Vehicle Supplies Vintage Y-wing Fighter	Supplies and Tools Paints: -Black -Silver -Blue -Dark Grey -Light Grey Plastistruct's plastic "Tee" beam Ponda Baba Shotguns (2) Black chalk Avery full sheet sticker paper #8255 R2-D2 Episode 1 eraser R5-D4 head
Before you begin: The Y-wing as bought as part of an Ebay ships lot that included two incomplete Falcons, a Slave One missing the ramp, a Saddle-less Taun-Taun, and some extra parts. I was lucky enough to find most of the parts I needed from a semi-local collector's shop. I bought the canopy w/ glass and the end engine pieces for about 5-7 bucks.
Step 1 The Struts are made from a plastic "Tee" beam that's made by Plastistruct. These can be obtained at any good hobby shop. Sand off the vertical leg of the "Tee" where it is going to slide into the engine parts. Sand down the remaining two sides of the strut as needed to fit into the existing holes in the engine parts. I always felt the vintage one was too short. so I made the struts for this y-wing a little longer than an original vintage strut.
Step 2 I took the entire ship apart to fix the electronics and landing gear mechanism. HINT: Remember how the landing gear spokes sit before you remove the landing gear mechanism. Take a picture if you have to. It took me about 10-15 times to get the gear to work right after puting it back together. That meant screwing and unscrewing the whole dang ship 10 to 15 times! The front landing gear is held loosely by the friction of a plastic "claw" and a cam gear on the langing strut itself. I tried using very small rubber bands to make this claw tight again but plastic fatigue had already taken it's toll. I decided to leave it as-is to avoid potentially breaking the "claw" piece. The front landing does not descend with the back two gears but does retract with them.
Step 3 Check all the electronics for corrosion and fix what is neccessary. If the plastic piece used to make the sound is worn or missing, a piece of really thick mylar or really thin styrene will do fine.
Step 4 The front nose guns are simple two Ponda Baba Shotguns trimmed down and superglued into the bracket in the nose. I painted them black and drybrushed them silver to give them a worn look.
Step 5 I repainted the entire ship with several very thin coats of two different greys to get the right color mix. The weathering on the engines was accomplished simply by masking and black spray paint dusted onto the ship. The blue color scheme and dark grey were painted on with a brush to avoid any damage from masking the areas. The cockpit was painted all black, including the inside of the canopy, both on the grey plastic and the clear glass. This gives the cockpit a much more realistic look.
Step 6 The weathering of the ship was done mostly with black chalk for blast marks and silver paint for paint chips. NOTE: Always run the streaks to the back of the ship. Rarely, if ever, will a blast come from behind that won't destroy the ship. Also, paint chips tend to happen only on ridges and panel edges.
Step 7 A scan of the original sticker sheet was obtained from THE STAR WARS INSERT GUIDE website. I played with the color balance a bit to bring the stickers into the POTF2 style and palette. I printed them out on Avery full sheet sticker paper #8255. The printer used was an Epson 600 at 1440 DPI. NOTE: Always cut the sticker big since Hasbro always gave extra with the stickers, then size and trim the sticker on the vehicle with the backer paper still on. If you always cut large, then trim it down, you have less of a chance to screw up a sticker.
Step 8 Finally, the R5 Droid is simply an R2-D2 Episode 1 eraser with a R5-D4 head that I had left over. The legs of the R2 had to be trimmed a bit to fit in the slot provide with the Vintage ship.
Tip provided by:  The Customizer's Cookbook Delaton