|
|
Post by jedimasterthrash on Jun 9, 2013 11:43:54 GMT -5
www.collectiondx.com/gallery2/gallery/d/12878-10/Voltez6.jpgOn the top of the two towers on each leg, right under the chromey antenna, there is a little yellow button on each side. I have owned this toy for almost a year now, and I have still not figured out what those buttons are for! I can't find anything that appears to be actuated by them. I had a similar question on the volt lander www.collectiondx.com/gallery2/gallery/d/12877-10/Voltez5.jpgIs there anything special supposed to happen with the missile holes that are under the black flaps? None of the missiles seem particularly suited to fit into them, and you cannot close the flaps with missiles present, and there's no firing mechanism. Are those just supposed to be "missile pods" i.e. holes, or is a certain color of missile supposed to go in them? While I'm at it, 3rd questio, anyone know where I can get a repro treads? I have the original treads with mine, but they were removed from the rollers a decade or two ago, and have since "shrunk". The good thing is that they are both still on one piece. The bad thing is that they can never get back on the rollers without destroying. I've been toying with the idea of trying to make some lego treads but haven't found any pieces that really work yet.
|
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Ginrai on Jun 9, 2013 11:59:46 GMT -5
1. Pull up on the white towers and you can insert one of the small missiles into each slot and fire them.
2. The chrome drill missiles are made to fire from under those black covers on the lander.
3. Repro treads are available from overseas. They pop up from a guy selling repro popy and godaikin parts form time to time. Not that cheap. Kim Castro used to sell them as well but I think he was more expensive and I don't know if he had them made or if they were someone else's. you could also call Steve Agin but they will be very expensive.
All the features are described in the godaikin manual. Sometimes it's text and pictures, other times it is just in text form and you have to read to find out. Uploads aren't working for me at the moment otherwise I would post pics, as I actually have my 2 Voltes V sets out right now.
|
|
|
|
Post by jedimasterthrash on Jun 9, 2013 20:35:47 GMT -5
Well wuddyakno, the towers do rise! One of the towers is pretty tight on mine and when I was fiddling I probably assumed it didn't do anything rather than risk breaking it off
But I still don't see how those chrome drill missiles can fire from under the black covers. The drill missiles fire from the launcher which is on top of the lander. The due to the girth of the drill bit it is not possible to insert them into the dual launchers under the black cover. The small red/yellow missiles can fit, but there is no actual launcher mechanism or springs or push-release or anything that would indicate they fire.
When I was playing with the newly discovered tower missiles on the frigate, the left one didn't seem to work right, the missile kept getting stuck. Seemed like the spring had expanded so the missile could lodge into the spring rather than push it back. In the act of fiddling with it I yoinked out the spring. And thus began 2 hours of fixing. I had to disassemble the entire frigate to be able to reinsert the spring. I do this stuff a lot, I regularly fix the old toys I acquire. But it is dangerous. Especially for a piece of this value! If you strip a screw, you're screwed. There's some cheap bloody screws on toys these days. I had a KO man-o-war I wanted to fix (shave off some plastic to fix the bad QC so it would transform properly) and all 4 screws just stripped like butter so that put the kibosh on that. Or worse than stripping the screw, stripping the part the screw screws into, or in the case of screw pillars breaking one of those off. I did successfully repair and re-screw into a broken pillar I had once. And if you have a bad stripped insert you can do a one-time fix fill it up with superglue and screw back in, but don't expect to get it back out easily.
And there's a bad habit, especially on the voltes, of putting stickers over joint seams. I had actually given up when I encountered that on the frigate, but while fiddling they just made a clean slide off of of one side of the joint. A perfect sticker release on each side with no damage. I was amazed, and that enabled me to get the legs out so I could get them apart.
But the chrome thigh would not separate at the knee joint. I probably could have worked on it more but I was weary about wearing the blue metallic paint or chrome with too much effort. Luckily it was enough that I could pry open the frigate tops to get to the springs finally. I used pliers to reform the springs back to a tighter radius and then reinserted (took for every to finally locate the pin hole for the spring end), and then got it all back together.
While I was all up in there, I noticed the knee joint does in fact have movement and two locking positions. But given the most amount of torque I was willing to try I was unable to get it to bend. Do you know if it's safe to give this joint more torque, or is there a good risk of breakage? It's a chrome plastic round piece at the bottom of the thigh that locks into round tents in a heavy duty metal spring.
When my voltes arrived the head was broken in shipment due to poor packing by the seller. But I acquired another head that was in bad shape but had an in-tact face, and performed surgery to put the good head into my cruiser. Of course two of the screws in the crewzer are UNDER STICKERs argh but I was actually able to peel these up gently with tweezers with no damage. For some reason, the two blue plastic shafts that hold the head to the body appear to be of slightly different lengths or something. This new head has a slightly downward bed as a result (really it's that the wings/body section doesn't fold parallel, it ends up slightly bend in, so either you can't quite fit the body behind the voltes, or the head aims down a bit.
I did track one problem down to the metal pin for the blue shaft being slightly longer in one than the other, and the extra length caused it to sit up farther than the other, so I swapped pins. I can't really nail down the exact other difference though.
After that was done, I figured what the heck. I'll try to repair the shattered head anyway. I collected all the pieces pulled out the superglue and did a fairly good job. I even fixed enough of the broken pin shaft that it can still hold the pin and swivel with the body.
The right fist was also shattered in shipment, but I was able to superglue it back. Since there would be pressure from inserting the peg into the fist spring, I reinforced the inside with wooden pieces so that all the pressure against the peg would flow to the screw pipe rather than shear against the glued plastic. Unless you look real close can't even tell now.
|
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Ginrai on Jun 9, 2013 21:59:28 GMT -5
The manual specifically says and shows with photos that the drill missiles are the only weapons that fit under those covers. I will check on mine.
The head/crewzer could have definitely broke in shipping, however the fist is a different story. If you bought this MIB and it was in the tray, it was probably broken already, but if you bought the toy loose, it most likely broke from jostling around, whether it was in the fist port or not.
As far as your other questions I will check. You shouldn't have too much trouble with the joints but I will let you know what I find.
|
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Ginrai on Jun 9, 2013 22:12:11 GMT -5
The spots under the black cover fit two drill missiles side by side. The missiles do not go in all the way and do not lock in or fire. The cover just lays over them when they are in there. The manual says lift up the cover to insert the missiles and pull them out manually to remove them.
|
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Ginrai on Jun 9, 2013 22:16:08 GMT -5
The frigate legs at the hip can move back and forth. The knees however should only move/bend backward. You might be able to move them forward slightly, but just like you wouldn't/couldn't do that with your own knee, you shouldn't try to move the frigate knees forward.
|
|
|
|
Post by repairtechjon on Jun 10, 2013 11:18:46 GMT -5
It's fun finding all the little gimmicks isn't it?
That VoltesV neck/face is notorious crack spot. It can be fun to see inside the pieces when fixing.
Mike covered the gimmick questions, I'm just chiming in on the repro treads.
Venson Wang is the one who does them. He has a R-J name of Venson1969 or close to that. Search the member listing in alphabetical order and PM , or contact thru Facebook, he's been active on the toyboxdx page on FB.
|
|
|
|
Post by jedimasterthrash on Jun 10, 2013 22:11:26 GMT -5
Yeah it's just the normal backwards motion I'm curious above on the knee. It just seems like it's going to take so much torque that I'm going to break something to make it happen.
Mine was loose, but complete (except for the "string", the folding sword, and the 2nd lander clip. But I don't see what's so special about that original string compared to any other string, and it has the non-folding sword, and it turns out only one lander clip is ever used).
I was holding out for a while because I wanted that 2nd release japanese one that came with the little rubber monsters. But I finally gave up on that and grabbed a loose one. Hopefully someday I'll be able to get those little rubber monsters. Or I'll settle for my M.U.S.C.L.E.S. instead. Didn't come with any instructions. It was shipped put together into robot mode, wrapped twice in bubble wrap, and wedged diagonal into a box. Even though I'm sure it seemed sturdy, the problem is Voltes is about 80% metal and all that metal mass just ravaged the head and fist. It should have been packaged as separate ships wrapped and then placed in peanuts.
I previously had won 2 other voltes auctions and both turned out to be fraudulent. In fact since then I've been tracking this e-bayer. This same person from Prawet, Bangkok, Thailand has re-listed (under new 0-feedback accounts each time) the same fraudulent Voltes auction about 6 times (each approximate 3 months apart). It's a verbatim bit for bit copy each time (it is actually a copy of a legit auction from 2010). He always puts up a 2 day auction, in australian currency with location as thailand. Then uploads fake tracking to the winner. He takes his money, eventually the loser gets a refund from e-bay, so e-bay loses in the end.
I have the entire history of usernames, auction IDs, etc. I always call e-bay support to report the fraud. The first time they took it down right away. But the rest of the times they just ignore me. I even posted all the info on the e-bay forums and they pulled the post. Apparently I'm not allowed to help save e-bay and her members from fraud! Argh. The last time was just this April. I bet in July it'll show up a 7th time.
|
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Ginrai on Jun 10, 2013 22:28:23 GMT -5
What folding sword? Do you mean the one that breaks down into separate pieces? That one only came with the single packaged vehicles. All the DX box sets (popy and godaikin) came with two swords but they were both solid versions.
|
|
|
|
Post by venson1969 on Jul 17, 2013 10:44:05 GMT -5
|
|
