The Energon Pub

... so where possible I'm rigging my figs to give them permanent switches to activate their features. I already did the job on my GF Starscream a while back when I Fusionised him, now I've done the same for Skywarp and Brakedown.

Skywarp was a pretty basic mod; I shaved the sides of the key part to loosen the fit, and used a small piece of styrene to give a better surface fit for when I glued it onto the switch. After trimming off the main part of the key, leaving just the hexagonal nub, I filed it smooth and glued the key in with superglue. Now I can pop up his launcher in jet mode without the key.





Brakedown was a trickier one - there were a couple of things that I thought needed fixing. For one thing, his 'racing sabre' couldn't be activated in his car mode, since the key port was completely obscured by his body. For another, I thought the 'sabre' (which looked to me to be more of a ram) seemed kind of ridiculous in robot mode, as the way he held it made it look awkward to use.

To start with, I converted the sabre into a rifle by trimming the spike off the end and drilling out the end to simulate a gunbarrel.
Then came the tricky part - rigging the weapon so it could be deployed in both modes.

I made the same modifications to Brakedown's key as I had to Skywarp's, but this alone wouldn't do the job; the point of his backplate extended too far forward in vehicle mode, obstructing the weapon, and the switch on the weapon fell too low to be reachable without some sort of probe tool, which would have defeated the object of the exercise.
I trimmed and filed the point off the backplate till the switch fit into the gap. Then I built up the top of the switch with spare bits of styrene, fusing them into place and filing them to shape.

Brakedown's new vehicle mode


With gun deployed


Robot mode


Close-up of the modified gun


I've also done the key mod on Ransack, but I've got more work to do on him before I post it.

Good thing!
I'm not a big fan of those cyber keys either. Good to know I'm
not the only one. Good jobs on those mods!

(Out of this thread)
I got Breakdown last week. I then noticed how his head could make a
small Galvatron head....)
Back to thread...

I did the same thing for my character Tumble a while back. Its a nice easy little trick, I hate any part that doesn't fit in both modes, I lose things to easily.

Aah. I knew I'd seen someone do something like it before; it may have been you who gave me the idea to do Starscream in the first place.

And yeah, I noticed the Galvatron resemblance too. Might be interesting to see if anyone takes advantage of that; I don't have the inspiration for it myself.

I've not posted many Cyber Key fixes recently, mostly because the ones I've done (like Ransack, Evac and Crumplezone) were all basic Key-chopping jobbies, same as Skywarp. The others (Excellion and Override) developed into separate bashes in their own right.

But there've been a particular couple I'd wanted to fix for ages, but only yesterday got round to working out how... Sideways and Soundwave.


Sideways was the more complicated fix. The biggest problem was that he's basically Autobot by default; I needed a way to keep him in Decepticon mode without having to keep the mechanism forced in.
I wound up removing the spring from the slider and attaching a thumbswitch to it, so I could slide the switch forward to turn him into a Decepticon and trigger the blades, then slide it back to change him back to Autobot.
After taking the slider out, I attached a small piece of thick styrene to the back end, just long enough for the top of it to sit higher than the top of the cannon. Then using a diamond burr, I carved a slot in the cannon top, from the back through to the point where the front of the tab needed to stop.
After reassembling the cannon, I noticed that by sliding the switch forward, it only partially depressed the release mechanism for the blades, so I took the slider back out and padded it with some pieces of styrene, which I glued on and filed to shape.
Once I'd made sure the mechanism worked properly, I made a thumbswitch, again from thick styrene. To try and stop it from standing out as a blatant add-on, I decided to make it into a pair of tail-wings. Once that was glued on, I painted it black, gave it a few coats of varnish (because let's face it, it will have to deal with a lot of rubbing), and reinstalled it.

Voila!











I'd actually really like to work out how to make a second face for this guy; it seems off to have him switching factions, when he looks exactly the same for both of 'em. How he fools anyone, I'll never know.

Anywho... Soundwave was actually a bit easier, once I'd worked out how the switching mechanism worked. I was baffled by how the linear movement from the key activated the rotary movement of the door latch. Then I realised the key basically forced its way under the latch and pushed it round.
So, cut out the middleman, then. I made a lever using a strip of thick styrene (wondrous stuff), along with a little knob on the end (more for effect than anything), and glued this to the back of the switch (I use a very good superglue).
Then it was just a matter of shaving out some plastic from infront of the switch, so as to clear a path for as far as it needed to move. I just shaved a chunk out, tested it, shaved out a bit more, and tested and so on, until there was enough movement to pop the latch.
Again, paint and varnish and we're laughing...











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By the way, I don't think you've heard the last from Soundwave...

Nice mods.

I need to do that to my Sideways.

Cool, love to see how it turns out.
Actually, if you want I'll snap a couple of pics of the innards, to show what I did to it.