[MOD] 75219 Imperial AT-Hauler with working winches and more seats /with Tutorial

[Gubi0222]

Hello everyone!

I'm finally here to show my simple modifications for the 75219 Imperial AT-Hauler set. 

Since the first concept pictures of this model leaked, I wanted it in Lego form. I really liked the overall look and the idea of a smaller imperial cargo ship, which could bring the walkers into battles. When the pics of the actual set released, it received a lot of criticism for its size and colour.

I liked the appearance of the set, looked sturdy and I'm quiet liked the idea of the chosed colours. Probably when the build was designed, they had concept arts, where the final colour of the ship wasn't clear and I think the light bluish gray parts with white works well for very light gray, and it looks good with Imperial shuttles and Landing Crafts. It's not as big problem as the color of Kylo's Shuttle. Based on the official images, I have only 2 problems with the model. The first is the technic hook builds to hold the cargo, which is a decent play feature, but nut too accurate and doesn't look good too. The other problem I had, was the fact that only one figure could fit in the relatively big looking cockpit. 

As the instructions released for this set, I started working on this modification. Firstly I build one of the "arm" of the ship in LDD to see how could I fit the winches. I usually like to the minimum added parts when I modifying a set. When the LDD file for the whole set became available in the  Official LEGO Sets made in LDD, I used that to finalizing the arms and started to make more room in the cockpit.

I wanted to make big improvement with as fewer changes as possible. So here is it:

Tutorial

 

Winches

Here is the original build at the beggining:

 

For this modification you'll need this coupple parts. 

 

The first move is to remove the whole technic mechanism, which is part of the main play feature. For that, as first step, the plates from all three sides of both arms needs to remove. After that you could take apart the technic axles inside. 

 

I'll use a couple of pieces from the cargo, which is included in the set and spare parts as well. And here are all parts from the technic mechanism.

 

The next step is to installing the string and the winch system, so firstly you secure the hooks to both strings with a knot. Than you have to lace through the string in the holes of the two light bluish gray L shaped pieces. You need use only the first two holes, after that you could pull the free ends of the strings out to sideways.

 

The next thing to build is the winches, and its needs these parts. As the space is limited, we need the smallest parts what could use for its task. Because of that, the red technic bush will be our winch drum. You could lace the string trough the two opening of the bush and then you could put it on the axle. For placing this small assembly the long gray technic brick need to be removed from its place. You put together the two part and then you secure the winch drum with two light gray 1x3 liftarm and one small gray bush. You put back the whole thing to the arm and do the same thing on the other side. After that the plate sidings could go back to the sides of the arms and the you can put the steering wheel pieces to the dark gray axles.

 

So here is the ship with the working winches, you could operate them by turning the steering wheels on the sides of the "wings". 

 

In the next step we remove the bigger technic panels and need to chang the position of the technic pieces on it.

After you put back it to the underside of the wings, you can see that these change not only moves them down by 1 brick, but it becomes a stop to the wings, when you fold it in flight position. That doesn't let the wing to fold the wings to low, wich was another big problem of the original model. On these two pics you can see how the original one(left) is much lower than the modified one(right)

 

Than comes a couple small details. You can add the smaller technic panels to the bigger ones and put dark gray pin connectors to the four exposed tan pins of the landing gears.

And these parts can use on the front ends of the wings.

 

Cockpit

The problem with the cockpit is that it's designed to be very sturdy and solid, but unfortunately that makes the inside small. The main thing you could do is lowering the floor of it, but for that we need to take apart the whole structure. From the side panels we have to take off the black curved pieces, because they are in the way of the figures arms. The next thing to do is to put the gray wedges to the insides of the sidepanels from the outsides of them. OntThe original design, when you close the roof of the cockpit, it moves the sides out. With the wedges inside makes the side panels to reach the windshield and the distance between them allows the roof to fold properly.

After the cockpit is completely taken apart, we need to rebuild its floor. With lower floor and thinner sides, we could fitt more figures inside, so we add a couple smal black panel pieces from the cargo container build and these will be our seats. In the original set the stickers for the controplanels is placed on a slope and on a tile, but I wanted to use two slopes(inspired by the cockpit of the set 75094), so I placed the sticker on a 2x3 black slope instead of the tile. After the floor is finished we need to rebuild the ship the same way as we disassembled it.

 

So here is the final model. I'm very satisfied with this model. The winches working good and the look of the ship improved well.

The cockpit could fit four minifigures total, it's a little bit crowded, but does its job. 

You could operate the winches very easy and with the two hooks you can lift up a lot of different things. If you needs mor stability to your cargo, then you can pull out a loop of the strings at the bottom of the wings, and you could hook those loops to a couple added pieces.

 

Comparison with the oroginal(left):

 

These are the leftover parts from the set:

 

I didn't want to put the stickers to the cargo container, because they are such a cool designs and I want to use them in further MOCs, so I placed them on a couple of tiles.

 

 

I really hope, you liked this small modification. The only thing, that I'm planning to design is a technic structure, what can grab the latest AT-ST. 

You can find my full album: Here

[Daddy_Stardust]

That looks absolutely fantastic, really great work and your tutorial is especially wonderful!

I've only made really minor changes to the set, for as utilitarian as the ship is, I think it's one of the most complete and detailed representations Lego has done in recent years. Compared to the amount of work I put into the originally-awful Imperial Landing Craft, I was delighted to find myself so happy with what came out of the box on this one.

Anyway, I filled out the cockpit (still a single-seater) with computers and greebling, which I'm actually really happy with and just tinkered with the outside a little. It's tight and cozy and the Imperial Cargo Pilot can't technically see through the glass, but I figure there's no way in reality you'd be able to haul anything with that ship without it all being based on computer scanners and screens anyway... plus I found a perfect use for a vintage inverted printed AT-ST computer screen on the ceiling (owned this piece for years and never found a functional use for it until now), looks perfect for  lining up the ship to haul AT's!

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I've kept mine with the stock carrying mechanism because we're keeping its playset features intact to work with the Conveyer carriages (the Conveyex itself has been my big mod project which hopefully I'll unveil soon) but really love what you've done. Only thing I changed was the doors on the container to white and with the stickers think it looks so much nicer, but that's just a little aesthetic thing.

The other thing I did was actually configure it to hold an AT-ST with the simplest of techniques... the very technic bar the container is lifted on and 6 standard pins. It connects to the back of the hauler with just an additional bracket and then three pins into the back of the AT-ST. I concede it's probably not robust enough to swoosh around the whole house at any kind of speed and you can feel gravity is having a bit of a fight with it, but as a really simple little playset feature to drop the AT-ST into battle from my son's Imperial base, it works perfect to deploy from one side of the room to the other. Considering I hardly made any changes other than a bracket and 6 pins, I'm actually impressed at how perfectly and easily it all lines up.

Forgive the bad photography, it was hard to do this with one hand!

Edited February 14, 2019 by Daddy_Stardust

[Gubi0222]

@Daddy_Stardust The computers in your cockpit looks good. I like the way you attached the AT-ST, I'm planned to do something similar to yours, but I'm still trying to build it some way foldable.