Repairing a Technic Figure

[Peppermint_M]

Hi guys. As you can tell from the title I need to repair a technic figure. I have this guy:

And most unfortunately someone small used him a little like a doll and his left arm snapped off at the shoulder joint. Now, what happened is the pin/peg snapped clean at the point it met the arm, so the entirety of it is inside the torso with a tiny dimple left on the arm itself.

I noticed the peg was hollow and the arm did have a dimple, so running a small risk of limited movement I attempted my own repair.

Using a carefully trimmed piece of the sprue two minifig keys come on I dipped the one end of this little pin/rod into Revell Model Glue and popped it into the hole of the pin left in the shoulder.

So far, so good. The glue cured and the new repair pin remained in place with normal handling. Then I trimmed it to the best length to attach the arm using the remains of the original peg. Dabbed glue into the dimple of the broken peg on the arm, placed it onto the pin and with a little masking tape to hold it in place, left the glue to cure.

First try, the arm came away with the tape. Second try, the arm fell off once the tape was gone. It is leaving a nice mass of glue on the tip of the pin (formed to the shape of the dimple on the arm...) I am guessing it is either not the best adhesive to use in this situation, the plastics won't bond or that there just isn't enough of the original peg left on the arm to join it right.

What would you suggest? I could get a different glue (I am on the hunt for some as a few action figures got mashed too. Poor Sam Flynn is now headless and my Big Duo is Last Appearance accurate!) or is it better to get the leftover peg out of the torso and put a new arm in?

[rodiziorobs]

Given the tiny area that the broken end of that pin has, I think any adhesive you use will be very fragile and probably not strong enough to pose the arm without breaking the glue again.

I would suggest removing the broken pin and finding a new arm. If you have a dremel or other small drill--a small enough diameter that drilling a hole straight into the pin will leave a little plastic all around it--you can drill about half-way through it, then with the drill bit still buried in the plastic pin pull straight out. Since that joint it so small, that might not be possible, so you could then just use the drill to carefully break the pin into shavings until it falls out.

If you don't have a tiny drill like that, you could use a pick or knife blade to remove it, but I would worry about damaging the socket around it.

Edited April 29, 2015 by LuxorV
No need to quote the only other post in the thread.

[dirkberlin]

Hey sorry, I had to highjack this thread. I know it's old, but there is not much out there to the topic repairing a technic figure, so this is way up in google.

I recently get a broken figure, arm was broken like the one of the thread opener. One leg was broken the connection for the leg. I had to learn a few things. In bricklink there are no technic figure inventory, it count as one piece. So you can not buy parts of them. Of course there are parts:

• a head
• a torso
• the hip
• 4 arm pieces
• 2 hands
• 2 feets
• 1 left and 1 right upper leg
• 2 down legs

The head is a ball joint, which can more or less be plugged out. The legs are on balljoints on the hip, so easy remove. Allthough the feet. The Arms are pressed in linke the nomal minifig hand connection. upper and lower arm are the same pieces. For me this pressed in pin was broken and the rest of it will stuck on the shoulder. I tried several things, but the easiest (but not that easy) was to remove the head an push the rest inside the shoulder. Wenn removed I replaced the hole arm with a nother one. For the leg I tried to seperate the upper and the lower leg from each one. I failed. The lower leg is clipped on the upper by 2 strong noses on the upper leg. I failed to open it with narrow knifes, finally I used a saw to remove the broken lower leg. So for this it was no solution for a sparepart, a changed the hole leg.

I noticed that brickowl has single spare parts of the technic fig, but the offer was few. I found less at ebay, but where lucky a some local announce. But the leg hat wrong color low leg. With shipping it is nearly to cheap offer of the whole fig at bricklink. But may be differ by fig or terms of the shop. Cause I want repair this guy and not store it for future replacement. I like this figs.

Another sorry, but hope my 2 cents will help other with same problems.