"Quick" Fixes...

Of Flaws and Fixes.  No kit is perfect.  Not even the so-called Perfect Grades.  Perfect Grades actually suffer design, stability and structural flaws more than their smaller-scale counterparts mainly because of the amount of parts that come with the kit.  I have two PGs so far, an RF Astray and a 00.  Both are overall good enough PGs design-wise and I am actually impressed by how they are built.

I'm not sure about other PGs, but these two actually share the same basic flaw of the removability of the armor.  Some of the armor parts easily come off even with normal handling.  What's funny is, when the PG 00 came out, it was advised that one should purchase a second kit if one wanted to assemble it with the clear parts.  That's nothing more but a sales ploy because armor parts do come off easily, and this was the reason why I had to do this fix to begin with.

The problem lies within the connective sections of the parts, some of which are either too short or too thin.  Both the NG and PG Astray have this flaw, specifically at the V-fin's base and thus making the connection flimsy.  The V-Fin comes off rather easily in both cases (I am yet to get an MG RFA), and my PG Astray's forehead base broke off because the base is too darned thin.

This was a fairly easy fix.  Click here for the step by step process.

The 00's Chest Armor.  Maybe it's me or maybe it's the flaw in the armor's rather thin connective "lip," but this particular chest part (the right one), broke when I was simply handling the kit (it broke about a couple of months ago, and I only got to repair this a couple of nights ago while taking a break from the Angelus build).  Using the other chest part to align the fix, I cut the remaining part clear off the base, and cemented a set of small plaplate strips and reinforced it further with a 3mm triangular beam.  After waiting for 24 hours for the fix to cure, the OTHER one broke as well while I was test-fitting it to the chest assembly to see if I aligned the part correctly.

This time, I decided not to cut the remainder off the base, but cut it laterally and left those small supports.  I cemented an appropriate-sized piece of plaplate in between the supports, imitating the original structure of the lip.  I progressively saturated the entire fix with extra thin cement to reinforce the part and waited another 24 hours before test-fitting it again.

And viola!  As good as new and (almost) fits like a glove.