custom Zoid: RayZilla

(Light Assault / Shock Trooper)

This is the story of my eighth Zoids custom. (completed April 2005)

After my seventh custom Zoid (the BrachioTortoise ) in September of 2004 I put aside darthing for a while. In April 2005, with the warmer weather my darthing urge began to return. Shortly after completing a Ray Saurer, I began to work on a concept formed in November 2004. It was the fusion of Ray Saurer and Brachio Zilla to form a mini-centaur. Sort of like a baby brother to my first darth project (see pic at right), but on a smaller scale.

Parts Modifications

As with my BrachioTortoise, I modified the standard Blox powerpack by removing the center elbow joint. This shortens the resulting body by two Blox and makes the final result look better. (Tomy could have accomplished the same thing by using multiple contact plugs, but I guess their elbow joint was easier to manufacture). As before, I used a Buster Eagle body Blox to keep the modified motor and battery case aligned while I applied the glue.

I cut the Buster Eagle body block at an angle in order to obtain a wedge to mount the Ray Saurer torso at the desired angle. I cut and modified the Ray Saurer tail to plug in to rear of Blox powerpack (similar to Brachio Zilla). Also I combined and modified two Brachio Zilla main gun mounts to form a "saddle" main gun mount (similar to Ultrasaurus).

I also modified the Brachio Zilla rear legs by combining them with Ray Saurer legs (stock leg on left, combined leg on right).

Finally, I cut down the Ray Saurer front belly cannons to fit them under the torso wedge. Some unused pegs were removed from the Brachio Zilla body parts.

Test Assembly

Here is a picture showing most of the above pieces glued and assembled together, along with the fixed blue pegs attached to the Blox block that define the leg movement. Some pre-painting was done prior to assembly.

Test Walk

Same as above but with the legs and guns added. I replaced the original red caps with some spare dark gray caps. Note how the shortened powerpack looks more proportional. Otherwise the tail would be two bloxs longer. The shortened powerpack will improve the appearance of a regular Brachio Zilla too. If you decide to shorten your powerpack, you should first remove your motor before you make your cuts, or else you may accidentally cut the wires.

Paint and Final Assembly

All the pivot points were masked off with tape or drinking straws. I used the same satin red as my big Centaur. I used BrachioZilla stickers and blackened the gun bores. Ray Zilla walks just as well as BrachioZilla, and of course the Ray Saurer torso still blinks.

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