A while back I picked up a custom Alternators Hoist, made from an Alt Optimus Prime with the crane section from an Energon Landmine in the bed. He has a G1 Hoist head w/ scanner-thing, and is painted a nice shade of Hoist Green. It was somewhat incomplete, as the crane assembly was just sitting in the bed, and the wings weren’t securely attached in robot mode or stored in alt. Still, a nice piece with potential.
I finally got around to "finishing" him. I say that in quotes because I have the bad habit of taking projects like this to about 90-95% and stopping. In this case, though, It's because he needs some repainting, because a chunks of his paint peeled off as I was manipulating him during the mods, and I am helpless at painting.
Regardless, here's what I finished up with:
The crane's base can swivel, so you can put the crane arm further back or forward, depending on the job:
Bot mode; the hand can be replaced with the little cannon-thing:
Here's what I did myself:
-Attached the crane in both modes. For the alt mode, I installed a pair of pegs in the floor of the bed, which mate with holes in the bottom of the crane assembly. I mounted the crane on his robot-mode back with a small pair of hooks that hang onto the edge of the back panel (the windshield). It just hangs there, so it's not secure, but it's all I could come up with without spending a lot more time on it.
-The wings drop into the space between the crane and the front of the bed in alt mode, but I might try to put them up on top like G1 Hoist. For robot mode, they peg (rather cleverly, I think) into existing holes on the top edge of the backpack, in roughly the same location as G1. They are pretty long, though, I might shorten them up.
-Mounted Alt Hound’s wheels and tires (really happy with how they look!). I picked up a loose set of them, and they’re the same overall size as Prime’s, so it was pretty straightforward. The axle is smaller than Hounds, so I had to make a sleeve (from the corrugated part of a bendy straw!) to fill in the gap.
Here's the rest of what I want to do:
-“Un-pimp” the alt mode. It’s a sport truck, which to me doesn’t suit Hoist very much, so in addition to the more workaday wheels from Hound, I removed the rear wing, and plan to mod the front end to make it look more plain.
-Add a tow truck light bar and other details. I’ll have to find a 1/24th scale truck to take one from, and I will scavenge whatever else might look good, like chrome mirrors, toolboxes, etc. Maybe add some fake diamond plate.
-G1 Hoist-style graphics, the black/yellow hash marks down the side. These I’ll have to make myself, should be fun, in the same way that defusing a bomb might be: could go well, could be awful.
After all that, I'll have to fix the paint, which I am not looking forward to. I'll try to find some brush paint and slap it on, I'm hopeless with a spray can. It would need to be painted with a flex agent mixed in, really.
Your thoughts and comments/suggestions, please!
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