LEGO Repair: Space Shuttle Discovery

I wanted to reset the lights on my LEGO displays and I found that the LEGO Space Shuttle didn’t look very good on it’s stand and wanted to see what it would look like sitting on it’s landing gear but I couldn’t get the rear landing gear to pop out. I figured out that I was supposed to push in a rear tail fin to pop open the landing gear but when I did that only the front gear popped out and the rear landing gears remained retracted. When I pulled on them it was clear that something was blocking the deployment. I built this set in 2021 and don’t remember if I even tried to use the landing gear and just automatically put it on its stand (landing gear retracted), or because I couldn’t get the rear landing gear to work and just put it on the stand because I couldn’t get the gear to work.

So, something was blocking the deployment and I needed to disassemble the set to uncover the landing gear mechanism. Alas, the rear landing gear is one of the earliest steps in the build and I didn’t want to take everything apart. So I focused on taking off whatever was needed to see the mechanism. It was a bit scary and quite the mess before I figured out what was at fault. I had to remove the vertical tail section and the skin of one of the wings and two of the four cargo doors and part of the cargo hold. But I eventually figured it out.

**NASA Space Shuttle Discovery disassembled**

A spring mechanism on both rear gears was attached on the wrong pin and the LEGO piece was fastened when it was supposed to move freely… I needed to change the fastening pin so that it attached to the end of the spring mechanism and move the spring mechanism back one space. More pieces were going to needed to be removed for me to get access to these parts.

I made the changes and slowly did the reassembly, making sure to properly fasten everything down. I seemed to end up with an “extra” L piece and am missing a small triangle piece. Ugh. But the wheel properly deployed and I can continue to figure out how I want to display this set. Here’s the set up with only the LEDs (I’m thinking that a different overhead light will be needed).