telescoping cylinder shaft is a 5/32 styrene tubing from Evergreen Scale models 1 1/8 inch in height. I added a stopper at the end of the sensor and added a drop of superglue at the top opening of the new cylinder to prevent the sensor fully pulling out.
The sensor spring housing doesn’t need too much work and is pretty good as is. I added a stopper on the new cylinder shaft to prevent it coming out of the dome and a thicker endcap to help it fit the spring housing without any wobbling.
Lightsaber hatch area
For the hatch i created a styrene ledge on the door and on the dome I added another styrene ledge. When you open the hatch, the ledges lock onto each other. Pushing down on the hatch releases that lock.
Working on the getting the lightsaber to lock down in place, I realized the spring housing wasn’t deep enough. I popped off the bottom and added a 5/16 styrene cylinder to drop the spring down a bit lower. That is about ¼ inch in length. I made a catch in the spring housing so that the top of Luke’s lightsaber will catch under which locks the hilt in place.
Don’t know how clear this is but hopefully it helps. Good luck!
