The Energon Pub

Just got done roughing them in, sorry for the bad phone-pic but it's late and my wife will kill me if I go rummaging around for the camera:



They are, in fact, Protoform Optimus Prime's feet, w/ the rear toes removed; might glue them back on as thumbs, but I like the alien look of them as they are. They attach quite easily via a press-fit onto the blue prop stud into a groove cut into the foot-hands. The props get mounted onto the forearms by trimming an existing bit of molded detail to fit the hole in the props; still working on that, they're really loose.

As some of you may know, the real V-22 Osprey has its engine intake ducts on the underside of the engine nacelles, not on top as shown on Incinerator. Swapping the nacelles left to right solves this little problem, but I'm working on it right now, and it's not quite as easy as it sounds.

You have to cut the tip of each nacelle of bec. it's glued on. Then you have to remove the purple hubs that the engines mount to and swap those, but watch out for a little blue sleeve inside the wing, just behind the gear that pokes out of the wingtip. The sleeve is bascially a bearing, and it has 2 pegs on it that fit into holes on the inside of the hub's mounting boss, where it swivels. Make sure that sleeve is back in those holes or else the mechanism will bind and not spin.

After you've re-installed the hubs, you'll need to trim away some material to make clearance for the top of the nacelle (the part without the intake that used to be the bottom). It has a round molded raised part that hits the end of the wing, that little tooth that sticks out behind the engine. You can also just trim off the little piece of wing, that's up to you.

I'll post pics in the next few days, I hope the above is enough to get some of you started. Good luck!

Comments please!

Bump.

I also moved his tailfin kibble. It unscrews easily, I thought it would be glued. It fits nicely up where it is now, but I trimmed back the opening a bit and beefed up the sides w/ superglue for a tighter fit. I think it looks pretty cool up there, like armor. A little supergule to thicken the mounting posts lets it stay on in alt mode without screws, as long as you're not shaking it all around.

Hope you like!

I don't care too much about swapping the intakes, but I'm definitely interested in hands!

The stupid blade hands are lame. If they just allowed them to rock back to the forearms, this guy would be 1000X better.

Nice work. That tail mod looks cool too.