Repairing your G1 Mirage’s broken waist

Author: jetfire, September 8th, 2009

Don’t throw that junker away.  If you have G1 Mirage with a broken waist that’s otherwise in decent shape.  It can easily be repaired.  All you need to do is buy a real junker with bad stickers, broken arms, bad chrome or paint – whatever!  As long as the waist joint is intact, you can swap it out.   It really doesn’t matter what condition the junker is, as long as the waist pin isn’t broken.  This is because the entire piece is inside the body.  The thing that is external would be the pin and Mirage’s head.  So get a good head too.  Replace the piece into your Mirage and you should be good to go.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I bought a total junker (complete).  The chrome and paint were terrible.  The tires were worn.  There was nothing good about the junker I bought… The only piece I could salvage was the waist joint.  So, I went on ebay and looked for a decent shaped Mirage with a broken joint.  It’s a very common issue with this figure and I’ve seen plenty up for sale.

It’s as simple as removing 3 screws.  1 screw on the chrome chest plate and 2 screws on the hip connector.  Here’s what it looks like on the broken Mirage.

After you take off the screws and remove the chest and hip piece.  The broken parts should be taken out easily.

Ok, just do the same for the junker you want the good waist from.  Here’s a shot of both.

I ran into a problem when I tried to replace the good piece in my Mirage.  Apparently, the broken waist pin had a much smaller diameter than the good waist pin.  It wouldn’t fit into the original hip piece because the hole wasn’t big enough.  Hasbro must have figured out that this was a big problem and redesigned the part so that it doesn’t break as easily.  What I ended up doing was taking the old hip piece too.

After taking out the parts, I went on to put them back together.  In the end, the decent shaped Mirage has a new waist.  My junker is now a useless piece of crap.

Note: I’ve learned that there were 2 (or more) versions of Mirage.  The pre-rub version (no rub sign) and the one with a rub sign may actually have different shades of blue.  I was able to mix mine up as the blues looked the same to me.  So, be cautious when purchasing a replacement Mirage.  You might get a different color head and hip (if the one you have has a smaller hole).

Categories: G1 Tags: broken waist, G1, Mirage