im sure just diving in now, a spouse could be taken by surprise..
Me? Im grandfathered in. Im 40, and I met my wife 20 years ago, and I always had a "collection" of some sort..So she was all about it, in that "Anything you want baby.." Phase.
Now..she just shrugs..and sometimes..MABYE once a year..she will surprise the living SHIT out of me, by bringing home something so awesome. Funny shit. If she ever (used) to say anything about it..I always replay "I could always fuel my needs and the stripclub, or drink it away.." With a smile..its almost a joke now.

Gotta love this one for just how damn flexible it is to do different things with.

 

Looks good....which part did you shave off specifically?

 

did you use vinyl tape like the electrical stuf, or is there a sheet that you cut to fit and where did you purchase the vinyl.

 

I "trimmed" or "shaved" down the inner upper leg on Motormaster, there is a mold line that you can trim right to. Then I sanded with different grits up to 2000 grit. Looks factory besides the Hasbro branding that was trimmed off (in pic). In the pic, the green line represented the very top of the inner upper leg, what is boxed in orange is the area I trimmed down. Now the hips abduct (move outward) very well with Menasor. I hope this helps, ask if you need any further info.

 

The vinyl is left over 3M matte black for the hood of my jeep. Its a glare reducer if you see them on hoods before.

 

That looks mighty fine, especially the added black. Still can't stand the Nonef horns but whatever I just won't buy them, but I hope their new arm-locking pieces go up soon. Does Menasor not suffer from limited outward leg movement with this tabbing mod, though? I think it's actually more effective to just tighten Motormaster's thighs and knees, that way he still has outward hips.

EDIT: Oh, I see you replied whilst I oogled your pics.   Excellent, they do move!

 

Great stuff....it allows the hip to leg fold come closer together creating a more flush look.

 

I really like all the mods I'm seeing here. I just got motormaster and messed around with the limbs. It's not all bad. The only minor issue was a loose arm, but some finish will fix that.

 

Help needed...

So I have a Menasor I REALLY want to like, but his joints are a bit too floppy. Mostly in his crotch area. I was poking around there, and ended up "accidently" removing his legs from his crotch piece. However, to get them back in, I need to actually remove the crotch.

I've got the short pin removed from the area, but I can't get the "abs crunch" pin (long pin) removed. I can't even seem to make it move in either direction. Is there some trick, or a specific direction I need to be trying to remove it from? If I can get it out, I can fix my issues - and I'd rather not buy another Motormaster.

Edit: Nevermind. I was going the wrong way. Pro tip: If you shine a light into that part of Motormaster, you should be able to see which side of the pin is smooth, and which is checkered.

Also, Be prepared to have some potential damage if doing this. My pin would NOT come out, and after forcing it, I discovered some serious stress marks on the inside of my Motormaster, on plastic that was directly in the path of the pin. Not really sure what I'm going to do about getting it back through - it was really tight coming out, and I'm pretty sure if I try and put it back without some modifications, it's going to be disasterous for some of the internal plastic. Not sure if I just need to drill out the holes a very small amount, or what.

Edit 2: well, that was a pain in the ass. Think I managed to tighten up the ratchets a bit - I used some folded paper instead of eraser. Haven't built Menasor yet, so no clue if it actually helped. Drilled out some of the holes a bit to make replacing the pins feasible. Got him rebuilt - would probably be a lot easier to take apart again, but I'm not sure I want to go through that again. Especially with some of the stress marks I saw.

Would not recommend the procedure unless you were absolutely sure you knew what you were doing, and were willing to possibly lose the figure.

 

So, I gave up trying to find the Stunticons at retail, and ordered Breakdown and Dead End from Amazon as an early birthday present to myself.

While I had Drag Strip, Wildrider, and Motormaster for a while, I actually hadn't messed around at all with trying to combine them, so it was kind of a new and neat experience in that regard. Since I had been keeping an eye in this thread and others, I had some ideas of what to do and what to watch out for.

While my Menasor/Motormaster seems to be fairly solid in the hip department, the same can not be said of the combiner joints on Breakdown and Drag Strip. So, I had to improvise a bit.

I took a quick pic of my current configuration:

In short I switched Wildrider and Drag Strip from the "normal" configuration. Using Breakdown and Drag Strip in their "Longer leg" mode to give Menasor some added height. However, I don't know exactly why, either the soft ratchets on Breakdown and Dead End, some minor ratchet issue with my Motormaster, or what, but it felt very flimsy and would occasionally buckle at the knees. However, once I flipped the feet around, he became very stable. I lowered the pelvic plate a little to give a better impression of a full pelvis.

Using Dead End and Wildrider as arms gives a nice sense of symmetry, since they have the same hands and same base mold design. I didn't go pure car mode with arms because of minor clipping issues with the torso, plus I thought it looked a bit weird, so I slightly transformed them, including raising the arms/doors all the way up and a little out for clearance.

Finally, I flipped the arm panels in, to give some added backpack.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the clanking monstrosity.

 

So floppy Motormaster is the norm? Ugh... (NO "surgery skills" WHATSOEVER, guess I'm stuck...   )

 

So is this just wave 2 Motormaster, or or does the wave 4 version have problems too?

 

Is there a combination to get him to look like his 2009 IDW self? Anyone remember that useful 3rd party trick to make Menasor look a bit better?

 

Surgery on Motormaster is not recommended. I've done it and the "improvements" you get are seriously not worth the effort. There is so a high percent chance you can damage him while trying to open him up. If you do have the skills to get to the crotch area, holy crap, it's got a weird gear system that doesn't want to be reassembled. It was tough enough to located all the parts and remember their original placement. Got tweezers? I almost gave up after sweat'n it for two hours. The thing's a Pandora's Box.

 

But the hips alone are easy enough right? That's the only part I plan on opening up so I can put in new ratchets.

 

Really? I took apart his waist and hips effortlessly. It's two easily removable pins and a couple of screws in his butt.

 

Time to learn then.  

Especially when you still have these on the shelves.

Getting to the hip ratchets requires 2 pins removed.

Easy enough job. hammer and small nail. Just make sure you pop the pin in the correct direction. The teeth side should be the one to pop out first. If you're hammering the teeth side that can stress the plastic.

 

Ah yes, never push the pin from the grooved end. Tap or push from the opposite side, and once the grooves are out, you can grab them with any small pliers and pull the pin out smoothly. Just make sure all of Motormaster's parts are lined up when you reinsert the pin in his midsection.

 

Exactly.

There are TONS of tutorials to make the surgery easy enough.

You can recognize the teeth side most of the time.

Here's the tutorials.

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/tutorials-how-tos/214570-anovassins-how-remove-pin-tutorial-video.html

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/tutorials-how-tos/214537-how-remove-pins-rivets.html

I use to hate removing pins only because I never did it. but once I tried it, I found out how easy it really was.