Topic: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

I know this is a long shot, but is there any way to fix torsos that have cracks in them?  I have several torsos with a massive crack in the side (for some reason, it seems to happen a lot in my post-2008 minifig bodies), causing the arm on that to be extremely loose.  I was wondering if there was a way to fix them, e.g. by gluing them.  All of my bodies with this problem come from retired sets so I can't get replacements from LEGO, and one of them is pretty rare so I don't really want to get another off Bricklink, eBay, etc.  So yeah, can anyone help?

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Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

If you want avoid this in the first place it would be a good idea to not take arms out and put them back in.  I think that's what makes it happen.

As far as fixing it, that does sound like a long shot, by i don't think that it would be entirely impossible.

The first idea that comes to mind is heating the LEGO up a whole lot and fusing that plastic back together.  Of course, heating it up to such a high temperature would likely damage other parts of the figure.

Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

In my 36 years of using minifigures, I don't think I removed the arms once.

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Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

Squid wrote:

If you want avoid this in the first place it would be a good idea to not take arms out and put them back in.  I think that's what makes it happen.

As far as fixing it, that does sound like a long shot, by i don't think that it would be entirely impossible.

The first idea that comes to mind is heating the LEGO up a whole lot and fusing that plastic back together.  Of course, heating it up to such a high temperature would likely damage other parts of the figure.

Yeah, I try to avoid swapping out arms.  I don't ever recall doing that for the blue suit, though, and there are a few that seem to have cracked naturally despite me never popping the arms out (that I can remember).

To be honest, I'm not sure if heating would work.  It's a tiny area to heat, plus the plastic would easily deform when heated.  I'm personally thinking of somehow gluing the crack, but I'd have no idea how to get the glue into the crack, and not getting it anywhere else or messing up the arm socket or other areas.

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&Smeagol      make the most of being surrounded by single, educated women your own age on a regular basis in college
AquaMorph    I dunno women are expensive

Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

I can't think of a way to permanently fix them, but as far as animation is concerned, you could hold the arms in place with putty or something of that sort.

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Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

If you do end up using glue, you could always file it down if you got it on the outside of the minifig too. And there is  model paint if you need to fix some color damage.

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Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

If you try to glue - I'd do so with the arm removed in case the arm is glued in solid.  As said - take out the arm, apply glue, sand/file away the excess, pop arm back in good as new.

Obviously less is best.

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Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

The only solution I could find is to try gluing it from the inside.
No visible mess, able to get more glue in and on it, but even then it's not always successful.

I wish you the best of luck on fixing it.

Re: Fixing Cracked Torsos?

plastic model glue will fuse the plastic back together, but you would want to do it from the inside, because it 'melts' the plastic and chemically fuses it back as one piece so it can damage the shape, after applying some model glue I would then use a small vice or clamp to push the pieces together so they are nice and tight after the plastic becomes hard again.