I adore G1 Brainstorm (and frankly, all of his updates too) but the G1 original is one of my favorite Transformers of all time.

So I know mine isn't entirely unique in this regard but the leg ratchets are incredibly stiff. I'm able to move them but it scares me every time.

Two questions:

1.) has anyone broken their Brainstorm because of this problem?

2.) is there a recommended fix? Some way to loosen up those joints?

Thanks for any thoughts, opinions, horoscopes, lottery numbers or information.

 

I used olive oil. It works, although the smell becomes less pleasant after a while (not really rancid, though). Sewing machine oil should also work, but I find it irritates my skin.

 

Thanks.

Huh... I never thought of olive oil. Adding oil of any kind makes me nervous.
How did you apply it?

 

My Brainstorm has the same issue, I've just put up it as I don't transform him that often.
Fangry on the other hand...holy crap his legs were so stiff I had to unscrew them and removed the springs from the ratchets. They still work fine and haven't become too floppy, so that may be worth a try with Brainstorm too.

 

I think that I'd taken the figure apart (this is about a year ago), but just pouring a bit on the joint and allowing it to seep in will likely also do the trick.

 

I use either use 3 in 1 oil or eucalyptus oil on my g1 stuff
Rock on

 

Thanks, guys.
Were these figures like this when new or is it a symptom of aging materials?

 

Not sure of the internals of those ratchets but if it's anything like the Japan reissue god ginrai the ratchets are very tight due to heavy duty springs, I did open primes thighs and put a drop of chainsaw! oil onto the ratcheting tooth discs, that allows them to slide over each other much more easily instead of slightly grinding each other away!

 

Like anything else time,age,and staying to long in mode or the other.they are toys and as such u gotta play with them lol
Rock on

 

Wow...I got both Fangry and Brainstorm recently and had the exact same problems. Thanks for this!

 

I've already mentioned this on another post but I recently acquired a super mint brainstorm and he had insanely tight ratchets, they did loosen a bit with a few transformations which made me think is old lubricant being released into the mechanism or is it wearing the teeth, anyway I applied beard trim oil at the big rivet, at the edges, blew it into the hip and omg, those things move like a knife through butter now, it took about a couple of tiny drops, the ratchet s very easy but still feels super solid, makes him a joy to transform. If anybody has a G1 snapdragon it feels about the same as his robot shoulders now, well comparing my own specimen.

I did open him up because one of the arms actually came loose (the screw wasn't applied tight enough in the shoulder and I see that brainstorms hip ratchet mechanism is pretty much unserviceable, looks like oil is the only solution, in fact if his ratchet were ever to break you would literally have to replace the whole back torso half as the pin is fixed all the way through. Thankfully I've never seen a review f him where the ratchet was actually broken so it must be pretty solid.

 

Got one ratchet very stiff.
The other is broken i think.

 

when you say it is broken, does the joint not move or is it just loose with no ratcheting?

 

It's very stiff and doesn't ratchet.
I can move it, but it feels like i'm sliding it against a pull, if that makes any sense.

 

interesting, I wonder what the mechanism is inside, unlike most ratchets brainstorms is not investigable, well as far as I can tell, at least not without destroying it! I've opened up and cleaned most of the headmasters and none of them has anything like brainstorms hip ratchet. Most of them don't even use springs, eg mindwipe.

 

I did the same once, but it's too long ago. Can't remember what i found in there.