Fixing Storm Raven exhaust Rotation!

Hey, here's a weird one. So you know those little stabilizer jet exhausts that come with the Storm Raven kit? At the tip of the wings and just under the cockpit? Turns out they can swivel.

It's a bit difficult to see, but the two models below show it okay. The first Storm Raven has 4 jet exhausts pointing sideways (towards the camera), and the second's exhausts are pointing down:

  

Well I hate stuff like this! Assemble them too stiff and moving them becomes grindy. Assemble them too loose and they start to rattle and move on their own. The best solution might be to just fix them in a certain position.

Unless you use magnets to keep the little things fixed in their extremes? And then you can switch between the two with a light touch and a satisfying click? Oh yes.

Use a sprue bit to create a girder down the middle of the exhaust bit and use it as a platform to add two magnets. The magnets should have the same orientation with regards to polarity. I used 3mm magnets.

Now use a sprue to place a magnet inside the wing. I used a 6mm magnet here:

This might take a few tries, but align the magnet so that it hits against the sprue when the exhausts are pointing sideways. If you place it correctly, the big magnet will catch either magnets as you rotate the exhaust:



And here's how it looks like assembled:

It works great. However you have no idea how satisfying it is to switch the exhausts between the two configurations. You just nudge it and the other magnet picks up on it and snaps it in place with an extremely satisfying click. This is worth doing just for the click, trust me!

That's it. Thanks for reading!

Also here's a teaser of what I'm working on: