After racking up the mileage going to Dallas and Houston for a couple of weeks, R2 managed to make it back from Texas, though not unscathed. With a slight reactor leak (well, he kinda had a meltdown, litterally) in the dome drive setup, R2 was still able to make it home in one piece and is working again thankfully.

Now for a quick rundown on how R2 is doing.

First off, the week before the Texas trip, r2 got a decent paintjob.  The whole body, most of the blue parts, and silver parts were done.  I wasn’t really happy with the way the arms came out, and most likely will need to strip them and do them over. They were very messy and runny, and just overall were not good enough for me.

As said above, had some minor wiring issues on the dome while in Texas. This was completely my fault unfortunatly. But it’s fixed now and things seem to be running.

I did find that my hobbled together VERY cheap sound system just isn’t going to hold up that well though, and sounds like crap at times. Because of this, I’m going to upgrade to the CFIII soundsystem setup at the earliest opportunity after hearing it in action at All-Con.

Finally, I got to work on the Drive Train. I started on this before leaving for Texas.  I was able to get one of the wheels mounted, but just couldn’t get the motor to mount right. Skip 2 1/2 weeks and getting back to DeWitt, while talking with some friends about the issue, they were able to sovle my 3 week old delima in about 10minutes!!! Talk about needing a smak in the head, anyways, after taking their suggestion, I was able to mount the motor this week with no problem. Hooked a battery up and BAM we have a working drive train. I still need to do some cleanup work on it to be able to put a shell over it all, but it works and that makes me happy!

I’d planned on spending this weekend getting the other foot working, and mounting the legs and feet, but it looks like I’ll be doing a 501st event in Memphis with the Grizzlies (NBA team) at FedEx Forum. Hopefully i’ll get some work done, but if not, no sweat. Right now “my deadline” to get him working in good order (hopefully with most details) is May 1, as I leave for NC for a Lego convention that week and want to take him with me.