I have decided, as amazing as many of the new TF toys I have seen are, I just cant get into the good ones and could care less about the mediocre ones. I will conceded, I do have an alternators Smokescreen on my desk at work, parked next to some of the most ingenious engineering in history, Masterpiece Hotrod, but as for my little displace case in my den, its just G1's. Well, lets be honest, G1 cars. The problem is, all my faves came from the Diaclone line and as it is not 1984 and Takara probably isnt going to make any more early '80s Diaclone Carrobos any more, it was up to me. Im a Mechanical Engineer, how hard can it be? (Thank you Jeremy Clarkson). Step one, find a robot that will work for what you want to do. Yes I could reinvent the wheel but let's take this step by step. Re-invent the wheel when you have perfected it. Enter the Datsun 280 mold. My all time favorite Diaclone/TF. The goal here is to use the insides of a Datsun and re-shell the outside into another car. Why not use a better robot? What do you mean? This IS the best TF in my books ever. No Articulation? Who cares? I'm not playing with them any more. I just like to look at them. What car will it become? Well, I will get into that. Step two, model it in CAD. Ok, Fire up Pro/E (Creo Parametric 1.0 to be specific) and whip out your micrometer, a trashed Bluestreak and a flat surface. Here is what I have so far. Just note that my tolerances are up to a quarter mm. That plastic injection molded foot was a pain in the ass to measure. All of the assembly joints work also, so you can transform him piece by piece. Another awful part to model. The head was a ton of fun to make. I am still working on a way to make his mouth. That has not been easy. Wire framed so you can see the insides of the parts. This was complete remake inside and out. And finally, the whole robot. Now that the important references have been completed, I can now focus on building a body for the car around the existing robot chassis. That will take some time as it will require copy geometry (which I don't know) and surfacing (which I don't know). The car I am using (I will show that after I post the artwork I created) has very similar proportions and dimensions as the Datsun so the final product will be awesome. I will 3D print out the body so that with further get the final product dead on to the existing body. Wish me luck!
So it's a Pinto, right? (let's go ahead and get the obvious "you should call him Backfire!" jokes out...) Seriously, though, I am going to be watching this closely. If you figure out how to tool up a reshell template, I will be very very interested in that (except for an AMC Javelin, of course.)
Hooper_X OMG. Backfire is the best name I have ever heard. And you are right, a 1980 Rallye to be specific.
Very nice, I'd love to get one of the reshells if you get them to point where you feel comfortable making them available for people to buy. And if you ever decide to try making an '80s Mustang reshell available I'd really be interested.
