stormtrooperguy
Sr Hunter
I can take NO credit for any of the concepts you'll see in this post. Fettpride was the innovator on repairing the pinched visor on the MR helmet. He took the initial risk on his helmet, and when I knew it was safe and possible, I did the same thing.
Here are the guide photos I used. Helmet photos from rebelscum.com
The cut I ended up making was a bit longer than that... almost to the keyslots. The longer the cut, the more you trash the paint, but the easier it is to reposition everything.
And now that the intro is done, on to the work! When I'm done modifying it, I plan to make a resin copy for myself. I'll never *really* trust that seam that I epoxy/bondo/goop coated for trooping. I'm going to use the ears / RF topper / etc... since the metal is nice. Paint stripped off of course!
Here is a shot of the helmet as shipped. Pinchy pinchy! And check out the weathering on the rangefinder:
The soft edged dent.
The interior, which sadly will never be the same again. This bummed me out, as the padded black interior was really nice
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Ow, my eye! MEDIC!!!
And it's a good thing I WANTED to repaint it... The electrical tape DESTROYED the finish. The silver came right off. Even masking tape lifted the silver.
I used electrical tape here because that stuff can apply a LOT of pressure if stretched tight and wrapped around a few times. It did a great job of holding the cut area in place while I epoxied it from the inside.
All better! Gotta love 5 minute epoxy putty!!
Internal support for the visor, since I have some paper thin plastic in there now. I'm pretty sure that a good visor would hold it in place properly, but since I'm planning on making a copy of it, I'm not worried about that. I just wanted to make sure nothing shifted while I repair the cut side.
An hour, a NIOSH approved respirator, a face shield, many pairs of chemical gloves and a bucket of acetone later...
And the ears loosely fitted back into place.
The dent, without the 99 layers of paint:
Observations:
The paint job is interesting. If you see a color, chances are it's covering the entire helmet.
The base is the dark green on the back. Whole thing. Then the dome green, also covering it all.
On the visor area, the dark red covers the whole thing, with the lighter red on top, the grey on top of that, and the silver on top of that.
On the top, the dent was first painted dark grey, then light grey, then silver. so all total, there were 5 THICK layers of paint on there. No wonder the detail was soft.
The MQ-1 is a separate piece. I was able to pop mine out with only minor damage, that is easily repaired. I'm going to treat that as a separate piece in the molding process.
The RF assembly is neat. It's not a tilt switch... There is an on/off in the hinge area somewhere. the RF doesn't pass through the helmet, despite the large hole where it looks like it would have. It's entirely self contained.
There's a magnetic "lock" into up or down, which is cool.
The borden connector is metal.
It looks SO much better with the visor fixed. I *think* it could be done with minimal impact to the paint. You'd need to repaint the back left section of the helmet, in part or in full. Matching the colors well enough to touch up would be tough though.
Today I'll be doing the bondo work.
Here are the guide photos I used. Helmet photos from rebelscum.com
The cut I ended up making was a bit longer than that... almost to the keyslots. The longer the cut, the more you trash the paint, but the easier it is to reposition everything.
And now that the intro is done, on to the work! When I'm done modifying it, I plan to make a resin copy for myself. I'll never *really* trust that seam that I epoxy/bondo/goop coated for trooping. I'm going to use the ears / RF topper / etc... since the metal is nice. Paint stripped off of course!
Here is a shot of the helmet as shipped. Pinchy pinchy! And check out the weathering on the rangefinder:
The soft edged dent.
The interior, which sadly will never be the same again. This bummed me out, as the padded black interior was really nice
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Ow, my eye! MEDIC!!!
And it's a good thing I WANTED to repaint it... The electrical tape DESTROYED the finish. The silver came right off. Even masking tape lifted the silver.
I used electrical tape here because that stuff can apply a LOT of pressure if stretched tight and wrapped around a few times. It did a great job of holding the cut area in place while I epoxied it from the inside.
All better! Gotta love 5 minute epoxy putty!!
Internal support for the visor, since I have some paper thin plastic in there now. I'm pretty sure that a good visor would hold it in place properly, but since I'm planning on making a copy of it, I'm not worried about that. I just wanted to make sure nothing shifted while I repair the cut side.
An hour, a NIOSH approved respirator, a face shield, many pairs of chemical gloves and a bucket of acetone later...
And the ears loosely fitted back into place.
The dent, without the 99 layers of paint:
Observations:
The paint job is interesting. If you see a color, chances are it's covering the entire helmet.
The base is the dark green on the back. Whole thing. Then the dome green, also covering it all.
On the visor area, the dark red covers the whole thing, with the lighter red on top, the grey on top of that, and the silver on top of that.
On the top, the dent was first painted dark grey, then light grey, then silver. so all total, there were 5 THICK layers of paint on there. No wonder the detail was soft.
The MQ-1 is a separate piece. I was able to pop mine out with only minor damage, that is easily repaired. I'm going to treat that as a separate piece in the molding process.
The RF assembly is neat. It's not a tilt switch... There is an on/off in the hinge area somewhere. the RF doesn't pass through the helmet, despite the large hole where it looks like it would have. It's entirely self contained.
There's a magnetic "lock" into up or down, which is cool.
The borden connector is metal.
It looks SO much better with the visor fixed. I *think* it could be done with minimal impact to the paint. You'd need to repaint the back left section of the helmet, in part or in full. Matching the colors well enough to touch up would be tough though.
Today I'll be doing the bondo work.
