So I received a leader Prime as a gift the other day, and while I was glad to finally have the mold at such a reasonable price, that backpack just drove me crazy. Taking it off made the figure look allot better, but his hip armor was also gone as a result. After a brief search to see what others had done about it, I decided to follow along Prime0080’s idea of how to add ROTF Jolt’s door panels as the new armor. So I hit the parts bin to see what I could come up with for attachment pieces. It took me longer to find the parts I needed than it did to do the work to install things. Not sure if anyone else has tried this, but here’s what I did... In searching for a ball joint to connect to Jolt’s door panel, I found that the Power Core Combiner figures had the most success, specifically Crankcase because the color on his arms matched. I removed his arms at the shoulder, and then took off his forearms. After driving the pin out of his elbow, I had a small ball joint piece with a mounting hole ready to install. Next, I took out the screws in Primes hips. The hole in the joint was a little small for the screws, so I did need to drill it out slightly. The new joint fit the radius in Prime’s leg almost perfectly, but it was a little too thick for the stock screws to reach across and thread back in. Thumbing through my screw bin landed me a couple screws that were just long enough to work. I think you could get the stock ones to work if you shaved the mount down a bit, but longer screws was allot less work. After snapping the panels in place, I found some slight interference between the leg and the ball socket that I’ll need to address, but overall I think it worked out pretty well. You can even rotate the joint at the screw to give you a little bit different placement of the armor. I plan on trimming all the small pegs and tabs on the edge of the new panels just to make it look better, and I may also trim off the long thin part of the panel by following the seam molded in for the door. As far as transformation goes, the panels will have to be popped off for sure, but I don’t think the ball joints will be in the way of anything. I’ll try it out when I’m finished and see how it goes.
