Hello again! I was at my local Walgreens looking for Ratchet, which is said to be at many stores now, and all I could find was Red Alert. I had mine already, but I found an excuse to help them restock faster. So I grabbed another and did some research. Taking Red apart I realized that some pieces were made of unpaintable plastic, so I boiled a pan of cherry red Rit Dye and soaked the parts until they looked right. Then I used 91% Isopropyl alcohol to rub out the hood of the car. I added acrylic black where needed and I reassembled the figure. Now Clampdown here isn't entirely accurate to the source material as I wanted to distinguish him from the other fellah. I went with green kneecaps and added a reprolabel to finish it off.

 

looks good, well done

 

Beautiful!

 

Yeah I kind'a want to do this. I doubt mine would come out that good and I don't think I want to spend $20+ for a custom that I'll just fuck up.

 

This is awesome!

OB

 

Well done!

 

You left some silver paint smudges on the lower legs...

 

My thanks to you all! I'm glad I could share it.

Understandable! This took a day of careful planning.

Don't worry! I'll be sure to smudge the rest of the figure with silver eventually.  

 

Brilliant work man..how is the dye holding up. In hindsight I would have tried this myself.

 

Very well. This isn't scratching off. I'm already planning to use this method on a lot of toys. I just gave Megatron a dark energon sword.

 

Man, I wish I could give your post two likes - one for the custom and just one for your excuse - it's a very good excuse by the way.

After the Rainmakers set in Siege I would like to see HasTak do a 3 pack of Clamp Down, Deep Cover and Tigertrack

 

Yo I just used that rit dye tonight...it’s dope! How did you disassemble the legs btw. I never did mess with the flathead pins on that mold. And yea Nemesis..everyone would go in on a 3 pack or exclusive. I’d be shocked if Takara didn’t try at some point in the future.

 

I wouldn't mind those repaints either .. As long as all three of them get undique heads

 

Looking most excellent. Good job

 

I'd be all for it! If a real clampdown is different enough from mine, I'll just add it to my army.

Thanks! I use a small hammer and a pin vise to take them out. But don't try it with clear parts. These may crack.

Same here.

Thank you!

 

Could you perhaps specify which parts have this unprintable plastic?

 

amazing

 

Upper legs, fore arms, elbows. And some in the inner torso. They have a different texture to regular plastic and is made to be tougher.

 

Greetings! I recently bought a loose incomplete Red Alert that I'm thinking of customizing into Clampdown because I want consistency and him being made from the Earth Mode mould is upsetting my OCD, so I wanted to ask...how good is the cherry dye holding up? How did yo disassemble the knees and wrists to dye only the arms and thighs?