[ARBCO Avenue]

A HISS Tank was one of my first Joe toys and I always loved that bright red driver with his cool helmet. Your driver lineup is fantastico! Cool idea with the pilot. Looking forward to more!

[46 Zone]

Nice work. Did you figure out any other mods to the hips to straighten out the legs?

[HissHissFangFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 46 Zone

Nice work. Did you figure out any other mods to the hips to straighten out the legs?

2020-11-27_12-49-08 by HissHissFangFang

Nothing new from before. For the first of three I went to the max shown here. The other two I didn't go as far. I like wider stances anyway. I'll give more info and pictures tomorrow on this one...

[46 Zone]

That's pretty good. Seems a lot easier than all the chopping I did.

[HissHissFangFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 46 Zone

That's pretty good. Seems a lot easier than all the chopping I did.

Definitely not EASIER. More...surgical...

[HissHissFangFan]

HISS DRIVER [2020 Update]


2020-11-26_03-23-52 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

Build:
Head, Legs, Chest Armor: 2020 Retro Collection HISS Driver
Upper Torso, Lower Arms: 2014 50th Night-Viper
Belt: 2008 25th HISS Driver
Hands: MTF male hands, gloves with pads

Notes:
Back in 2017, shortly after I first unveiled this Cobra 1983 Collection, behind the scenes I started working on alternate builds for my HISS Driver, Gunner, and FANG pilot. The 25th body sculpts used weren’t really in sync with the 30th Trooper body builds of my Cobra 1982 O13 Collection and I wanted to correct that, using the 2014 red Night-Viper bodies for better corresponding builds. I had big issues with getting the chest armor to work but was ultimately able to get a decent fit with those. The bigger issue I had is with the legs being to tall and skinny. In the end, I didn’t like the resulting overall build over the 25th versions, and stayed with the 25th builds for quite some time.


2020-11-26_02-35-59 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

When Hasbro unveiled a new build for the HISS Driver in Sept 2020, the idea of updating my HISS Driver and the other two began to resurface. The chest armor looked good and was built to fit the 30th Trooper torso. The head looked really good as well, though I really didn’t have issue with the 25th head except that its neck peg hole was cast to far forward. My biggest concern was with the legs—they had the right sculpting details, but they looked oddly shaped with wide heavy upper legs that tapered down to skinny lower legs. I figured I would wait to get a figure in hand to decide whether to move forward.


2020-11-28_02-07-49 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

[Left to Right: personal photo of 2020 HISS Driver unmodified; box back photo from press release; modified 2020 HISS driver for my collection]

When I finally got the figure in hand last month, I was pleasantly surprised that the legs looked much better than they do on the unveiling box photo. As I had hoped, the legs in the photo were distorted due to perspective, with the camera angle high on the figure to fit the tank and figure in the same shot. The arms in hand were also not as long as indicated in the box photo (but still long), and the head is a bit smaller. I’m so use to the large head of the 25th version that the new head threw me off, but it looks great and I decided to run with it. The legs are have a great sculpted look with the right bulk to match the upper body—not as thigh wide as on the box pic. But as discussed by others elsewhere, the sculpt restrained where the legs are limited to a wide stance. I figured this was fixable within my skills, and went ahead with the figure upgrades these last few weeks.


2020-11-26_03-03-34 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

I switched out the upper body with the 50th Night-Viper mostly for the shorter lower arms. Though I was going to repaint the figure the deeper red shown, I wanted the base mold color to match both arms to limit coats of overpaint. This figure also represents my first official implementation of MTF parts in the hands, which are shorter than the typical 30th Trooper hands and help shorten the arms as much as possible. Hands were kept black instead of red to make up for the loss of longer black gauntlets from the 25th figure. The belt was added because he looked a little bare and skinny at the waist. The sculpting of the belt on the torso had to be cut down and sanded for the belt to fit.

More colors were added to break up all the red on the upper half of the figure, keeping in line with choices I made back in 2015. The chest plate was repainted in my Cobra blue #2 (Tamiya Flat Blue) because the color out of the package was a little too violet. A darker shade of red was used for some secondary parts. Originally the chest straps were this darker red, but in the end I went with black. Upper arms were finished off with Bad Mother Cobra sigil decals—not really vintage accurate, but keeping in line with the look for my 1982 and 1984 Collection army builders previous.

HIP FIX:


2020-11-27_12-49-08 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

A lot of work and trial-and-error went into modifying the upper legs so that the legs weren’t stuck in such a wide stance. I don’t know why this bothers my so much since I normally pose my figures with the wide stance. The figure also ends up with a wide stance when used on a two-peg GI Joe figures stand (FOOTSTAND!). Regardless, my OCD wanted this fixed to match all figures released previously. What follows is a series of photos to help explain the combination of mods done to help correct this without messing up the look of the figure build.


PhotoGrid_1606390254285 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

The most obvious thing is that the upper inner legs lack the contour needed to rotate the leg in a straighter position, as seen on the right-side photo. On the left-side photo, I highlighted in yellow the areas on the inner sides that need to be worked done, but if you do this, you should inspect the required areas yourself by moving the leg joint and seeing the bits that are touching. If it helps, you can also but a little bit of temporary paint on the areas.


20201128_032323 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

To start, I used a coarse 100-grit sanding stick to quickly wear down the offending area. Then, when leg hits the very bottom tip of the torso, I cut the groove deep with an exacto knife. The groove is then smoothed down using a round 1/8” dia file. The round file is also used to help continue the sculpted wrinkles and folds from the front to the inner sides. For finishing out, I do a few more sanding strokes with the coarse 100-grit, then a bunch more strokes with a finer 240-grit sanding stick, a bunch more with an even finer sanding pad (??-grit), then topped off with rubbing down with a felt pad. In cases where the part won’t be repainted, the felt rubdown with include a little polish are maybe toothpaste, but not with this figure.


PhotoGrid_1606390277338 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

As with the front inner sides, a back of the upper legs needs to be worked down—even moreso than the inner sides I found. I marked the areas above. In these areas, I had to start cutting down heavily with an exacto knife, then worked it as described above for the inner thighs. Back here—especially with the right leg, you start getting dangerously close to cutting a hole into the leg piece. As a result, I suggest also cutting down slightly on the adjacent area on the torso, basically working both sides of joint.


20201128_032458 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr


PhotoGrid_1606390320177 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

Another angle on the areas to cut down, finished product darker red, far left shows area to cut down highlighted.


PhotoGrid_1606390228576 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

After doing the two steps below, I thought that would be enough to fix the problem. However, the legs still would not straighten. The weird thing is that a gap existed where I worked down the legs, and something inside the T-joint was restraining the leg. Therefore three (!) more steps were required to correct the problem.


2020-11-02_07-31-47 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

The first of the three additional steps is to cut a big dimple into the outer leg, opposite of where the t-joint ball sits. During my frustrating trial and error of things, this was actually the final thing that did the trick, but I list it first since it is the most straightforward of the extra steps, and likely can be done in one shot. I use a 1/8” round engraving but on my Dremel to get this large dimple, then use my round steel file to clean out the shavings. I do something similar to this for the 50th/Retro Destro and the 30th/POC Cobra Trooper, to allow the leg piece to push in and not be so wide vs the torso hips.


PhotoGrid_1606549721405 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

The second of the three extra steps is to remove a little bit of the top of the inner leg cylinder that cradles the t-joint ball. You only want to work on the top bits I highlighted in yellow above, and cut off only a little with an exacto knife. This will allow the leg piece to rotate straight, but may also result in a loose joint. I haven’t had a problem to extremely loose joints on mine, but if there is a problem, you can tighten back up as and where needed with typical joint tightening techniques (superglue, floor polish, etc).


2020-11-28_05-51-12 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

The third of the three extra steps was to work down the slot of the inner leg piece where shown above. I used my 1/8” round steel file to do this. Working to make it a little deeper as well as wider helped. I found working both the inside and outside was needed. Note that there is a lot of trial and error with this final step, and a little with the second step.


2020-11-28_06-01-08 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

And above is the final result. So far, I done this with three figures of this mold. Each time I was able to refine the process, and better document each step. I’ll admit though, for the first one, I was trying frantically with all sorts of different things, and hit a lot of roadblocks. I am happy though that I didn’t end up wasting or breaking these figures.

Once I got this HISS Driver done, the Gunner was relatively easy to start and finish, though I did a last minute color inversion on the head that delayed me for a little. FANG pilot is also done at this time, so I should be getting out posts for these next two in the coming week.


2020-11-26_01-13-15 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr


2020-11-28_05-22-56 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr
[HISS Driver, HHFF Shelf Collections, 2017,2020,2009]


20201126_031956 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

[stljoe]

Thanks for the how-to. I don't have the patience or talent for that, but it's nice of you to share.

[Jinx723]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HissHissFangFan

2020-11-26_03-23-52 by HissHissFangFang, on Flickr

Build:
Head, Legs, Chest Armor: 2020 Retro Collection HISS Driver
Upper Torso, Lower Arms: 2014 50th Night-Viper
Belt: 2008 25th HISS Driver
Hands: MTF male hands, gloves with pads

So the chest armor IS removable?

[HissHissFangFan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jinx723

So the chest armor IS removable?

Yep, glued closed at the back lower left. All loose webgear is removable if not detachable (built in nonglued clasp). If no clasp, can usually remove by unscrewing the legs, and heating up the gear to make it temporarily more stretchable.

I can throw in a quick pic later, but it looks like you stocked up big on these guys today. Congrats!/?

[Dragasses]

"Bad Mother Cobra sigil decals—not really vintage accurate, but keeping in line with the look for my 1982 and 1984 Collection army builders previous."
your incorporation of stickers/waterslides vs. paint is always amazing, regardless of their would-be inaccuracies. stellar.

always impressed.