ROTF Dirt Boss mod... preliminary stages

[Uberman]

Hey everyone,

I have 2 Dirt Bosses, because he's semi-sort-of generic, if you think of him as a scrapper drone, and becuase there were SOO many of him on the shelves. And, well, one of them was free. But in light of Spoons coming, I've decided to try to mod one of them. This will be the first time. I'm starting small.

I'm going to take Dirt Boss and try to turn him into THIS, which I saw on the street a few days ago. I will call him Suck-Master. I plan on removing the forks, the left lift bar thing, trimming down the front grille thing, lobbing off maybe half of the canopy, and adding the hose assembly, which, if it works the way I think, will be an under-slung gunk-thrower. Or something. I'm tempted to try to make his head either different, or at least articulated...

Any suggestions before I mangle a decent if redundant toy?

[Stapler]

That looks like it will be a very cool mod! Just remember to take your time cutting and to have fun. Good luck, bud.

[chans formers]

i like you're idea and what you're going for.
(i've only seen those weird vacuum cart things in toronto....let me guess,that's where you reside right?)
as for the head mods,you'd be surprised at how much you can change the look of a bots mellon with just a tiny bit of sculpey/green putty

for the second dirtboss you have,have you thought about doing a "animated" dirtboss?it'll be way more mod intensive to get the animated feel/look but to this day,i don't think it's actually been done yet

[Uberman]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys.

I've done all the cutting I think I need to do, which involved removing much of the forks and trimming back the canopy, and also altering the shoulder/side panels to allow the remaining canopy to swing down a bit, to give him a slightly different profile. Now to alter his face just enough that that and some paint will make him unique [I gave up on adding a neck joint; I don't have the resources].

I'm having trouble finding a suck hose though. It needs to be big enough to look right and in scale, but malleable enough not to impede transformation or posability. This will probably be the biggest hurdle...

[crimbot]

I'm pretty sure I knew a girl in college who went by "suckmaster". You may need to see if that name is already taken...

[Uberman]

Ugh, crap.

Fine, "Decepticon Suckmaster."

[chans formers]

Originally Posted by Uberman

I'm having trouble finding a suck hose though. It needs to be big enough to look right and in scale, but malleable enough not to impede transformation or posability. This will probably be the biggest hurdle...

for the tubing,try canadian tire.the first thing that comes to mind is the flexible "sheath" tubing that you use to cover your under the hood wiring.it comes in many different diameters and is usually really cheap in price.heck,if you drive a car,chances are that you have it under your hood right now(it looks like a piece of ribbed tubing,but with a slit down the length of it which is easy enough to fix the slit)

[Stapler]

Don't lose hope about not finding the tubing right away. I have a couple unfinished projects that are on hold until I finaly find the parts I need. But the feeling of coming across somthing that could fit the bill just causes lighting to crack in your head out of sheer excitement.