Since this guy is relevant again, thought I'd re-share my fix for the loose shoulders. The shoulders on mine have remained tight and raised for a year and half now: For those of you who are a little handy, and want to improve your figure with a little work, I found an excellent way to tight up those shoulder joints. I used Future at first, and it worked great, but wore off recently. I wanted something more permanent and solid, so I tackled the rivets on the little swing arms (the cause for the looseness.) If you want to try this yourself, first manipulate everything until you have good access to this joint arm. Then find something to set on top of the rivet. I found a screw with a flat head and short shaft. Fit your pliers in there, and give them a good, slow,but deliberate squeeze. I actually could see and feel the rivet press down in further. I did this on both rivets on each shoulder assembly, and mine are now very tight. Almost too tight, but that's ok. They will now hold a pose solidly, and do not move at all when I move the arms in any direction.
I tried that on mine but it didn't seem to work. I used super glue, which works well as long as you're careful to keep the joint moving. FWIW, the BMB OS KO uses screws for these joints, which makes stiffening them a breeze.
That rivet actually broke off on mine and and I replaced it with a screw. Took a lot of finagling but got it in and it holds.
I think I finally got this guy to squeeze together about as good as he’s going to get. Fiddly as fuck. It would be nice if there were a couple more tabbing points to help get the arms oriented correctly within the cab as those were the toughest bits to get correct. Still an imposing figure, though, and great at $25.
I love my Ironhide! A lot! The issue with the hood halves in alt mode, is that they have that big rivet pivet point, along with a double stacked extension joint. All of these things must be in perfect harmony to get the front together. The rivets control that inner to outer movement for the hood, and those stacked joints are the up and down. Again, without them all perfect, it becomes difficult. The trick is to open up the side wheel wells and tires, and get your fingers in there and start manipulating those joints until it all sits. I just transformed mine about an hour ago, so these little nuances are still fresh in my head.
I did see your pics, and I’m pretty sure I followed those correctly. It seems I have to choose between getting a mostly (not completely) flush hood and locking the front wheels as they should be. I can try it again and post pics of my own showing the issues I am having. In the meantime, can anyone tell me whether it is even possible to get the hood flush once one of the tabs has broken off? And if I find another Ironhide for cheap at Ross’ or something, is there anything I can do to the tabs before transformation to strengthen the tabs and prevent them from breaking?
Cool, I might have to try that! How is that toy overall? MPM Ironhide already seems to scale well with BA Prime, so I'm hesitant to get an OSKO...
The OS BMB Ironhide is awesome. Some nice improvements to the mold, such as the windshield/roof kibble on ball joints. Very good paint apps. Light-up eyes and cannons look great. I would say that he probably scales better with the BMB OS Optimus, which is a little taller than BA OP.
Thanks! Since I have BA Prime I'll stick with regular mpm Ironhide until there's an improved regular size knock off...
I looked at the previous posts, and I'm pretty sure I lined things up correctly. But it seems if I get the hood lined up correctly the roof and the doors start popping out. Forget it. I should not have to spend over an hour trying to figure out every nuance to finish transforming a toy. I am done. I'll either put him back in robot mode and leave him there, give him to one of my kids to try to figure out, or just throw him in a bin and forget about him. This has really stained my desire for masterpiece toys.
MPM Ironhide is the worst transformation out there... Well the worst in terms of tolerances and material choices. You get through his legs easy then it becomes a train wreck.
The chest halves sort of tab in to his torso. I say “sort of” because the connection isn’t very secure. The red circled tab in the pic below tabs into the green circled slot. Then you kinda arrange the halves of the chest so they tuck in behind the chest plate. It will be a tenuous connection at best. It will come undone and untabbed quite easily as you move the arms around.
