Hi Guys,
This whole project started with getting a messed up swindle (chest paint scratched and head wouldn't fold down). I made a custom waterslide decal for his chest and painted his visor after repairing his head (http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radicons-customs/683350-hasbro-foc-swindle-chest-revision.html). Over the course of the last month, I decided to give all of the combaticons a makeover. I ended up disassembling and repainting every member except onslaught. He has some custom paint but was not totally disassembled.

So yeah, I repainted the FOC combaticons and made some modifications to get a more G1 looking Bruticus and team. G1 canon, rifle and chest plate were used. DOTM voyager skyhammer willingly donated his hands to the project as well. I made a metal plate for onslaughts chest that attaches to a magnet on the back of the G1 chest shield. I had to find a ball joint for blast off's hand and for the hand that vortex has. They are ball jointed and the hand on vortex folds in during transformation just like the original. Unfortunately there are 2 parts that kind of make Bruticus a parts former. The first is the forearm/hand that slides into blast off when he is in arm mode. The second is the chest plate.

There is no elbow articulation the way that I transform Bruticus, but that's ok by me. The Gestalts always seemed like lumbering giants or sentinels to me, so it's fine that he just swings his un-articulated arms and smashes things LOL

Vortex had some extensive work done. I used a rotor from HA whirl and some piece from the red HA guy that turns into a hover type thing (reverb maybe?). Anyway, the factory blades on the arm thing wasn't cutting it for vortex. I wanted the rotor on his back during robot mode so the part from reverb allowed me to do it.

Bruticus actually looks good with or without the G1 chest plate. There is a picture near the end that shows an alternate chest piece I was working on initially. The hardest part was mixing the paint colors...especially blast off (would NEVER have thought that brown would be so hard to mix). Also, painting blast off's eyes was probably the worst part of the whole project. As far as colors....I didn't feel like going full drab/military. I liked that the guys were updated aesthetically, and really liked onslaughts factory paint (for the most part). So, I kind of made swindle and brawl a color compromise between the old and the new. Vortex and blast off weren't really debatable though. Although I loved the purple blast off, there's no way it was gonna work for this project.

Sorry for the image quality/lighting. I've been experimenting with a light box and different settings so that's why things don't really look too consistent. The green of brawl and the yellow of swindle are really hard for the camera to capture right for some reason.

Almost forgot...chopped onslaught's cannon and it worked out perfectly in the way that it went together with the G1 canon. I drilled 2 small holes in the bottom of the cannon and that's how it attaches to onslaught in vehicle mode. Yes, he now faces backwards compared to the hasbro version but that was the only way I could do it to get it to look good. The cannon slides on a bolt/washer setup that I made so that it can work in vehicle mode then connect to Bruticus' back. It also flips upside down and connects to onslaught in robot mode for a true G1 look. Any questions, feel free to ask.

 

I'm lovin' it!

 

This is so friggen cool!

 

See Hasbro.. all he needed was a Chestplate!! this guy is looking good. I have some spare G1 Bruticus parts I'm gonna see if I can get the Chestplate onto mine when I open it. Very cool.

 

LOL...a chest plate, the G1 accessories and MOST IMPORTANTLY... a coat of paint! Red vortex was an ABOMINATION!!!!

Thanks for the comments, guys!

 

Looks good.

 

This looks great i particularly like seeing vortex in the right colours.

 

Nice work, looks very cool.

 

Thanks! I used the red part in this pic from the HA reverb guy. It has a 5mm post that fits into vortex's hand in copter mode...then i drilled a hole in his tail section for when he's in bot mode. I had to make a post from a tiny piece of tubing then put a screw in to hold the prop on. It even turns so after it was all painted, it looked like it could have came from the factory that way.

The combaticons were my favorite combiners when i was a kid and I especially liked vortex. Probably the first "custom" I ever made was a wooden plane type "transformer" with a head painted like vortex's   I'll have to try to locate it at my dad's and post some day. I just couldn't let hasbro get away with what they gave us as vortex. Oh and I also forgot to mention that I transform him so that the "skirt" is in the back....no idea what that was about when they designed him.

Edit: his guns are from the weaponized deluxe dotm topspin btw...something else I didn't mention in the first post.

 

No problem at all   The tail rotor is from HA whirl too. I was originally going to use a tomahawk rotor for the main, but the whirl one is a little larger and was eaiser to mount on the connector piece.

 

Vortex is sick!!

 

This is very cool.

 

 

Who would have thought that THAT would fix the look of this guy? 

That chest shield helps in sooooooooooooooooooooooo many ways. Turning Onslaught around makes him look so much better too, as do the new guns. Better combined hands didn't hurt either, but chest shield for the win 

 

WOW! Fantastc, very good for him! Nice custom, FOC-1  

 

This is AMAZING!!!  
Bruticus desperately needed that chest plate.
Vortex looks fantastic. Why they didn't release him in his original colors is beyond me.

Your work gives me hope for these guys!  
A little paint and a little modification go a long way.

I'd love to see this done with G2 Bruticus and Ruination.

 

Great Job man, the Vortex is the best one

 

WOW! Looking at my Bruticus right now and looking at yours... WOW! Vortex is really slick! You gave me some ideas for my Waspinator out of Vortex too, so thank you for sharing. Great stuff, hope you keep it up!

 

Man that vortex  
Much MUCH better looking with the chest shield.