Customs: Masterpiece Seeker mold - Post your advice here!

OMEGAPRIME1983 · Oct 19, 2014

The Dark Seeker said: ↑

So....taking apart the legs. Some might want to remove the legs first. So I'll start with that.

1. Hip removal.

There is a stark difference in how one can remove the legs on MP-03/PP03 vs the MP-11 mold. You can either remove the entire hip first, or just remove the legs and leave the hips on there. It's easier on MP03/PP03 to remove the hips first because the crotch piece is rounded towards the backside of it on the bottom and actually allows you to move it down to expose the screw that holds it together. On MP-11, the crotch piece is "squared off" and prevents much movement. To illustrate it....I took a pic of it on MP-11 TC and circled that "squared off" part on it as opposed to it being "rounded" on MP-03/PP03:

You can remove it with a pin push....but again...becareful. I destroyed that piece on mine as I'm working on an MP-11 Skywarp myself I replaced it from that exact same junker PP03S Like I said....iGear's seekers are much more customizer friendly...

Once you've removed it (that is, if you didn't break it), you can go ahead and remove the screw as shown below in a more or less dismantled Acid Storm.

Someone asked if you could remove the hip flaps. Yes you can. I'll highlight it below in another step in leg removal:

To remove the legs without removing the hips....do the following:

1. Slide the torso up as if you are going to transform it:

2. Flip up the intakes while simultaneously moving the arms up and out of the way:

3. Move the nose cone out and up as if you were transforming it:

4. Move the obluque parts out of the way and then flip the front hip panels upward to expose the screws that hold the hip joint together.

*note* - once you've removed the hip joint off, you'll notice that there's a piece that serves as a ratcheting joint and the piece that holds the side flaps together. In the sake of easiness and to avoid damaging anything easily, do all the prescribed steps first to remove the hip pieces off before using a pin push to remove the pins holding the side flaps in. Again, use caution as you may end up breaking the pieces you're wanting to paint. It can be done....just be patient about it and make sure...you be careful!

5. The hip pieces are held together by one screw....so I'm not going to show how that works in removing it. The next step is the thigh pieces....held together by 3 screws:

6. Then the knee pieces, held together by 2 screws:

Be careful with this part because there's a spring loaded button that I'll highlight in the note below:

*Note* Some customizers may swap out knee parts or whole thigh and knee parts over to an MP-11 from an MP-03 seeker. I've found an inherent flaw with that because....it just doesn't work 100%. In short, the legs don't really lock into place and when you stand the seeker up....it tends to...self shorten itself. I couldn't figure out why, but I figured it had to do with the knee part that slides up and down on the lower leg part. I compared the two parts from both molds in terms of the two slide rails on the outer and inner part. The inner slide rail on both MP-11 and MP-03 is always shorter than the outer slide rails.

However, on MP-11's the outer slide rails are SHORTER than that of MP-03's! (shown below) This prevented MP-03's knee part from locking when I used MP-03's knee part in MP-11's lower leg. If you recall taking apart MP-03 or MP-11's lower legs, there's the slide grooves that the rails travel on when you transform them. Horizontally are where those little buttons on the knee "catch" (circled in blue below). Because of MP-03's longer outer slide rails, it will not allow that "button" to "catch" on the horizontal groove in MP-11's lower leg. And since I hated paint rub, I had to find a way to make it work. It was simple. Eyeballed the difference in length (outlined in red) and used an xacto knife and trimmed it. Now, my custom MP Skywarps legs are fully transformable without the worry of paint rub on the knee joints!!! ( I gotta find junker skywarps or PP03Ds to do the other custom now )

MP-03/PP03 on the left, MP-11 on the right

I figured this might be useful....if people didn't want to paint those parts....
But I guess that only applies if there's color matching parts available for the custom that you're doing.

Onto the rest of the leg:

The screws on MP-03/PP03 and MP-11 molds are pretty much visible except for one stinking screw hidden by a panel. Of course, on the Hastak molds, that panel is annoyingly glued on whereas on PP03.....they're not and can easily be pried off.

MP-11:
Left Leg:

Right Leg:

MP03/PP03:

*edit* added 10/19/2014

There seems to be a need to clarify how to remove that little booger of a panel. I found that the best way is to soak the two lower halves in really really hot water. Tap water to be exact. I kept it running so as to keep the temperature hot (if you're in CA, you may not have that luxury....). The reason for this is that this somehow softens the glue enough to where you can use an X-acto knife to help remove the panel much easier than just using the knife by itself. In fact, you'll want to leave the part soaking in hot water (trying not to let the temperature of the water drop too much) for about 5 - 10 minutes at least. For this addition to the tutorial, I played it safe and left it in there for 15 minutes (please note that I also put in the shoulder pieces from Hasbro MP Sunstorm so that I can remove that panel from the arm too) (Another note....with Hasbro MP-11 Thundercracker, that screw panel was on the rear shoulder panel/piece, on Hasbro MP-11 Sunstorm, that screw panel is on the front shoulder panel/piece)

Now...I was asked about boiling these parts. Honestly, you could probably boil these parts....but I'm not so sure I wanted to risk anything "melting" so I won't recommend or suggest it. I don't know if it will, and any of you are most certainly welcome to try, but at your own risk.

Once the parts are "heated up enough", you can use the Xacto knife (note I used a big one for leverage and cutting force...so I don't accidentally end up cutting my fingers) to gently wedge into the gaps and use like a repeated "digging" type motion to shove the blade in between the panel and the leg piece:

At that point, you can even wedge the piece out so as long as the glue's been softened up enough to where the xacto blade can cut away at the glue.

Wa-la! That pain in the rear panel removed with ease. Now....if you can manage this without keeping the hot water running, that's fine I just played it safe and kept it running to make sure the temp doesn't drop and the glue is softened up enough to be able to do this.

Once you've gotten that panel off, taking the legs apart is a breeze. Everything else in the leg...you can just pull apart. As you can see below in the two halves, there are those slide grooves I spoke about earlier that the knee parts travel up and down...there's also that "horizontal" one that the two buttons (held inside the knee part by a spring) clicks into in the process of transformation. I went ahead and circled the groove in red.

PP03 featured the hip kibble fix that the MP-03 had (that many did not like).
To remove that part, you had to move it up a little enough for it to become "loose." Meaning....it feels like it's about to "break" off, or "fall off". It's actually held on by two plastic "hooks" that also serve to help that part slide up and down. If you look at the picture above, you can see those two slide grooves/holes. And then, there's that one screw you just remove:

So....that's about it for the legs that I can think of If anyone else has any further info, please feel free to chime in. I'm going to post up about the nose cone in a bit.

*edit* MP-11 Tailfin removal.

Ok, my final bit on the dismantling of an MP-11 seeker. People have asked how to take off the sliding mechanism. Well, it was rather easy. And this will make this one really long f**king post (As if it wasn't already

So let me start with this:

You're going to want to separate the two halves of the tail fin assembly (upper and lower half)

The two screws to do this are located here:

Note that the two red circles show where they're at. But honestly, if you're looking at the screws, you can't miss em. There's two sizes to them. One you can use a regular small phillips head, and the other one...a really small screw, you're going to want to use something from an eye glass repair kit or...whatever won't strip the screw (like a really small flat head, also from an eyeglass repair kit).

After you've separated the two halves, you'll get the result in the other pic shown. Next, you're going to slide the mechanism down all the way as shown:

Then take a small flat head screw driver and gently wedge it in between the lower leg and the sliding mechanism:

That step really isn't necessary, but if your grip isn't strong enough or if you don't want the risk of messing up your fingers attempting this, the screwdriver will definitely help in applying the leverage you need. But I have to emphasize that you gently wedge it in, otherwise you will marr your part. You don't want to do that now do you?

Looking at that last pic above, you'll want to then grab that piece and pull up first, then away from the leg. Again, do not "hulk" it out. If you break it....uhhh....*DISCLAIMER* it's not my fault! You'll want to use enough strength, but not so much as to snap the piece in half or something. Done properly, you'll end up with this:

So there you have it. Now you can sand the groove down and/or the part itself to avoid paint rub when customizing your MP-11 seeker.
Click to expand...

The Dark Seeker said: ↑

Ok, I've got my photobucket album back up and running. The pictures should all be back.

I've also added some info and tips with regard to the lower leg piece and the tailfin part to this post:

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/creat...-mold-post-your-advice-here.html#post10304316

To help you find them, they're the pics using the Hasbro MP-Sunstorm parts. Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

Thank you!! This is immensely helpful, and I willdefinitely betryingthe hot water trick.

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Customs: Masterpiece Seeker mold - Post your advice here!

OMEGAPRIME1983 Well-Known Member

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Customs: Masterpiece Seeker mold - Post your advice here!

OMEGAPRIME1983 Well-Known Member

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