Posts Tagged ‘upgrades’
New Parts Anyone?
Teasers teasers everywhere… Now please don’t expect these in stock yet. We are working as fast as we can but we thought you’d like to see some progress.
New Parachute Packs (didn’t put the Diest logos on yet)
New Antlers and Antler Lenses (by Falcon Designs)
New Beacon (this is our beacon but chromed and then hollowed out by Andy G.) That’s the HW red insert stuck in there just for the photo. It sticks up too tall. Our beacon will not.
And a quick look at the prototype new seated (and fully legged) Figure Sets.
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In The Name Of Progress…
Well we had to do it. What started out as a quick, minimal disassembly of an Elite Batmobile to grab the batphone for molding for the upgrade kits turned into a full exploratory session. And we uncovered some interesting finds in the process.
First off – All the sonic welds are MUCH easier to rip through for parts removal than on the Standards I’ve tried. All these parts popped out with some simple scraping of their weld divots.(note the detect-a-scope inner round screen remains as part of the dash and the housing around it pops off. Good to know for our new scope upgrade)
Next, as you can see in the upper left corner of the photo below – the turbine engine is part of the front wheel assembly. Easy to remove but interesting physics going on there. I know it’s a fictional engine but – yeesh. The sooner I get a Ford 390 in there the better.
Next, we had heard this but hadn’t experienced it until now – the Elite seat-tops are rubber and removable. And the silver trim bottoms come off easily as well. All the better to try some of Futurabat’s new seat designs out on them.
After removing several of the soft rubber pieces, we find that many items are much different than the ones on the Standard. Here you can see the subtle differences between the Elite center console and the one we cut out of the Standard. (you can see evidence of the trouble the older phone gave me)
Probably the most interesting thing we discovered was that the 2-piece chrome dash pops right off. This will make installing the photo-etched dash panels that much easier.
I’ve got to say – I’ve ragged on Mattel a bit but they really optimized this model for upgrades! They should put all the parts in a box and call it the “Custom Batmobile” edition.
