Hot Mod

About a week and a half ago, Jeff from one of the Yahoogroups I'm on noticed a YahooJapan auction for a Hot Rod that had been modified so that the legs extend a bit further than normal. I first thought that Hot Rod with extended legs was some sort of prototype figure that was only seen in the 1986 catalog. But it turns out all Hot Rods have this feature. Apparently there are more details sculpted into the knees of the figure, but for whatever reasons Takara decided not to engineer the lower legs to extend far enough to see these areas. Not content to let the Japanese have all the fun, the call went out to anyone on our group brave and willing enough to try to modify their Hot Rod accordingly. A guy on our group named Martin has experience with modifications like this but he doesn't have a spare Hot Rod to mess with at the moment so while he gets one I figured I'd give this a go. Sometimes attempting these modifications is scary but I had an extra reissue Rodimus Major I bought in Turkey so I figured what the hell-it's trilingual packaging anyway so I've got nothing to lose. You can see in the picture above how the modification adds approximately a quarter inch / half centimeter to the height of 'ol Rodimus Rod (or whatever they're calling him nowadays). That's the modded reissue on the left and a Targetmaster Hot Rod on the right.

You can see here upon dissassembling the leg how much of Hot Rod's knee never gets extended. There are some nice sculpted details that never get exposed.



Here is the basic lowdown of what needs to be done using the right leg as the example. All I used was a screwdriver and a dremel. The screwdriver dissassembles the leg and the dremel sands down two raised bars that need to be made flush with the lower blocks below them. One of the bars is on the rear leg panel and the other is on the front.



Care must be taken not to cut the bars down too much or else the leg will not catch and Hot Rod will never stand up at all. I trimmed slightly too much on one of the forward panels but not enough to destroy the figure. I've just got one knee that's ever so slightly looser than the other. The lower legs still lock securely but if I had gone any deeper I would have wrecked the figure.



Here's a closeup of the knee areas showing just how much of an extension I got out of this. Good luck if you choose to try it. Remember not to trim those blocks down too far!