Minor/Repaint: MP-44 General Fix Thread

Discussion in 'Radicons Customs' started by BrutiKing, Sep 3, 2019.

?

Which knee on your MP-44 broke?

  1. None

    59.5%
  2. Right Knee

    7.2%
  3. Left Knee

    14.9%
  4. Both

    18.5%
  1. Bruticus88

    Bruticus88 Bruticus devastate Devastator!

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    For the Super Italian Red applied with a brush... did you thin it out any with Mr. Hobby leveling thinner? And if yes... in what ratio? I have a few chips around the front cab windows in bot mode to repair. Thanks.

    And if anyone has recommendations for the white crotch area around the yellow crotch lights... and for the thighs. Mr. Hobby Off White looks like a decent match... but if anyone has first hand experience please chime in. Thanks.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2019
  2. Jarrod

    Jarrod Semi-retired Builder

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    Yep, Leveling Thinner specifically. Usually for hand brushing it's 1:1, but sometimes a little more or less, depending on the color underneath.

    I haven't found a perfect match for the white yet. It's super white, like ultraviolet almost. I've got really close with white, a tiny bit of gray, and a little purple. I know I can get closer, just need to find the proper base white first.
     
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  3. Bruticus88

    Bruticus88 Bruticus devastate Devastator!

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    Thanks. Much appreciated.
     
  4. RetroElectro

    RetroElectro Well-Known Member

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    I'm also interested in finding a match for the white paint. I chipped some of the white paint on the diecast waist part. How did it happen? Maybe someone can learn something from my long story...

    I developed a wobble between the pinned diecast waist part and that rectangular plastic piece it's sitting on. I'm guessing it was from that plastic part/side ab joint was way too tight on mine. I think I've been over forcing the side ab motion because of how tight it is and that either loosened the pin or deformed some of the plastic over time.

    So I tried using Future between those parts to close the gap. It didn't stop the wobble but it did make the white paint flake off the diecast much easier. Great! So don't try using Future there if you have the same problem I had. Luckily, I was able to get rid of the waist wobble by squeezing a small rubber band in the gap between the parts, wrapping it around the waist pin and tying it off. It's acting like a rubber washer between the diecast and plastic part and you don't see it so it's good enough for me.

    However, I believe the root cause of my wobble was from too much friction with the side to side ab joint so I tried loosening the part's screw from the back of the waist assembly. Even with the screw removed it was still way too hard to move. I fixed the friction problem by using silicone oil on the areas the ab joint is rubbing against when it's making the side to side motion. It still has enough friction to maintain poses so I'm good with it.

    So maybe this can be a cautionary tale for others if you've noticed your side ab joint is hard to move. Oh yeah, and my knee joints are still good.
     
  5. G1Wheeljack

    G1Wheeljack Well-Known Member

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    I recently noticed a scratch on my MP-44 but don't really know anything about painting, what do the numbers that aren't in parenthesis on the list mean? How much to add to a mixture?
     
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  6. BrutiKing

    BrutiKing M O I S T

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    Yup! It’s the amount of parts inside the mixture.
     
  7. BrutiKing

    BrutiKing M O I S T

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    I am making a fix for the wobbly waist and the white is gonna be matched soon. Gimmie a bit more time. Sorry about that.
     
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  8. G1Wheeljack

    G1Wheeljack Well-Known Member

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    How much does a part constitute? Is it the entire bottle?
     
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  9. Arie

    Arie One Man Army

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    You decide that for yourself, it depends on much paint you need. Say you need to mix three colors, the first and second both 1 part each, the third 2 parts. If you need a little bit of paint you could do 10 ml for the first, 10 ml for the second and 20 ml for the third. If you need an awful lot, it would be 1 bottle for the first, 1 bottle for the second and 2 bottles for the third. You decide how much each part is, just make sure to mix according to how much parts each color is. I hope it makes sense now?
     
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  10. G1Wheeljack

    G1Wheeljack Well-Known Member

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    Thanks! I appreciate the help! Like I said I'm new to this and just want to fix up a scratch on my MP-44.
     
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  11. BrutiKing

    BrutiKing M O I S T

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    Don't worry about it. If you need any more help, feel free to DM me
     
  12. 4249david

    4249david Click my avatar, you won't regret it...

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    And generally 1/32 means "a little bit", i.e. in the 10/10/20 example above, it'd probably be a drip or two. Obviously it'd be proportionately more in the 4 bottles scenario
     
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  13. AnonymousDwell

    AnonymousDwell Well-Known Member

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    Not sure how reliable this is, as it sounds like fourth hand information. So be skeptical. But:

    For now Hasbro Asia and Takara Tomy have not plans to address MP 44 knee ratchet issue

    Hopefully the above response (again though, it's like... fourth hand information, so take with a grain of salt) indicates the issue is not massively widespread, as if it were I'd like to believe they'd take it more seriously than that.

    Also, I still can't get any information from Amazon JP either on why the listing was pulled other than third party sellers.

    Lastly, the poll in this topic is now up to 60 people on TFW with the knee breakage issue. Still 82 (down from 84) without the issue as well.
     
  14. flynnibus

    flynnibus Masterpiece Addict

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    The problem with this one is.. many people can have the problem and not really know it. Unless they know what the figure 'should' be doing, you can have lots of false negatives.

    I think its pretty clear from the inspections done that this is a flaw that impacts every figure. It's not like some figures have harder plastic than others, etc. It's just a question of if the pieces been strained enough (through handling or bad/marginal tolerances) to fail. This isn't a production variation... or a QC issue. It's a weakness in the design itself. The production variations trigger the problem.. but the root cause is still in the design of the material choices in the knee.

    But note this linked comment simply says TT doesn't intend to RECALL the unit. That doesn't exclude the idea of support providing replacements or upgraded components, etc.
     
  15. flynnibus

    flynnibus Masterpiece Addict

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    I hadn't seen people elaborate on the flight stand issues with photos... so here goes..

    Symptom: The flight stand has a sliding lock to hold the top mounting block in position. But the lock doesn't engage fully and the stand fails to hold the position of the blue mount.

    The problem is the locking tab fails to slide far enough to engage the lock due to flashing and poor molding on the locking tab and the piece it slides into.

    Step 1 - Open the assembly
    Open the top segment of the flight stand by removing the two philips screws and separate the two halves of the stand. There are no springs or anything to fall out, just the sliding lock itself.

    base.jpg

    Here is the assembly separated. The tab highlighted on the sliding lock is the friction tab that is held by entering the two spots highlighted in green. When you work it by hand, you will see the tab never fully reaches the second spot when the cog wheel is in place because the triangle shaped tip is prevented from engaging fully with the cog wheel. Remove the cog wheel, and see how confidently the locking tab 'holds' when the tab reaches the second spot.

    assembly.jpg

    Step 2:
    Inspect the tip of the sliding lock. Mine was very noticeably irregularly shaped on the top and bottom of the tooth.

    Look at the white reflection in the tip and see how it's a bowed line?
    tip.jpg


    Step 3
    Use an xacto knife, razor, or file and remove the hump caused by the mold seem on top and bottom of the tip. Objective is to make the tip have flat top and bottom surfaces. Work the area highlighted in the photo below on both the top and bottom.

    modify2.jpg

    Removing the seem first, then using the straight blade side of the xacto knife along the surface and moving from the long side to the other worked well to get nice fine scrapes that got a reasonably flat and clean look.

    You don't have to reduce the SIZE of the tip.. only take off material to make it uniformly flat.

    Step 5: Test fit the tip into the positions on the cog wheel. It should go in much further than before, but may still not sit square.

    I found in my example, you could get the tip in all the way, but it may not sit square and still had resistance to sitting square with the cog wheel in all the slots.

    The seem line in the cog wheel itself was also problematic. So using the blade or file.. work the center seem inside the grooves of the cog wheel as well. Clean up all the grooves, and test fit the locking slide to see it sits nice and square and fully seated.

    I never had to remove significant material... just scraping and shavings. Again, the long straight edge of the xacto blade works well for scraping along the long surface.

    Step 6 - Reassemble.
    It pretty much goes back together only one way.. I doubt you can screw it up :) 

    Result...
    IMG_6490 copy.jpg
     

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  16. jackisking

    jackisking Well-Known Member

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    Never expected to see a recall when you had the option of returning it or self fixing it. There was no salvaging RID as it had too many issues that were a bit more than gluing 2 pieces together.
     
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  17. Buster D

    Buster D Well-Known Member

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    Man, both of the super glues I tried didn't work, "x3G" from Wave and a multipurpose gel type from Loctite, the former being made for model kits and the latter listing toys among its uses. Both were bought in Japan. Looking closely at the back of the packaging, they both say that they won't stick to certain types of plastics.

    I think I'm just going to return it to AJ at this point, since it's easy enough for those in Japan. Hopefully a fixed run will come soon.

    edit: Phew, glad I didn't wait any longer to make the decision, as today is the last day I can return it to Amazon
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2019
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  18. ElekTriC

    ElekTriC Well-Known Member

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    sadly both of the knees went down :(  but bought some gorilla glue yesterday, fixed it today. after 2 hours i did a "test" run with both legs and it clicked nicely. will wait untill tomorrow to use them again.
     
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  19. Draemonus

    Draemonus Well-Known Member

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    Sorry for not having a pic, Perhaps all Curly's hips are reversed.
    Remove the legs, rotate the hips 180 degrees, and reattach the legs.
    By doing so, your curly will be correct.
     
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  20. kshaps

    kshaps Busting Deceptichops

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    Has anyone checked their shoulder ratchets? I opened mine up due to them not being as clicky in certain spots and saw that some of the teeth had been worn away. Keep in mind I’ve done very minimal posing so I have to believe some of this was there out of the box. Any suggestions on how to fix? I’m assuming someone’s going to need to 3D print a fix here?
     

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