Fixing your Lego R2-D2's angle for Star Wars 10225- Ultimate Collector's Series (UCS) model

Before I built L3-G0 I built the 10225 Lego UCS R2-D2 ("Ultimate Collector's Series", I guess they haven't thought of L3-G0, is he ultimater?")  Even before I joined the R2-D2 Builders Club, I realized that my new "ultimate" R2 didn't stand right in 3-legged mode.  It drove me nuts, so I fixed it.  Here's what I mean:

R2-D2 is supposed to have an angle between the legs and vertical of about 18 degrees for a total of 36 degrees.  However Lego's instructions for the UCS R2-D2 don't provide the right angle.  I didn't know the exact amount when I build the 10225 Lego kit, but I could tell that it looked wrong. He looks like he's about to fall on his face. 

I drew a red line sort of along the middle of the bad angle Lego kit and a green line in L3-G0's centerline.  As you can see they're pretty far off.  Notice that the back legs aren't too bad, it's just the angle of the body.

To fix it, all we have to do is make the middle leg a little longer.  To do that I moved the stop up one stud to the top of the leg support - and all of the teeth too.

Unfortunately, that means that it hits the stop plate in the center support.  That's the 4x4 plate with a 2x2 hole in the middle.  When it hits the plate, the foot won't retract all the way.

 

The fix is to remove the offending plate, which apparently isn't really needed, so you can use the cool hollow 4x4 plate somewhere else.  Here's a picture showing the removed plate circled and the stop in the space the plate had occupied.

Here's the result of our repaired droid.  A nicely inclined astromech at the same angle of the full size one.

Lego R2-D2's, both L3-G0 and the UCS 10225 Lego Kit

Anyway, I hope this post helps save the world from Lego R2-D2s that look like they're about to fall on their faces!

 

I'll leave you with an annotated copy of on of the R2-D2 Builders Club diagrams showing the correct dimensions of an Astromech Unit.  I've added the 36 & 18 degree angles in blue triangles.

Now I know I'm truly way too much of an R2 geek!