The Energon Pub

I wouldn't put oil or heat. It looks fine to me. I've heated up with a blowdryer the bottom torso of my armada unicron. I was able to get off much of the plastic stress marks it had but I ended up bending a bit of the thinner lining of its plastic next to it.

Not really sure about the size of the pieces, but casting isnt too hard as long as you dont try to rush the process. I've made molds with a product called Smooth-On, and it works pretty well. It would cost you about a hundo to get all the materials you would need to do it yourself. Maybe get some gold colored spray paint that naturally bonds to plastic. Get some lego blocks to make the perimeter of your mold. A release spray is something that always helps too.

bionic_radical wrote:Not really sure about the size of the pieces, but casting isnt too hard as long as you dont try to rush the process. I've made molds with a product called Smooth-On, and it works pretty well. It would cost you about a hundo to get all the materials you would need to do it yourself. Maybe get some gold colored spray paint that naturally bonds to plastic. Get some lego blocks to make the perimeter of your mold. A release spray is something that always helps too.

This isn't a route I want to go. Black Zarak is a very expensive figure in the condition I purchased it in (which I paid for by selling duplicates and 3rd party products on eBay). I don't paint or do any customizations myself. It's just not my forte. I take photographs of Transformers toys and am a website/PHP developer/MySQL dba. That is where my expertise lies. I would rather pay someone an appropriate sum of money to do this properly for me and to my expectations. This is way too expensive of a toy to figure out how to correctly and properly do anything of this nature between now and the end of this year. I don't want Black Zarak to look amateurish when it's done. I want it to awe all of you who look at the gallery and give the world an amazing 200+ image gallery of this beautiful toy.

Congrats on the rare bot, but for gold plastic, you pretty much sign the toy's death warrant by touching it at all.

actually, it will probably break over time without you touching it. I know everyone is trying to come up with some magic solution, but with all the GPS figures from the 80s toy lines, someone would have already found the answer if it existed.

some things just cant stay intact forever. I had a skyquake MISB that literally fell apart in the box, with no human interaction whatsoever. I had a G2 Pyro I bought MISB disintegrate on the first transformation, sounded like a coffee grinder.

you mentioned not touching it wasnt an option, how about a modified gallery of the toy in the styrofoam, showcasing the box, insert and toy in the insert? you have done this before I think, with uncirculated figures that couldnt be unsealed due to their rarity.

Seibertron wrote:

bionic_radical wrote:Not really sure about the size of the pieces, but casting isnt too hard as long as you dont try to rush the process. I've made molds with a product called Smooth-On, and it works pretty well. It would cost you about a hundo to get all the materials you would need to do it yourself. Maybe get some gold colored spray paint that naturally bonds to plastic. Get some lego blocks to make the perimeter of your mold. A release spray is something that always helps too.

This isn't a route I want to go. Black Zarak is a very expensive figure in the condition I purchased it in (which I paid for by selling duplicates and 3rd party products on eBay). I don't paint or do any customizations myself. It's just not my forte. I take photographs of Transformers toys and am a website/PHP developer/MySQL dba. That is where my expertise lies. I would rather pay someone an appropriate sum of money to do this properly for me and to my expectations. This is way too expensive of a toy to figure out how to correctly and properly do anything of this nature between now and the end of this year. I don't want Black Zarak to look amateurish when it's done. I want it to awe all of you who look at the gallery and give the world an amazing 200+ image gallery of this beautiful toy.

Ask either Venksta or this guy here
http://www.facebook.com/bellyboy.repro
Both are awesome when it comes to casting parts and Bellyboy specialises in reproducing parts, I'm sure if you donated the needed Skorponok he'll recast the parts in gold plastic-ish resin.

Boss man I dont think anyone would call you out for not messing with the figure at all. Being as rare and Grail-ish as it is, I think it's a museum peice I'd be terrified to even look at it wrong LOL

Maybe contact frenzy rumble or even check out the Procustomizers.com forums. Get enough of the right minds together and something good might happen

I'd just get a Scorponok, take the parts off of him that would be gold on Black Zarak and have someone paint them to match (one of the many fine customizers mentioned previously in this thread). The only issue will be actually removing the gold parts without damaging them and then replacing them when the galleries are complete (or you could just leave the feaux parts in place, especially if you don't want to worry about him breaking).

Lots of replies that I need to make in this topic! I'll get to that later tonight when I'm not working.

In the meantime, Black Zarak just arrived about thirty minutes ago. I just finished packing him back up and putting the box back in its slip sleeve cover that the store provided me with. The box has a slight tear in the upper right hand corner, which I didn't notice, but I'm not the least bit bummed about that. As many of you might remember, I lost tons of boxes for MIB toys earlier this year and while I would be very bummed if something disastrous happened to the boxes for either Grand Maximus and Black Zarak, it is the condition of the toys themselves that concerns me the most. And on that note ...

Black Zarak, as far as I can tell, is flawless. There are NO broken gold pieces on him miraculously. I took out the following pieces to inspect them ... the large gold shield, the fast track repaint, the Lord Zarak repaint, the large gun, and the baggie of small parts.

I was expecting that the shield's peg hole would be damaged (the shield is collapsed into its tower transformation from the factory in the package). However, the shield transformed just fine ... no resistance whatsoever, and the peg and peg hole were both 100% intact.

I inspected the Fast Track repaint ... there are two spots on his legs where there are lines in the gold plastic, both ripe to shatter when I transform him for the first time (I'm planning on letting the figure soak in some type of lubricant for an hour or so before I transform it and after I've taken photos of it in vehicle mode. One of the arms in the baggie for the Fast Track repaint is holding one of its small guns. Not sure if the gun will be able to come out or if I should just leave it in the hand. My concern is that if I leave it in the hand that the hand could snap/break/shatter while in storage somehow. Just something to think about.

The rest of the small pieces look perfect ... no damaged pieces.

The large gun finally came out after I slowly pulled it out of the package. It was a really tight fit and I was concerned that if I put too much pressure on the gun that the gold plastic peg on the right hand side of the gun would shatter. Fortunately, nothing catastrophic happened during this process.

I inspected the Lord Zarak headmaster repaint. The toy's arms look fine. I'm less concerned about this piece than anything because I have the reproduction head. I plan on using the repro head in the gallery after doing some comparison shots of the original next to the repro. I do not currently plan on transforming it because I should be able to do all of the comparison shots I need/want without attempting to transform this figure. The flap that goes over the larger robot's face is in the up position so you can see its face just fine without moving any parts.

I'm about to head out to the post office right now to drop off 8 more packages from stuff I sold on eBay since yesterday afternoon. I'm going to stop at ACE Hardware to see if they have any lubricants that they would recommend for use on toy plastics.

The famous words of Ben Parker keep coming to mind ... "With great power, comes great responsibility." I know there can't be that many intact Black Zaraks out there. I had a feeling while handling this toy today like a Paleontologist would have when handling fossiles or Egyptian artifacts.

Oh, man. Good success with him.

I bought a can of ACE Lub-E. When I came home, I pulled out an extra Pretender Roadblock to test this stuff on. I have two Roadblocks. One has an inner robot that has a small chip that broke out of its upper arm, the other one that I have MIB has a damaged hand.



I inspected the Roadblock robot to see what was potentially a severe problem on that toy. One of the gold plastic wheels wouldn't turn and one of the arms wouldn't rotate. The other arm had limited movement before it reached a point where it wouldn't rotate/turn any further and would also sustain gold plastic damage from too much pressure. The feet also wouldn't move from their transformed position to their forward facing robot feet position. All of these symptoms are typical of toys that have gold plastic.

I submerged the figure in the ACE Lub-E in a small container for a few minutes. After taking out the figure, I was able to move both feet (with a little resistance), turn the wheel freely that wouldn't turn before, and move the arm that wouldn't move just as much as the other arm would move. The arm that moved before now moves very freely though it still feels like it meets resistance the further I turn the arm. I'm content with the arms moving as much as they do now because at least I would be able to pose the figure with its arms at its sides and in an attack pose with guns blazing in a future gallery of this figure.

I would consider this small trial a HUGE success at loosening up gold parts so that the parts can move more freely, which will help reduce the risk of a catastrophic gold plastic syndrome event. I really want to try this on Black Zarak's feet but I think I'll have to wait to do that so that I can take pictures of it in scorpion mode first prior to attempting to transform it. I have an extra G2 Slingshot that I would like to try this on as well to see if it loosens up his parts as well. BW Neo Randy with various shattered parts ... I'm looking at experimenting on you as well!

And this, my friends, is why "there's nothing you can do for gold plastic" is a bunch of bull. This doesn't fix how fragile gold plastic is, but it makes the parts easier to move to reduce the risk that they won't break under pressure from transforming a Transformers toy made of gold plastic.

I'm glad the lubricant is working, but you should monitor Roadblock for a few weeks to ensure there are no long term effects from it before trying it out on BZ. I think using a junker Scorponok to have a company create repro parts may be a good bet, but like a previous poster, I'm worried about removing the gold parts from BZ.

Final option: collect some cash from all of us to fund real research from a polymer specialist, and see what they have to say. I'm sure there is a company or university that would tackle it as a research project. Science.

Razorclaw0000 wrote:I'm glad the lubricant is working, but you should monitor Roadblock for a few weeks to ensure there are no long term effects from it before trying it out on BZ. I think using a junker Scorponok to have a company create repro parts may be a good bet, but like a previous poster, I'm worried about removing the gold parts from BZ.

Final option: collect some cash from all of us to fund real research from a polymer specialist, and see what they have to say. I'm sure there is a company or university that would tackle it as a research project. Science.

The lubricant says on the can that it is safe for plastics and rubber. I've used WD-40 for years on my Transformers and have never noticed any problems. Has anyone used WD-40 and experienced any ill-effects? If so, what happens?

Roadblock is still soaking in the fluid in a small container. I'll check on him in a few hours after I put my daughter to bed.

It seems as though you're applying liquid ball bearings between the pieces in motion, rather than making them more maluable. When casting with smooth cast, you mix two liquids of equal portion to make the plastic. One has the viscosity of baby oil, the other, pancake syrup. Too much of one will make the end result brittle, while too little will make the end result a sticky, gummy mess. Perhaps if one of these were to be brought to a boil, and the test piece dipped as though you were dyeing plastic, the broken bonds could be repaired. I need to find my old g2 slinger...

It's gonna sound really weird, but the only two problems I had w/ my Black Zarak's gold plastic was the connector on the Headmaster's shoulder and on the hinge in the middle of the large gold claw. As far as the gold plastic on the main body goes, I never had even a minor issue.

Professor Smooth wrote:It's gonna sound really weird, but the only two problems I had w/ my Black Zarak's gold plastic was the connector on the Headmaster's shoulder and on the hinge in the middle of the large gold claw. As far as the gold plastic on the main body goes, I never had even a minor issue.

What about the Black Roritchi (Fast Track mold) or the Scorponok headmaster unit (Lord Zarak mold)?

Professor Smooth wrote:connector on the Headmaster's shoulder

Ah, it helps if I actually comprehend what you wrote before asking more questions. The arms seem to be a problem for just about everyone on this thing. Curious about the Black Roritchi figure that you had though.

Seibertron wrote:
What about the Black Roritchi (Fast Track mold)?

Since Black Rorichi is almost entirely gold plastic, you're going to want to be extremely careful. The wheels might come off if your set it down too hard. That lubricant will probably come in handy when attaching the arms for the first time and also when you pose it holding its weapon.

crazy idea to be taken seriously or laughed at, clear coat the the plastic to make a protective shell... probably would never work though.

congrats on the two purchases
good luck with the photos
a 200+ picture set will be effin awesome!

in relation to wear on TFs does anypony know how to prevent chrome wear, I looked in the forums but couldn,t find an answer.

congrats on getting the black zarak masterforce toy. it's a amazing toy with awesome retooled parts like the new head sculpt. the color scheme is also leaps & bounds more beautiful than the 1987 scorponok toy colors.

Seibertron wrote:According to the very thread that you guys are linking to, Darkov is no longer a viable option unfortunately. Hopefully someone else can help me with reproducing Black Zarak parts, painting Scorponok parts to look like gold plastic, or gold chroming Scorponok parts for use on Black Zarak.

Sorry to bump up this topic again, but it seems Darkov IS actually still making BZ sets!
Please see this thread on TFW2005.com for more information.


Click picture for link to Darkov's Facebook page...