Mods for Iron Man (Neo-Classic Armor)

Ah, the armor variant a lot of people forgot about. 

It's already been 5 years since Iron Man 2, and I can still see remnants of the toyline in malls.
this one in particular really clogged hard.

Well it's one of my personal favorites, and after reading Doomquest and Legacy of Doom last new year's I went out and bought this dude again (I have 2 more).

One thing I could never accept though were the stupid shoulder joints they gave the figure. So I went and did a mod, which I think works out way better than my last 2 attempts.

It works on the same principle as the marvel legends version of this armor variant: the joint for the shoulder armor is placed on the shoulder itself, instead of the torso,

It's practical and it's remarkably simple too. 

The first step I did was to cut off the shoulder armor from its original joint, I glued down the remainder of that joint to the torso so it won't move around. Then I  drilled a 2mm hole into the middle of the shoulder joint and widened it with a ball-tipped grinder to accommodate the ball joint. 

Next was to install the actual ball joint (which I stole from another figure that didn't need them anymore) and bonded it to the shoulder armor with superglue and faith in a higher power.

It works wonders since the joint itself is a double ball-joint, and essentially there's a socket on the shoulder and on the underside of the armor so it's quite mobile. The result is that the arm can now move freely without the shoulder armor moving in an unnatural way, instead it follows the movement of the arm itself.

I guess the only thing left to do now is to clean the mod up a bit and repaint the figure better. If in any case you want to try this out but lack the joints, you can go find a 2mm diameter metal spring instead.

EDIT: Finished the repaint lol