Back in 2008, when TFA was on screens and on shelves, I did some mod guides for Blitzwing. Since I was asked about them recently, here's a quick write up combining all of them into one handy guide!


Animated Blitzwing - Arm \ Wing Mod

Blitzwing's bot mode varies from the show in that his wings are mounted to his arms instead of his back. This can make for some awkward articulation, with the wings waving around like someone taped sticks of purple gum to his shoulders. (Sadly, the Wrigley's wing mod remains an artifact of 2008, as FDA enforced drop tests have since found it too delicious.)

While moving those wings to the back would require new parts from some kind of futuristic 3d printing technology, we can at least give the wings some better articulation with gold ol' fashioned plastic cutting.

First, you'll want to yank those wings off the arms. They should pop right off if you apply a little bit of pressure. Results may vary, depending on which of Blitzwing's personalities is showing.




Now that the wings are off, we can see that they attach via a round black peg with prongs along the top edge. This type of peg can be used to secure parts that are meant to pop off rather than break, and is often used for swivels and sometimes even wheels.

What's stopping that part from rotating on Blitzwing is a bunch of small ridges. What's the purpose of those ridges? Maybe to make it more sturdy while reducing plastic? Maybe because of some kid safety test? Maybe to make sure customizers have more x-acto scars?

Wait, don't worry about that last part. You can use one of 2020's latest innovations, cheap flush cutters!

Yes, while this guide originally handed razor blades over to less than responsible bots--



--now you should be able to do the guide faster and safer with a pair of flush cutters. Just put the flat side where you want it flush, and give those ridges a snip.


Here's where I'd normally show a before and after, with the individual ridges highlighted. However, this is one of the first mod guides I made, so here's something a bit more crude, but that still gets the point across.





Shave along the red area until the ridges are smooth and even with the rest of the wing. Basically, anything that's sticking up in the red colored area should be shaved flat. Except for the peg, of course.

Once you're done with that, you can pop the parts back on and the wings can now rotate back when the arms are raised.

This allows for a whole range of new and exciting action poses!


Stern glares!




Shaking Autobots for lunch money and Allspark fragments!




Or, at long last, Blitzwing can do the Macarena!




Animated Blitzwing - Other Wing Mod

This modification allows the wings to sweep forward more in jet mode.





Something to note about this is that to swing them forward, you have to lift the shoulder pieces into into 'tank' position, so there's enough clearance for the wings.



As for how to actually do the mod, it's trimming more of those ridges!

Here's a before shot, with the red colored area indicating what you need to trim off.



And this is the result of what it should look like, illustrating the new range of motion.




So that's the wings modded. Now for the cannons!


Animated Blitzwing - Cannon Mod

This mod needs some extra parts sourced from another bot, and you don't have to use the same one that I used. The main thing here is that we need to add a section that lets the cannons retain their rotation, but also bend forward.

For the best results, really getting those cannons to fold over the shoulders, you'd need to fit a sliding joint up in the barrels so they could extend and then bend forward, but a nice inbetween is just adding a bit of extra length.

And you can do that with a ball joint section with a bend. The easiest place to find that is on a bot's hips or shoulders, but if you look around you might find other examples.

For this mod, I used Universe Tankor \ Classics Octane, as that was common and deluxes were about $10 at the time.


Here's a pic of the parts!



The top piece is the ball joint section for the hips, and just unscrews from behind the waist. The other two pieces are the hip joints, and can be obtained by unscrewing the legs.

The sections that are marked in red are where you should cut. The red lines indicate a complete cut across, and the part colored red indicates where you should shave until smooth and even with the peg. It doesn't have to be completely exact on the shaving, but it needs to fit snugly into Blitzwing's hinge hole.

What's a hinge hole?

Aside from something scrawled on Cybertronian bathroom stalls, it's something I'll mention in the next step. It's also something that could limit what parts you can use.


For now, let's keep going with the guide as if you've used Octane's parts. Here's a picture of what those will look like afterward!



Also pictured are Blitzwing's cannons. Examine them closely and you will see where I've shaved the peg off from the bottom of the cannon. A flat surface on both the bottom of that and what is now the top of the joint from Octane are essential to them making a good connection later on, so be sure to shave off any bumps from where you cut it.


Now that we've cut those apart, it's time to unite!

With glue.

We're going to glue the parts together.



In the above picture you'll find blue colored areas to indicate where to apply a thin layer of your favorite adhesive. Superglue will work just fine, but make sure to avoid doing it in a humid room and the parts should be well ventilated for about a day, both of which can prevent fogging.

I suggest you get the positioning worked out the way you want before you apply the glue.

The joint pieces are a little smaller than the bottom of the cannon, but if you center them they still look great.

Repeat for the other cannon and let them sit for a few hours so the parts have time to bond.

Once that is done, we need to glue the peg into the backpack's hinge hole. As I said earlier, Octane's peg actually fits very snug into it, so you might not even want to use glue for this part.

There should probably be a picture here, showing exactly what that hinge hole looks like, so let's just check the guide from 2008 and see what it says...

Huh. It's just a big scribble that looks vaguely like a middle finger.

Okay, so, I don't have a picture of the hinge hole. But according to the original guide, if you own a Blitzwing you'll probably have already discovered it by having the cannon pop off during transformation, because they can only be facing a certain way or it doesn't fit against the backpack.


I do have two tips for this step, though. The first is to be careful not to have the hinge against the backpack, in case any glue drips down and it decides to no longer hinge. And also, make sure you have the hip section attached to the ball and peg when you're doing all this. If you've got that on there, it'll keep the peg from sliding too far down in the hole. If the gun is in the 'up' position for Blitzwing's bot mode, you can slide it down enough to touch the hinge itself. That's because the way the joint is designed, as the cannon rotates forward, it actually gains a bit of clearance.

Again, test this out before you apply the glue.

Repeat for the other cannon, let them sit for a few hours, and there you have it

As you can see, the cannons might not be a complete bend forward, but they're enough to aim a blast at any oncoming Autobots.




The mod doesn't affect the plane mode much.




Tank mode however, gains bigger, positionable cannons!




Animated Blitzwing - Backpack Mod

There's a tab in between Blitzwing's shoulders that snaps into the backpack, and it fits too tightly on the slot. This might not be the case for all Blitzwings, but it was enough that it felt like the plastic was about to break when untabbing it.



To fix it, just shave a bit from the sides of the tab. It still needs to have some grip, but it doesn't need to stick out as much.


Okay, so that backpack mod might not be on every copy of the mold, and saying to trim a tab is basically basic level when it comes to mods. So what's the last part of this mod guide got?


Animated Blitzwing - Helmet Mod

Is it hard or nigh impossible to turn your Blitzwing's faces with the dial on the back of his helmet? Does his head sit kind of cockeyed, and why doesn't that make me feel dirty when 'hinge hole' does? Maybe the helmet just angles awkward, and it doesn't sit flush with his fuselage in jet mode.

If so, this mod will fix that!

Blitzwing's head consists of a rotating center post with a separately rotating ring that has three faces attached to it (the ring is the 'dial' normally used to turn the faces), and his helmet.



The helmet is supposed to remain in the same position as the center post, and both pieces should only rotate together. The people at HasTak though the friction between the rubbery material of the helmet and the plastic on the top of the post would be enough to accomplish this, but it doesn't always do that.

There seems like an attempt was made to help out the situation, or at least make a marker of the front and back positions, as there are two haphazard notches on the top and center post on mine. They mostly match up with where the pole needs to be, but I don't know if every Blitzwing has them or if this was just the factory chipping or something.


That does bring me to my next point, though. There is a correct position for the pole to be in relation to the helmet.

The center post is actually off-center a bit, and if positioned incorrectly, this can cause his faces not to turn, or even his head to tilt to one side. It's much easier to see when the helmet is off.



Look closely where I've circled in the picture. That's actually the offset center post sticking out behind his neck.


Here's an illustration, in case any of this is getting confusing.



As you can see, the metal pin is not centered on the main base, and the center post that forms the main part of Blitzwing's head is not centered on the pin! This means that when the center post is rotated to the position shown above (and circled in the above non-diagram picture), there's a part that hangs over the back of the base. When rotated around the other way, there is no overhang.

You'll have to play around a bit with this one, and work out the best position with the post either sticking out in the back, or towards the front. Like I said, at the top of mine's center post, there was a notch in the front and a notch in the back. I'm still not sure if that was random or not.

You can vaguely make it out in the first picture. See how the shiny bits in the front have a gap between them? That's the notch. There was even less of one in the back.

I don't have any clearer pictures, but I do have comparison shots of how it should and shouldn't be.


First, how it shouldn't look!

With the center post aligned incorrectly, there is often a gap between Blitzwing's helmet and fuselage. These pictures were taken by positioning the exact opposite of how it should be, so the maximum gap width is shown.






Next, how it should look!

When properly aligned (Which, I think that has the protruding edge at the back when in bot mode, and is shown in the circled area of the first picture in this step.) there should be no gap in plane mode. It might be a bit off, but it's the best position you can get with the helmet.



Thankfully, the metal part at the top and the center post both turn together, so you can easily dab some glue at the top and even a little around the edges with no worries. Just be careful not to get any on the ring of faces! Then place the helmet on and let it sit for a bit. If you're worried about the faces getting stuck, you can spin them for a few minutes as the glue begins to set.


And that's the condensed guide for all the mods and fixes I did for Animated Blitzwing!

If you have any questions or comments, let me know and I'll see what I can do to answer them!

 

Back in the day I always made sure to check out the latest MB Guide. Good to see these again.

 

High praise from one of my favorite Radicons.   Thanks!

 

Nice to see your mods back in some form

 

Thank you! ^_^

I always did mods on things that bothered me enough to fix them, and the stuff I buy lately just hasn't needed many fixes. The last mod guide I did was about a year and a half ago, for Studio Series Sideswipe's feet kibble, and it was fun to see the difference in pics and instruction between that and this one. I'm always in awe of folks who can actually paint up bots-- and ones who do rad 3d print work --and it's nice hearing folks appreciate some plastic chopping every now and then.  

 

great tip here. immaculate explanation

 

Thanks!  

 

Bravo good sir,
Im in an animated nostalgia trip at the moment, so this is right up my street,
Gunna get him and do some mods.
Good to see the old days come back - Keep them coming