Friday Night Mods!

Continuing with the modifications that need to be done on the Asshimar kit, I've decided to address a few of the most crucial- loose fitting parts.

okay, since this kit had to conform with a standard set of polycaps and still needed to do a full transformation, a lot of the non-essential moving joints on this kit are done via plastic-on-plastic friction between parts. Now over time this will grind down the joint with every repositioning one may do, as evidenced by plastic dust accumulating in the socket (this was before bandai learned to use glossier plastics for these sorts of joints). So this particular entry shows some methods I tried to address this issue.

First of all, let's tackle the most obvious; the shoulder pads. the way these things are designed, with transformation in mind, the pegs are a bit smaller (3mm) and can wear down much easier every time you move them around, the steps I took included:

Removing the original joint with my sprue cutters.

Next, I smoothed the cuts out with a hobby knife and used a pushpin to mark the center of each peg I intend to revise.

I took my mini-drill and went at it, progressing from 1mm to 3mm holes on each side, to accomodate the new pegs.

Now the pegs, I took from the runners of the polycap sets I had on hand, taking care to choose the ones that were slightly above 3mm to ensure a nice tight fit.



After installing the new pegs and cutting them to length, I secured them in place using superglue. I opted to use the polycap runners as pegs because they would ensure a snug fit while at the same time wouldn't succumb to grinding itself into dust, rather it's tight but has a good amount of give to hold the shoulder pad in place regardless of whatever position it's in.




Now, after repeating the process on the other arm, I now have shoulderpads that will hold no matter how many times I move and adjust or transform them.

Wanting to resolve the same issue on the knees, I repeated the process but opted to use more rigid 3mm clear plastic beams (flexible type) they have the same amount of give as the polycap pegs, but can support much more weight.




Seeing as the Asshimar is mainly a top-heavy kit, this choice of tightening the knee parts proved very beneficial, it made the kit more stable and gave me more freedom to do challenging poses like balancing, or just getting a more dynamic looking standing pose.

Anyway that's all for now, there's way more work to be done on this thing but at least the issues affecting playability have been resolved. I seriously can't wait until I paint this thing.