Lepin 05038 Not Lego UCS Star Wars Sandcrawler Set Review - Part Four

Yay!  Lepin's version of the UCS Star Wars Sandcrawler is finally done.  Let's see how we got here.

Step 80: Here's the assembly of the 4 tractor wheels.

The treads have been attached and the wheels fitted to the main sandcrawler body.

Step 85: A closer look at the wheel assemblies.

Step 90:  The front hatch door is operated by the gear lever at the top.  

Step 95:  I somehow messed up the installation of the extending winch and had to take apart the entire mechanism that opens and closes the door to fix my mistake.  Now the winch extends properly and the door opens and closes perfectly.

Step 100:  All the side panels are installed on the technic structure.

Step 110:  Just installed the finish pieces that link the panels together.

Step 115:  Roof and rear panel assemblies completed.

Step 120:  Done!

Here's a pic of the side panels raised up.  You have to remove the roof panel to access the central winch.  There are different accessories to attach to the winch so that you can lift droids or one of the three containers that are included with the set.   There is also a small speeder used by the Jawas to transport the droids that they capture.

A look at the front of the Lepin Sandcrawler with door open.

Here's an overhead shot of the Sandcrawler.

My previous posts about the Lepin Sandcrawler can be found here:

http://its-not-lego.blogspot.ca/2017/02/lepin-05038-ucs-star-wars-sandcrawler.html

http://its-not-lego.blogspot.ca/2017/01/lepin-05038-ucs-sandcrawler-review-part.html

http://its-not-lego.blogspot.ca/2017/01/lepin-05038-ucs-sandcrawler-star-wars.html

Lepin 05038 Not Lego UCS Star Wars SandCrawler Set Review - Part Three

Hello and welcome back to Its-Not-Lego.blogspot.com.  Today, we will continue our review of the Star Wars UCS Sandcrawler building set.  It's not the Lego 75059 version, but a knockoff version Lepin model 05038.   In our previous blog post, I put up some pictures as I was building the first 40 steps as I followed the Lepin manual.   Now we will continue the build from steps 50 and onwards.

Step 50

Here's how the Lepin Sandcrawler is progressing so far.   The base and lower side walls have been installed along with the pivot mechanism which will control the rear treads.  On step 50, I added the lower side cladding and was supposed to attach the ladder but I couldn't find the two black arms that hold it in place.   The pivot mechanism is a bit stiff but seems to work for the moment.

Here's another view before we move on.

Step 60.

We are now at step 60 of the manual.  In the previous 10 steps, all we did was put down some long tiles on the floor of the Sandcrawler.  I think this is used to mark off the areas where the droids will be located later. 

I applied the stack of bricks at the front of the Sandcrawler that will be used as the front door pillars.

 Steps 67 - 70.

The height of the front pillars was increased with more bricks, and one of the side panels has been constructed.  The yellow door opens up into the cargo area.

This is a look from the other side.

Now both side panels have been added.

Front view looking back.

On step 70, we added the support beams that connect the front pillars with the side panels.

There is also a sliding mechanism along the inside. I think this will be used for as part of an arm to pick up the droids.

This build seems to go on and on, I still have so many bricks left to attach.

Construction of the back of the Sandcrawler begins.

And here's the completed detailing.  Looks pretty cool.

Support beams installed between the back wall and the side panels.

Roller ramps added underneath each opening on the inside of the side panels.

A closer look.

A look at the technic pieces that hold the back wall in place.

Just a few more pics.

side view.

top view.

Rear view.   This brings us to step 79.

I'll stop here for now.  I'm aiming to wrap up the construction by the next blog post, I promise.

Lepin 05038 Not Lego UCS Star Wars Sandcrawler Set Review - Part Two

Hi there.  Today we are going to review the building of the Lepin UCS Star Wars Sandcawler 05038.  As with my other bootleg brick set reviews, I will take pictures every ten steps or so to show you the progress of my construction.  I don't bother sorting my bricks, so I just leave them in their plastic bags and try to memorize where I last saw the parts I need.  Sometimes, it works and sometimes it doesn't, lol.

Step 10

Here is the bottom of the Sandcrawler after step 10.  The first pic above is also step 10.  As I'm building it, I can't help but think that it's not as big as I imagined the set would be.  So far the bricks look fairly clean and there's not a lot of scuffs or scratches as I encountered on the Lepin Modular sets.  Clutch is good and no loose parts yet.

Step 20 

Before I continue back to the construction, I want to digress a bit.  I've accumulated a fair amount of bricks from Lego and non Lego sets over the years.  Where possible I want all of my bricks to be as compatible with Lego as possible.  That includes clutch and colour similarity.  In the event I find some bricks to be substandard (like MegaBlocks), I keep those bricks separate from the standard ones.

A lot of people would probably just throw out the off colour or poor fitting bricks but I keep them and then look for opportunities to use them without affecting the appearance or clutch of the model I'm building.

In the case of the UCS Sandcrawler, there is the perfect opportunity, here in step 20, to swap out some better Lepin bricks for some crappy Megablocks bricks.  There is a subfloor between the brick tiles if you look at the picture above.  Bricks are used to provide stability but are never seen again after the plate bricks have been applied.  It is here, where I have swapped in some Megabloks for some Lepin bricks.

Step 30

If you couldn't quite figure out which bricks, I have now substituted them with pink bricks in the pic above.  Yeah sometimes I get stuck with these off-colour bricks but there's little purpose to them.  So I bury them inside a building or inside the floorboards of this Sandcrawler.  Another example where I used pink bricks is under the Lepin Town Hall modular front steps.  The bricks that came with the set originally can then be repurposed in another set, or be used in the case of missing pieces.  Once I put this Sandcrawler together, it won't be coming apart, so only you and I know what's inside of it.  Shh, it's our little secret.  I'm curious to know if it's just me or does anyone hide undesirable bricks inside their sets?

Ok, back to our construction process.  In step 30 we are putting down the gearing that will help to turn the future Sandcrawler tracks.

Step 40

We've now hit step 40 and page 23 of the manual.

More technic pins and bricks applied.

Another view of the knob and gearing that will steer the Sandcrawlers giant treaded wheels.

This will all be invisible soon.

Lower rear view.

At this point, everything is holding together well and I have had no missing or deformed parts.

 I want to mention that the Lepin UCS Sandcrawler manual is 143 pages long and there are 121 steps used to build this iconic Star Wars vehicle.   I've decided to split the construction process into three parts so that each blog post will span 40 steps of the build, so the next blog post will cover steps 41 thru 80 with the obligatory pictures of course.

If you missed the preliminary pre-construction blog post of my Lepin Sandcrawler, you can find it here.   See you in a few days!

Lepin 05038 Not Lego Star Wars UCS Sandcrawler Set Review - Part One

Welcome back to Its Not Lego!  Back in September 2016, I told you how I was really excited to learn that Lepin was cloning the Lego Star Wars UCS Sandcrawler 75059.  Well, after Christmas I found the Lepin 05038 version of this set on Aliexpress at a good price.  And now my package has arrived.

As always, I don't get the box delivered to me, just the bricks in a nondescript bag.  The Sandcrawler set is my largest bootleg brick set so far with 3346 pieces.  The Lepin instruction manual comes in a thick glossy booklet, but you don't get the two page pictorial introduction that you get in the Lego version of the manual.

The pages of the manual are decent quality and there aren't any missing instruction pages that I can see.

This is the back cover of the Lepin UCS Sandcrawler manual.

I tried to inventory each of the bags as I have done with other large Lepin sets, however most of the cellophane bags didn't come with any numbers.  I counted 65 individual bags.

The bag containing the yellow bricks was torn open in two places, so hopefully I won't have any missing parts.  I also found two bags of parts which appear to be identical, not sure if it's supposed to be that way or not.

The parts for the minifigures and droids look to be spread out amongst three separate bags.

Here's the minifigure parts as provided.

And here's all of the minifigures and most of the droids assembled.  You get the following minifigs and droids:  Luke Skywalker, Uncle Owen, C3P0, R2D2, a Green R2 unit, R5-D4.  You also get 4 Jawas, and some have different torso designs.

Here's how the minifigs look from the back.  I understand that there's a few other droids that come with the set, but I haven't gone through all the parts yet, so I'll look at those ones later.

Time to sift through the parts!  In my next blog post I'll start building the Lepin UCS Sandcrawler so be sure to come back in a few days to check on the progress.