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Help with restoring vintage micronauts

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  • JMC
    Persistent Member
    • Feb 3, 2004
    • 1940

    Help with restoring vintage micronauts

    Hi,
    does anyone know of a site or how to restore old micronaut figures? For example, I have a galactic warrior with a broken leg but I found a replacement. can this be done. can the body be opened to add a new o ring?

    Any help would be appreciated.
  • AcroRay
    Persistent Member
    • Apr 17, 2005
    • 1010

    #2
    There are a lot of applicable techniques for repairing and restoring Micronauts.

    Broken inner O-rings are a common issue. Of course, it's easy to simply swap in the O-ring from a flea-market 80's/90's GI Joe figure with most Micronauts, because their bodies are held together at the torso with a screw.

    Space Glider and Galactic Warrior, however, are another story. Most of them (but not all) are held together at the torso with a rivet.

    What you need to do is to carefully drill off the head of the rivet holding the torso together. Find a bit large enough to fit into the 5mm socket on the figure's back, but that won't easily graze the edges of the socket. Fit it to your drill and carefully 'peck' at the rivet until you've worn away enough to pry the torso apart (low speed if you can). Use a small file to clean up the edges of the rivet, but don't file it down any more than you have to.

    Get a GI Joe you can use as a source of parts, open it and take out the O-Ring (hopefully it will be in relatively good shape), and keep the screw from the torso. Loop the O-ring onto the metal hook on the piece keeping the legs together, pull it up through the pelvis part, and loop it onto the rear torso half's inner post. Hold it in place carefully with a thumb or screwdriver, and re-assemble the head and limb pieces and snap the torso together. Use the Joe's screw and carefully drive it into the back socket. With luck, the head will fit (there's some variance in them). It should be self-threading, and should drive into the remains of the softer rivet's material. You can also use the screw from another junk Micronaut.

    Galactic Warrior and Space Glider's upper thighs are also held together with rivets. You can use a dremel or a hand file to file off the head, take the upper thigh apart to replace the leg onto the leg 'hanger' or swap out a lower leg, and re-assemble them with thigh-screws salvaged from a GI Joe or another junked Micronaut.

    If you're serious into Micronauts, it's helpful to pick up the occasional 25-cent flea-market GI Joe figure to use for parts. (Plus, you can sometimes find Micronauts, Mego figure and other cool old figures in piles of 80's/90's Joes. I even found a 25-cent Blue Snaggletooth in a pile of them!)
    Micronauts Collector, Historian, Consultant
    AcroRay's Laboratory - My Micronauts Blog
    The Micropolis Embassy - My Micronauts Group
    Rockets, Robots & Dinosaurs - My Blog for Other Interests

    Comment

    • ctc
      Fear the monkeybat!
      • Aug 16, 2001
      • 11183

      #3
      Hmmmm....

      If you're patient and just have to replace a rubber band, loop it over the torso center rod without opening the body, and roll both ends over the leg hanger thingie.

      Don C.

      Comment

      • JMC
        Persistent Member
        • Feb 3, 2004
        • 1940

        #4
        Thanks so much for the detailed help. In one case, the hanger on the galactic warrior is broken so I will take a stab at it following your method. Is there any chance there are visual tutorials around? One could hope.

        Comment

        • tmthor
          God of Knock-offs
          • Nov 29, 2005
          • 881

          #5
          Here are some sites for reparing GiJoes

          How to fix GI Joe figures.

          How to Fix G.I. Joe Figures with broken rubber bands | Mech9.com

          Comment

          • JMC
            Persistent Member
            • Feb 3, 2004
            • 1940

            #6
            Thanks again

            Comment

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