The Energon Pub

Thanks to Flix and his tutorial on how he fixed his blackout! This post is both word and picture heavy so enjoy! If you want your Blackout/Grindor to look more movie accurate, and less tripod, check out Flix's post or read what I did and try it out. If you don't wanna read all the details of what I did, just skip to the pictures! Thanks, and please do comment!

Of my customization posts, this one probably had the most things done to it.
*-Shoulders were lowered by angling down entire panel that arms are attached to, held in place with original rectangular peg from chest and new slots cut out to fit them.
*-rotor spinning gimmick removed, hole filled in.
*-rear tail section cut from main tail, added peg to peg back in to tail in copter mode, drilled hole on bottom to attach to the main tail when in robot mode. The triangular "support" piece on the tail wing was removed as it looked bad and was useless
*-Scorponok's cage was hacked and remolded to make Helicopter mode look more accurate, he can still sit in the cage with his tail sticking out though.
*-The bulby top part the rear rotor was attached to was removed as the real Pave Low does not have this. Added screw to tail rotor to act as a plug/something for magnet to hold onto, drilled hole in tail for rotor to plug into in copter mode.
*-Magnet added to left arm for rear tail rotor to attach to to form arm blades.
*-arm cannon came from a scout class dune runner guy's shoulder cannons.
*-Made a balljoint for the neck using a MG Gundam hand for the balljoint/peg, shaved some plastic off the back of the head so Blackout can look up/tilt his head.
*-Pegs above the fuel tanks were removed since the backpack blade chainsaw gimmick that plugs into them is retarded and never going to be used. Visible screws/holes were filled in.

For the paint: flat black over everything, then mixed flat grey, deep sea blue and a little gunmetal for the helicopter parts and drybrushed gunmetal/silver for robot parts. Gloss black for windows then a coat of Satin clear coat over everything (which i accidentally overdid on some parts)

Ok... now the pictures!











And a night shot with a lamp from above lighting up his eyes...oooOoOo scary. Plus, dinosaur curtains in the background.

pure bad ass dude! i love how u used dune runners gun!

Good work. I don't like the shoulder mod as it limits shoulder movement but you've done a good job.

Mykltron wrote:Good work. I don't like the shoulder mod as it limits shoulder movement but you've done a good job.

Actually, the shoulder mod lowers the whole arm/side of helicopter unit as one piece. The actual arm/shoulder is unmodded, but the helicopter part that they are attached to that pegs into the side of the chest was lowered so that Blackout's head isn't completely covered.


Out of box Blackout has no peripheral vision and his arms sit above his head. I lowered the whole section
so his shoulders are at a more natural location and he isn't blinded by his helicopter parts when he looks right or left. As you can see in my custom picture, the shoulders/arms are still untouched in respect to helicopter sides.

Yeah, I know exactly what the shoulder mod does. The arms don't sit above the head on the original figure, as can be seen here. The reason I say it limits his shoulder articulation is because, unmodded, he can raise his arms forward just less than 90° (not quite parallel to the ground) but after the mod he can only raise them about 45° as the 'wings' of the copter bind on the blue shoulder arch.

You said you gave him a ball joint neck. I can't really see additional head movement in the pics you've given us but how did you remove his head? Do you have to take his body apart?

Mykltron wrote:You said you gave him a ball joint neck. I can't really see additional head movement in the pics you've given us but how did you remove his head? Do you have to take his body apart?

Oh I see, that's what you meant. I suppose it does limit it slightly, but I always pose mine in some sort of leaning action pose, so I didn't notice that part. For the head, the light piping was glued on, covering the screw that you need to remove to take the head off, as i was trying to pry it off, I accidentally snapped off the peg that holds the head (which worked out just fine for me). I was then able to just rip the two head pieces apart, bore out the inside, and drilled a small hole in the chest and embedded/glued a ball joint with peg from a MG Gundam hand. The head can only tilt up a few degrees, but it makes a big difference in the way I pose my Blackout, since those few degrees is the difference from looking down at the ground and looking at some unseen enemy in front of him. You could probably get a lot more tilt out of it if you use a longer peg for the ball joint, but then his head would stick out more in copter mode, or you could bore away some of the plastic in his chest behind his head (since you can't see that part anyways in any mode).

Sounds like just snapping the head off is easier than prying out the piping! If you set the ball joint further back, rather than in the middle of the head you'll get better movement. If you look at ball joint necked figures you'll see how it's done. Figures like MP Prime, MP Grimlock, MP Seekers. Any figure that can actually look straight up will be like that.