Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Update : Jinbao KO Oversized Predaking ( 金宝冲云霄 ) - Bovis and Fortis - Hind Thigh Plates Swap

Only until just than I realised that this Jinbao messes... I mean, made amendments to the hind thighs of Bovis and Fortis, as they swapped the hind thigh plates of these 2 and also ensured the animal legs has a single uniform colour for each figure... Hence decided to attempt to swap them back... with partial success... First, the parts are dismantled... I initially planned to have Fortis also follow the original MMC Bovis's twin-colour scheme for animal legs, hence plugged out the feet...


The proper hind thigh plates are swapped...


... with Fortis's ones painted black before fitting in...


However, when I assembled and transform them into animal mode, I suddenly feel they look kind of ugly...


So decided to switch the feet back to a single uniform colour, even though it means wrong feet for Fortis and Bovis... hahahaha...


Yeap, correct hind thigh plates....



Edit: I also shaved off the chin and lower jar of Fortis/Headstrong in an attempt to let the head move further out in leg mode, but as it was trial-and-error, it was overcut... luckily the head doesn't shift much in leg mode due to the lack of space... I strongly suspect the animal heads of Fortis/Headstrong and Bovis/Tantrum are oversized more than 1.2 times... But at least now I have a nice Predaking thighs...


Also make the slot in the Thigh-Thickener pieced longer (red circle) to allow the piece to be pushed further into the thigh... The yellow circled part has to be filed/cut down...


Done! Now the pieces fit in better, even much better than Talon/Divebomb and Tigris/Rampage ...


Lastly, a group shot of the Predacons in bot mode.... nice...

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Update: Jin Bao 金宝 KO Oversized MMC Feral Rex (a.k.a. Predaking)

Some updates on my KO Oversized Feral Rex... For this post I shall just call him Predaking and the gestalt members by their G1 names... First, the broken tab to ratchet Divebomb's gestalt connector has to be repaired... Yeap, the good old super glue and tissue method... some fine trimming is done to the tab to allow the connector piece to be swiveled with lesser force... However, I did not remove the robot head connector piece (a pin-joint) when I tried to force the chest pieces out, and in the end I broke the pegs (the yellow pegs in the picture background) to secure the chest pieces onto the torso... Luckily the chest pieces are tight enough and do not seem to need these pegs....


Divebomb's robot head is painted black at the black to camouflage and blend in better in bird mode...


This is Razorclaw's robot legs fix attempt. I tried using magnets to hold the legs in the mid position for gestalt configuration, though knowing that the magnetic force will not be strong in countering sliding action, but got no other better (actually I am lazy to use more complicated mods) method... it did not seem to work initially, because when the legs are pulled to this point, Predaking's legs will slowly open up and attempt to perform a side-split... I figured this could probably be solved if the feet is not so slippery, and that will be a later mod... Also use this magnet method for holding the leg position in Razorclaw's robot mode....


I checked some pictures on the internet and it seemed that MMC's Feral Rex head has an orange "chin" / "helmet-strap" / whatever-you-call-it... Removing the paint on this KO's "chin" seemed to make the over-oversized gestalt head look smaller... optical illusion, perhaps... hahahaha...


This mod is for both Tantrum and Headstrong, both having swiveling thigh pieces to beef up their thighs. However, this KO version does not seem to be able to push in these pieces to sit on the thighs.. I cut off this part on the swiveling thigh pieces (and file off the rough edges)...


And now the swiveling thigh pieces can be pushed further in to sit closer to the thighs... Of course the slot on the piece can be trimmed longer to allow the swiveling thigh piece to push even further into to be flushed with the thigh, but again my laziness forbids me to do that... hahahahaha...


One of Tantrum's beast leg connector has a wrong piece attached, making it not possible to tab the piece properly in beast mode... Hence some trimming and fixing of the joint has to be done... luckily things went smoothly and the operation is a success...


And to prevent Predaking's legs from doing side-split, I added some non-slip mat at the bottom of the feet. Since the feet bottom are hollow, and the edges are too thin, I have to use hot glue to thicken up the edges to better stick the non-slip mat onto the feet... Once Predaking don't do leg splits, Razorclaw can now position the legs to the mid-point positions for gestalt mode...


Done! Here are the Predacons in their animal mode!!! Note that Razorclaw does not have his tail as I am lazy to remove it from the humongous sword...







And a size comparison of my KO G1 Predaking and KO Oversized MMC Predaking... Both look great!!!! Hahaha... My top 3 Transformers gestalts are Devastator, Predaking and Bruticus.... Bruticus is because he is my first TF gestalt (and it is a KO RID "Ruination" version)... For Devastator, he is the very first TF gestalt to appear, the grand-master of gestalts, hahahaha... and as for Predaking, he has a special place in my heart. Of course one of the reasons is that he is the largest G1 TF gestalt, but there is more.... In fact, this set of KO G1 Predaking I have is super old and fragile, but I will never replace him with the new KO box set that is so cheap in Taobao.com... This set is a gift from my aging uncle which initially I asked him (and my cousins) to help me buy in Genting many many years ago, and my uncle refused to accept when I wanted to pay him, insisting to give them to me as a present... Hence this will always be a special one in my heart... So unless if the toys are really broken beyond my repair, I will not replace this KO G1 Predaking....


I tried but cannot make Predaking hold the humongous sword... this is the best I can do... hahahaha...


I love this Predaking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Edit: Felisaber - Scraped off the un-needed paint on his face to have a proper (and hence smaller-looking) face... Also tried to repair the broken ratcheting joint but not really completely successful...


And have put Predaking up for display... Happy....




Edit: Predaking holds his sword!!!!!