Acroray need help on a Classic Micronaut Fix

[Drain]

AcroRay, I have a vintage SpaceGlider that I got recently, but needs to have his wore O-ring replaced, it is wore out bad but not broke. I know its torso isn't held together by a screw like the plastic one. How can you get it apart. Also, the only replacement O-ring I have a dark brown. I would like to get some black ones and other colors used. What would the right size to look for at the hardware store.

Thomas

[ctc]

>How can you get it apart.

A Space Glider? Actually; they're easy to take apart (a hammer dfoes the trick) but they don't go back together afterwards.

*ahem*

That's a joke.... Your best bet to replace the little rubber band would be to loop a band through the torso and pull BOTH ends over the hip connector hook.

Dunno where you could find an accurate replacement that you could actually use. Most 3.5" figures have a similar band in them. But fitting it over the inside peg would be a real trick.

Don C.

[palitoy]

My friend had a humanoid he was trying to sell at a toy show but the o ring snapped, on the way to the show he asked me to stop off at a toy show and buy him any Hasbro Joe figure I could find. So I guess those O Rings might work.

Ray may have a better solution however.

[geotroid]

I performed a repair on a blue Space Glider with a broken shoulder. Getting a replacement arm was easy enough, but getting the riveted torso open required some work.

Several Micronaut repair experts use high-speed rotary tools, like a Dremel, and specialized carbide bits made for the dental industry. Many, many different shapes & sizes with different flute cuts are available for that niche market. You won't find them in hardware stores - I would now, I worked in sales for my current employer's dental lab supply division for two lousy years.

I used two different carbides - an egg-shape and an inverted cone. The egg was a bit smaller that the rivet head while the inverted cone was almost the exact diameter of the rivet head. My goal was to reduce the top surface area of the head, to make it much thinner, and apply pressure to squeeze the torso halves apart by inserting a very small & very thin flat-head screw driver.

So I would delicately drill, stop, and apply a modest bit of pressure. Repeat.

Once the top of the rivet head was ground down enough, the two halves popped apart and through the paper-thin rivet head.

Best of all, the rivet still makes an acceptably tight fit when I reinserted the halves back together because there's just a millimeter or two of the head left. I'd like to find a way to maybe flash a tack weld on top of the head, but that's pretty tricky with die-cast. I haven't found anybody with the right kind of welder to do that for me yet.

What you DO NOT want to do is drill straight down and penetrate below the rivet head. The rivet is actually an extension of the front torso half, so if you drill it off, it's gone. You'd have nothing to even "tap" a thread for a new screw hole. Granted, I've never attempted that, either, but its feasible.

One last thought - you could spend so much money on specialized tools that a better course of action may be simply to buy a different figure.

-geotroid

[Seeker]

Yeah I was going to say...........

[Captain]

The o-ring can be purchased at any local plumbing shop or hardware store...they arent unique in size by any means. Unless you want to be a bunch of em, I would advise bringing the old one (even if its broken) to match up the new one. They only cost a matter of pennies apiece. Be warned, some big chain stores may try to sell you an o-ring kit with a ton of different sizes, but I've always found smaller stores will sell them seperate.

As for the die cast rivet, it can be glued back together, or repaired as need be with a product called JB Weld. Again, available at most hardware stores. Its a two part mix that sets up to be almost as hard as steel. Works like a charm, and is paintable afterwards.

[AcroRay]

Sorry, I haven't checked in over the last few days to catch this question....

The answers here are pretty sharp, so you should have what you need!

I'd always suggest nabbing 80's GI Joes cheap at flea markets (or junked Mego Dukes of Hazzard, Buck Rogers, etc) to repair Micronauts.

There's also a size of fish-tank air tube that can be cut into transparent O-rings. I don't recall the dimensions off hand, however, and I'm not at home to check.