seti88

if the release differences are a few months apart, they should be annoucing the next release sometime around now? Is there another upcoming hobby/bandai show in the remaining months this year in JP?

Making it easy to maintain probably would be the last on arcadia's mind, but i would welcome some direction on that point from arcadia. Am not even sure if that would be possible to push through somehow to higher management.. Did Yamato make ease of maintenance a feature or more likely just a by-product of their engineering stand-point at that time? Or perhaps they designed something they could themselves take apart after it was assembled. If so, i would certainly welcome such a feature again.. sorry not too sure on that..i would think tho ur only option would be pushing it somehow (using a similar diameter needle or perhaps a circular brass tube https://www.hlj.com/product/ABEBT132/Sup used in modelling), as gripping it and pulling seems real difficult. Is it clear on the other end? Thats good to know. Is there a process to contact them or a list of what they can replace? Am not in HK but can arrange something if need be.

If they included an easy maintenance feature, I would thk that would be a game changer. Are there any other toys that do that? i would not want the durability of the toy to be affected in any way though.

and....he is up! vf-0a steve austin version! I did a little sanding on the plastic ball, so the metal socket closes more evenly at the ends. The ball ended up with straight corners at some parts...however it helped to fit into the socket easier... Broke the pins opening the thigh up though...just watch for the circled points below...the pin at the lower corner proved to be very annoying holding the halves together...difficult to get leverage while trying not to damage the paint too much.. There is a slight gap on the thigh as expected when closed but probably can be sealed better if i dabbed some glue on the broken pin joints + push the seperate thigh halves in on the metal pin better...for now its down to monitoring the durability, should it hold up then probably will do the closing up work better.. Yeti's guide was helpful enough so steve austin thanks Doc Yeti and also Doc noel for the tightening of the joints pointer! Arcadia's price is expensive cos it includes maintenance experience (sorry a lil dark humour there)! I wonder if they will release an open hatch version tho, would be interesting to see internals and mechanics...!

@saburo... the 0a looks looks silky smooth. gerwalk mode ftw!.. http://ameblo.jp/digitamin/entry-12066449444.html it was mentioned in translation that the skulls would be pad printed ie tampoed...not sure how accurate it is...

ohoh dont give me a reason to stalk mandarake now...

Plastic on metal provides better friction than metal on metal imho. I expect metal on metal will give you real smooth/floppy joints . In this 0a case anway, i thk its more a matter of ill fitting plastic bits that caused plastic to stick to metal and for sockets not to close tighter.. The tolerences for ball diameters were exceeded at a very important part increasing the impact of failure significantly... looks like figure skating valks on ice show... now that you summarised it, yea it looks like an accident waiting to happen! BTW, not to freak anyone out but it doesnt mean that all the valks would be affected. So please enjoy your valks responsibly

haha i like the fine print...

I thk the adhesive was meant to avoid the ball rattling in the metal socket or provide some form of pressure against the half metal ball. i have updated findings in the maintenance thread, http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=41401&page=2#entry1221873 as not everyone may be interested to read it here. The plastic ball certainly looks like ill fitting, it looks bigger than the metal half ball and i also had problems getting it to sit flush against the metal half ball.

this would be a continuation from http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=42180&page=55#entry1221859 on the vf-0a fix findings Evidence of bonding on the metal socket and plastic ball is seen by bare metal marks upon removal of plastic ball with metal socket. Looking at the surface of the ball certain areas the paint from the metal socket had stuck into the plastic causing rough spots on the ball. There also seem to be adhesive marks on the half metal ball portion of the hip bar which seem to suggest that a form of adhesive was used... I then proceeded to refit the plastic ball to the metal half ball. It seemed that the ball was not a best fit, altough i tried many many angles. I couldnt get the ball to sit flush against the metal ball portion, it seemed the hollowed out plastic ball was not deep enough to fit the protuting metal square of the metal hip. This pic was the tightest friction fit i could have gotten and there was a noticible gap between the surfaces of the metal hip and ball. All this lead me to believe an adhesive spillage affected the ball to stick to the socket. Likely, insufficient surface contact allowed access fluid to leak out into the surrounding ball/socket wall areas. Am not sure why adhesive was used, but it could be to provide sufficient push back to avoid loose joints when both the plastic ball and metal half were enclosed in the socket. A check with masking tape along the ridges of the socket seem to show the half plastic/metal ball being past the socket line. However as with yeti's pic above the socket is unable to fully close, since the diameter of the plastic ball also seems to be larger. You can tell from the pic that the plastic ball seems to be larger. After test closing it the socket still has a slight gap. Will see if i can sand paper the ball down to fit. The socket does seem to hold ok if i tighten the socket screws very very tightly, however that would seem back to square one and would like to do something to improve on the fit.. thats all for now...thanks for reading.....

mind boggling...then i realised they may have assembled the hip to the metal rod by dabbing a bit of bonding agent and pressing the 'completed closed leg' to the metal rod.... i dont thk this problem would happen if they bonded the plastic piece first to the rod (let it cure) and then closed up the leg. I couldnt see it as part of their process explanation, but quite literally thats one of the way to get overspill of bonding agent into the socket area... just like squishing a sandwhich together ur bound to get juice running out...

I guess i dont have surgeon hands or the patience and i went rambo on it. i couldnt quite tell where some of the pins where especially for the front of the thigh. Perhaps as further info, will mark it out once i got everything sorted out. now i got it revealed i can do the maintenance stuff like you said...

after few more tries... never tot i would go this far, at least to dissamble a valk. A new experience for me..and..upon examination of the metal socket, the plastic bit is absolutely bonded into the socket wall. No leeway to move at all..I tried giving it a few knocks but it doesnt seem to budge. Will have a look at it later again.....

*gently turn the thigh halves...* been stuck on it for half an hour.....time to rest....

The sight of the VF-1 on the runaway taking off always made a bad day good. and the song at the end of macross really had a melancholy affect on me... macross always has had that emotional hold on me up to this day .... Around that time too bulletin boards and yahoo ruled the web. The first things i tried to search for were 'macross' 'valkyrie' etc etc. Any sighting would drive me crazy! i so elated and would make sure i saved that image on my floppy thinking i got a hard to find treasure..heh... However that first anime pic always goes to my crush at the time nausicca...

I heard of appying future polish coats to increase the tightness or reduce the gaps between ball and socket. Would that work? in the vf-0a case, could it be the adhesive used to bond the plastic ball and metal also didnt have sufficient time to cure? I heard that plastics to metal need a long cure time. But i can see that if we didnt have the half/half solution, shearing of the rod from the plastic wouldnt even be a factor..

I suppose what am getting at is to prioritise 'quality/correct engineering' vs 'over-engineering'.

Yea thats seems more along the lines of a sturdy hip... I understand yamato folded, but since they didnt change the factory, it doesn't explain why they couldnt manufacture the same. like chronocidal mentioned...hard to fanthom how or why it can be forgetten...

In addition to the *test swoosh* i added *test guns/missiles firing* as well... yeah my laser seems to be straight also...

Minor error/issues that dont affect the overall playability (it is a toy after all!!) or i would say durability should be tolerable. Any toy manufacturer should look to really lock down potential areas of breakage. It boils down to overengineering. No point overengineering it if it breaks so easily. Thats what i loved abt my old VF toy. It cant pose like the modern ones with the legs etc, but hey it still transforms effortlessly after 20 odd years! sorry minor rant..back to surgery...

A full diecast metal ball hip joint would probably have been a better way to go. Not sure if it was a limitation of the factory unable to cast a ball joint or not, but i do hope it wasnt because of cost. Or was it because a metal ball joint would be loose after a while? I thk that could be rectified with plastic insert or something. Again barring the hip joint, everything else feels solid. * thrusters extended after trying it with drier hands but still considered tight..

Thanks yeti for the detailed guide, gonna try and give it a go! Ignacio all I can say is to be in a calm state when handling the hips. I was flustered getting it into gerwalk mode. Those shoulders just didn't seem like want to swing out and I pushed the darn legs too hard to get clearance.

sigh 0a left leg came off like yeti's... am PM'ing as to how to take the leg apart. That aside, does anyone have issues pulling the leg thrusters out again after pushing them back in? I cant pull them out no matter how hard i try..is there a technigue am missing?

quick someone photoshop it into a screengrab!!

dang it am revisiting this thread too often just to see pics....nice job