Pre-emptive DIY fix for knurled shoulder hinge pins?

[anime52k8]

no need my friend, if you take a picture of them with a nikon camera first thing, they won't break. See, when I got my roy 1s all I had was a panasonic point and shoot and what happened? Shoulder broke. All the other ones I have I got post Nikon D90 and they haven't broken, so it's obvious, Nikon saves lives while panasonic somehow causes catastrophic autism inducing shoulder failures.

It's a 100% correlation so it must be true.

interesting... will nikon point and shoots work or does it have to be an SLR? All I have are a couple coolpix point and shoots.

Edited February 25, 2010 by anime52k8

[ChristopherB]

Hello,

I recommended checking each Yamato VF-1 V2 as soon as possible to determine what type of shoulder pin it has (smooth or knurled), and if knurled removing it and replacing it with a smooth one.

Today I received a weathered VF-1S, and tonight I have my tools ready to take it apart. My motto is "Better safe, than sorry."

It's funny and all to make light of things by intentionally being melodramatic/overacting by associating broken shoulders with global warming, etc.

However, it's getting old (beating a dead horse) in my opinion and is also insensitive to the MW members who have broken valkyries and are upset about. Some people aren't as well off as others and can't afford to buy very many collectibles.

When they find that their hard earned money bought them a broken Yamato, it must be pretty frustrating.

Just because you have had only one or none break, that does not mitigate their loss.

My regards to anyone who owns a broken Yamato,

Christopher

[sidearmsalpha]

If you have a VF-1S Roy or a VF-1A Hikaru, it's inevitable that one or both shoulder hinges will crack even if you don't ever take them out of the box it seems. I had 2 VF-1A Hikarus that were never taken out of the box with the shoulders cracked when I inspected them. I decided to have my friend use his Dremel to sand down the slight knurling on the VF-1S Hikaru because I would rather be safe than sorry, and I only ordered so many of the replacement hinges for the VF-1A's, VF-1S Roy, and a VF-1J Hikaru.

I even busted one of those pieces on the top of one of the intakes on one of my VF-1A Hikarus. It's the trapezoid-shaped hump that helps to keep the leg secure in fighter mode. The leg still holds because of the swing bar clip and the attachment on the back of the lower leg, but you can see a slight gap where the intake part meets up with the bottom of the chest plate. Never did that on a 1/48.

[derex3592]

Reading this thread day in and day out, just makes me SO happy that I am going to finally be taking all my Valks out of storage in the next 2-3 weeks to put on permanent display. I just can't WAIT to find out how many exploding shoulders I might find! Awesome!! It will be such as exciting time!! Just like x-mas!!

[eugimon]

What we're pointing out is two things.

One, the massive amount of hyperbole when talking about "exploding shoulders" and the people running around telling everyone, "THEY WILL BREAK!"

and two, the lack of critical thinking, "I did this so it must have fixed it". You're telling us to prove a negative, if it makes you feel better go ahead. But for someone who lacks modeling experience, punching out pins and popping them back in may easily cause more harm than good.

Why take the risk if there's no sign of damage? I've had people screaming that my roy's shoulders were going to explode any minute now, that was months ago. Similarly that my hikaru 1s and hikaru 1j and whichever other ones were going to explode, just fall apart sitting in boxes, etc etc, hasn't happened. No sign of stress marks, cracks, etc and I regularly pose and transform my figures.

So, we don't even have a strong correlation that knurled pins = busted shoulders but we're telling people to punch them out and "fix them"?

Anyways, I'm out, good luck with voodoo logic. Last night I wished it would stop raining today so my kid could go play soccer, and look, it stopped raining, guess that means I control the weather, huh?

[Vifam7]

Haven't we been through this before?

Those who want to replace or file down the pins can. If they don't want to that's fine too.

Edited February 24, 2010 by Vifam7

[CF18]

Remember Graham talked with Yamato and they will make shoulder replacement parts available to us somehow. Still no news on that huh?

[David Hingtgen]

There's been tons of news on that: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...st&p=828161

[bluemax151]

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

There's way too many variables to be easily accounted for. Fact of the matter though is the pins that have "knurlining" have raised portions of the surface that put additional pressure on what is obviously thin pieces of plastic. If someone wants to do a double blind study on yamato exploding shoulders and prove their fragility to be baseless rumor I'm all for that but I'd rather be safe than sorry in the mean time.

[ChristopherB]

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

There's way too many variables to be easily accounted for. Fact of the matter though is the pins that have "knurlining" have raised portions of the surface that put additional pressure on what is obviously thin pieces of plastic. If someone wants to do a double blind study on yamato exploding shoulders and prove their fragility to be baseless rumor I'm all for that but I'd rather be safe than sorry in the mean time.

Bluemax,

Very well said my friend. Likewise:

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Benjamin Franklin

Modeling experience is not a prerequisite (althought it certainly can't hurt), and the lack thereof shouldn't be a deterrent to anyone considering inspecting or replacing a Yamato shoulder pin.

Familiarity with something you own can only be a good thing, as it would not breed contempt in an inanimate object such as a valkyrie. Ha, ha Just a little play on words.

Sincerely,

Christopher

[GU-11]

Great. Now I'm basically tossing coins in the air, trying to decide whether or not to attempt a DIY fix.

Guess I'll just give it a try and see if it's easy enough; if it takes more force than I'm comfortable with to extract the hinge pin, I'll just stop before risking any damage.

Oh, well....

In any case, I really appreciate the replies. Thanks!

Edited February 26, 2010 by GU-11

[BlueMax]

Great. Now I'm basically tossing coins in the air, trying to decide whether or not to attempt a DIY fix.

Guess I'll just give it a try and see if it's easy enough; if it takes more force than I'm comfortable with to extract the hinge pin, I'll just stop before risking any damage.

Oh, well....

In any case, I really appreciate the replies. Thanks!

Hy GU-11, I've finally managed to find this post by a fellow forum member vf2ss: I think this should be especially helpful to you.

Hi Guys,

I recently had to perform shoulder surgery on 2 Valks, so I decided to take some photos and try to document a bit of the process. Hopefully these photos might help someone needing a visual reference. Sorry if a couple of the photos are not well focused, I was using my friend's iPhone camera with which I am not familiar...

One thing I forgot to mention in the photo text is to let the lubricant soak in for at least 10 minutes. Also, be careful how much of the knurling you file away, I managed to get one shoulder with just the right amount of tightness, but the other shoulder is somewhat loose. Hopefully, if I apply some nail polish it will help.

[sidearmsalpha]

Yeah, he fixed all of mine so far. The method works great. He even came up with a fix for the ones that had cracked hinges by using a baking soda/Krazy Glue solution that he looked up online, and it seems to be working. One VF-1A Hikaru that I transform all the time hasn't gotten worse.

[m0n5t3r]

Great. Now I'm basically tossing coins in the air, trying to decide whether or not to attempt a DIY fix.

just make sure you lubricate it enough that the oil has seeped into the hole where the knurling is. there's a huge difference between trying to push out a pin w/ knurling w/out oiling it up first vs. w/ oil (and also a pin w/out knurling is easy as pie to push out).

the fact remains that whatever the percentage of cracked/broken hinges there are for the side of the hinge w/ the knurled part of the pin...

- part of the hinge w/ the smooth part of the pin for the ones w/ knurling = 0 breakages

- hinges w/ totally smooth pins = 0 breakages

if it keeps bugging you and you just can't let it be, just try it out...

[GU-11]

BlueMax, you're a godsend!

sidearmsalpha and M0n5t3r, thanks for the additional info!

I've only seen Armor-All at my local hardware store; is that okay as a lubricant?

[sidearmsalpha]

BlueMax, you're a godsend!

sidearmsalpha and M0n5t3r, thanks for the additional info!

I've only seen Armor-All at my local hardware store; is that okay as a lubricant?

I forget the brand of oil he bought, but I don't think it was Armor-All. The brand you see in the picture is one he bought before that he couldn't find, so we went to a local drugstore (a CVS Pharmacy store), and he bought a little container of oil, but the brand escapes me. I'll ask him later today and have him comment here.

[m0n5t3r]

...is that okay as a lubricant?

this'll do...

[BlueMax]

No worries M8! I think most lubricating oils should be ok, as long as they are properly cleansed after you've done what you need to do with the shoulders.

[GU-11]

Thanks, all! Baby oil should be easy enough to find.