Is your Skids feeling depressed? How would you feel if you have a bumper in your neck ? if you have a double ball joint (or something similar) lying around and an exacto knife you have the power to free up his neck so Skids can look around a lot easier. original vs final result the way it was: ...please make transformation sounds to make this cooler... the way it is now: Happy Skids ----------- You take the end of the car and one of your sharpest blades. and gently cut along the line that represents the crack inbetween the trunk and the bumper. do not try to cut that immediately. the plastic will break and your cut will not be very smooth keep going over the line with the exacto knife and hollow out the plastic until you see a white line on the back of the trunck-part. then you can attempt to cut off the plastic directly or keep dong it the safe way. I drilled two holes for the joint that will make the bumper fold and yes this has to be very precise... otherwise the bumper wont close correctly I didnt have a good pic of the joint but this is the easiest part of the mod. Pegs go in the the driled holes and are connected by a joint... If you used joints before you probably can guess how to do this. if youve cut the plastic slowly you wont even see that the bumper has been cut off. dont worry about the visible pegs they will dissapear after the repaint (A)to make it more perfect you can trim the peg at the window here so the backpack goes all the way down. dont cut it off completely just take off a bit from the side (A)i added two bolts in the neck piece that hold the side panels up . because he looks more transformed this way. they just push up the panels. You also need to cut off the peg underneath the neck joint that is used to do the headbanging feature. it will get in the way. I also took out the spring but I dont think it needs to be removed I also released the screws of the the two side panels under his chest so they can be turned to loose the car-look. (B) in the back you can see the joints I used ... note these are not double ball joints ... i dont have any now... i had to throw something together. ------edit here are the pics of the joint I used, but agqin I think a double ball joint would work better. the idea is that th bumper folds inwards I used a claw that holds a single joint connection. ---- I did this because i hated the fact that the back of the car was just sitting in his neck, untransformed...it looked stupid. I would not say this is a walk-in-the-park tweak, but if done right i think it is worth it. hope this is helpfull .. cant wait to repaint this one soon, he s a lot cooler than I thought he would be. You need to attach all images as outlined in the Radicons Guideline - Radicon Staff
Wow! He looks sssooooo much better with this mod. Skids looks so sleek in your last attached pic, it really makes me rethink buying a Skids of my own-I mean, I still don't have the money so I probably won't but I really want to now! But, I think you are really going to have to take better shots of the double ball joint you made though. I think I know what you are talking about based on what I could imagine it needing to be to do what you have pictured, I just don't know everyone else will be able to. Plus, I would want to know how your joint looks so I could make/find a similar piece to be able to do the mod. Great work though man. I love how we Radicons can always find a few ways to make the Has/Tak molds look and work a lot better.
Outstanding! I really wanted to do something like this for my Skids but felt the electronics would interfere. Looks like doing it your way O may be able to get away with LEDs and a folding backpack! Thanks for the great work and the pics!
joint pics added Ive added two joint pics, in the original tutorial post. i used a ball joint in combination with a claw... not ideal but it works. you probably wouldnt need glue with a double ball joint thats why i would use that. but Im still waiting for mine to arrive. I thought about that too but but after the repaint you will not see them anymore... and glued on stuff like this keeps breaking off after while. but you can try ..
I know this sounds like a lie, but I swear I was thinking about this backpack fix the other day... So gonna grab one of these shelfwarmers of Skids tonight; gotta hit WM anyway to drop off a PC I was working on... Thank you so much for showing how to do this. Gonna try to work out a chest fix of my own when I get him.
A little kneadite to fill inthe hole and a bit of paint perhaps? Neat fix. I'm fine with Skids backpack now that I shave the peg down a bit so his head has clearence. Now for Mudflap, on the other hand...
Thanks for the inspiration - used this scoring trick for my chest mod. Can't wait for your paintjob on this guy!
good question, it actually does not change it ... it does not improve or makes it worse. but mine is quite stable and I suspect it will improve when he is painted. (one knee joint is a bit loose)
Great idea! I'm really tempted to try it. I don't have any ball socket hinges though, so I'll have to make do with something else. I like how you have the chest panels displayed... I didn't realize they could be turned in like that. I'm so doing that now! Thanks for both!
fixed so the pics are back up, sorry about that. ... to quote optimus "oops, my bad" (maybe just get rid of that picture from url option if you are not allowed to use it.)
Wonderful, thanks for the pics! Now, if you can figure out a way to keep that grill pushed in when he's in robot mode so the panels stay open that would be a perfect Skids!
