Omega "Will Be" Supreme again

Posted on February 27, 2005 1:51 PM | Permalink

So several months ago back in late Summer or early Autumn Mr. T. found a fairly decent G1 Omega Supreme in the garage of a house he bought.

Omega eventually made it to the Attic of Love� and as I started to take him apart to assess his condition.

This then is the story of the my first journey into the beginnings of repair to make this figure display-ready.

Omega's floppy claw syndromeFirst off... he's got FCS, or what I like to call "Floppy Claw" Syndrome".

Now this isn't a slight on the masculinity of everyone's favorite last line of defense for the Autobots. It is just reality with a 20 year old plastic toy that probably made some kid pretty happy back in the 1985 as evidenced by his wear and tear. (And of course he makes me extremely happy now!!!)

Actually this Omega isn't in all that bad of shape and I'll was able to repair and minimize the Floppy Claw Syndrome with a little tender love, care, a little toxic toluene, and Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails nail polish.

omega's plastic clip tramaWith the screws removed it was very easy to disassemble the claw and arm/rocket housing. With all the pieces separated the trauma on this Omega is easily noticeable.

The 3 plastic peg/clips that lock into ridges on the claw had major plastic stress on them from the constant opening and closing of the claws. In fact, one small plastic tab was even fully broken off.

I began by reattaching the broken clip with glue. I then put a layer of glue over the areas that were heavily stressed on both the top and bottom of the plastic ring piece for added strength and to give the whole clip flexibility in case the actual glued part came off again. (At least it can't fall out of the arm/rocket.)

Eventually I put 2 more coats of clue to ensure a new layer would form and I also dabbed clue into the small joint areas where the orange claw clips. This will make the whole joint tighter.

nail polish works wondersNext I went to work on the organge claw parts themselves.

I completely cleaned them of oil (Yeah... there was a weird oily secretion in this claw arm. No idea why.) and lightly sanded the plastic.

I then applied several coats of nail polish to both the parts that fall into the joints I glued on the ring earlier as well as the ridged side that "clicks" along the clips on the plastic ring. (The piece that had broken off is one of the bits that fits into the ridge and give the claw a controlled range of motion.)

the glue and nail polish make for a tight fitOnce everything was tried I applied second and third coats to all pieces and also added a bit more glue to the joints to form a more solid piece.

Now really I should have used an expoxy or some form of polymer resin to do this but my goal here isn't to really repair the toy so that it can constantly be transformed. I just want to repair the piece so that it stays displayed like I want it which is basically with the claw open in robot mode or fully apart for rocket mode.

reassemblage!With all liquids and glues fully dried I started reassembling the pieces.

The claws were inserted back into the ring piece and have full range of motion. Since I built up layers of clue the whole assembly didn't have much room to float so when I put the main screw back in everything was very tight.

Now the plastic clips that had broke have some flexibility due to the various layers of glue. However, they definitely won't take a lot of abuse which is fine.

Hell, without finding a mint ring and making a mold of it and pouring a new resin piece I seriously doubt one could completely repair this piece. While the thinness of the plastic isn't inherently a design flaw it most definitely is a poor choice of thickness for this specific range of motion. But this is a toy so other than a few losers like myself... who really cares.

I continued to assemble the outer casings that make basically make up Omega's forearm in bot mode and rocket stage in base mode.

Everything went back together perfectly but with a much tighter assemblage than before.

no more floppy claw syndrome!Voila! No more Floppy Claw" Syndrome syndrome!

The whole assembled claw/forearm is now solid and can be used to display Omega grasping a Decepticon or just "reaching" to crush something.

When the top part of the rocket (Omega's other forearm/laser) is connected the whole rocket now can stand vertically without any problems on the claw base.

And since I'm such a loser I even made a quicktime movie of Omega's full rocket mode sans Floppy Claw Syndrome so you can all bask in the glory that is my new Transformer repair skills.

Because this blog serves no real purpose anymore I think I'll also throw these fun and exciting Robot Repair Shop entries up so you can all wallow in the depths of my lameness with me.

And don't you be thinking that I can't get any worse.

I still haven't figured out how to ask/convince/beg Trixter to teach me how to dye plastic.

Categories: old content

4 Comments

You are a very very sick puppy. I mean i would never take apart a transformer a put it back togethor. Well save Reflector to tighten the joins and i did manage to merge 2 G1 jazzs into one.

How is the condition of the rest of the Omega Supreme?

Um, Omega looking like a dildo was the last thing on my mind. No, really. The idea that maybe, just maybe, you should take Hoont for a long, long, oh so long walk outdoors did cross my mind, but never the idea of your toy resembling sexual proclivities.

Marv: Well I'm working on 2 at present. The one I got at OTFCC is beautiful and complete and now has working electronics.

The one that was found in a garage is missing some yellow clips (as expected) one leg/track piece, and is a little scratched up but overall in good shape.

I'm basically looking at pieces/parts on each and assembling one for display from those. The remaining one will be in base mode.

---

Jhames: I don't like to take Hensley for walks around this neighborhood.

We used to go out nightly for several years and would often go to the park but since I bought this house we don't go.

I don't consider this neighborhood good for dogs, especially smaller ones.

There's a lot of glass that seems to constantly be in the streets and there are just too many vehicles since we are near the main Cowtown street and Ohio State University.

hi!

a friend has a omega supreme , and he stored 20 years with batteries on, so when he opened now, it was full of corrosion and it didn´t walk

is possible to "bring it life" again?

regards!

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