So I got myself a Predator, and of course, since it’s built on a Rhino chassis, I knew I was going to magnetize the hell out of it so I could switch between Rhino, Razorback and Predator. Now that I have done so, I think it’s brilliant that the model was designed with this potential.
Magnetizing all the pieces required twenty-eight 1/8″ and seventeen 1/4″ magnets (at 1/32″ thickness) and took me two evenings to do, so maybe 6 – 8 hours of work total.
Consider the humble Rhino, before it gets all dressed up.
I put a stack of magnets inside the door wells. They’re just high enough to contact the magnets glued to the doors.
The sponson mount doors have 1/4″ magnets on them, which give a good solid contact with the magnets in the door wells. The regular Rhino doors have a 1/8″ magnet mounted on a piece of sprue cut to the right length and stuck to the door.
Magnetizing the sponson weapons was also somewhat challenging. I cut off the pins on the weapon mounts themselves and glued 1/8″ magnets on the ends. This was pretty fiddly. The result was not so strong so I added a thin strip of green stuff wrapped around them and this is more sturdy. I went slow and measured and checked everything before gluing stuff in. The sponsons were the most time consuming.
I added these magnets on the front so I could attach the hedgecutter.
I’ve seen solutions for magnetizing the turret that involve a piece of sprue glued onto the mounting plate. I wanted to use this as a Razorback as well and gluing a spar in place would block the weapons in that configuration. So to enable both set-ups, I glued a piece of sprue inside the turret and put a magnet on that. Then I cut another piece of sprue just longer than the diameter of the hole in the turret ring mounting plate and put a magnet on that. This way I can attach the Predator turret and it stays on, and easily remove it if I want to put in a Razorback gun mount.
Here are the main guns. I cut the pins off the mantles and put in the magnets.
The turret was a little difficult. The magnets went in easily since the holes were already about 1/8″. I had to back them up with some greenstuff. The piece of sprue on the front there keeps the guns from drooping, and that meant I had to cut a small piece out of the inside of each gun mantlet which was hard to get right.
Here’s the finished product.
The 1/4″ magnets on the top of the hull and turrets allow mounting of smoke launchers, searchlights and other accessories. The rear of the turret is magnetized so the ammo bins can be changed depending on which main gun configuration I’m using. The storm bolter is also magnetized so that I can put on the pintle mount or the hull mount.
So in the end I think it was worth the work as I now have three vehicles in one!
I need to order more magnets!
You And What Army? 