I'm new to the site. I mostly restore and do custom G.I.Joe vehicles,and I don't know if any of you may know the answer to a problem I am working on or not but here goes... Does anyone know a good way to mend or repair the vertical vanes for the killer whale broken at the hinges?... Preferably in a way that would still allow them to flex. If anyone has a solution to this it would be really helpful since most of these parts are broken if you can find them at all,and if someone on eBay has an unbroken one they want to charge you more for it than the entire vehicle originally cost. Thanks for any helpful advice you may have.

I do primarily vehicles too, I'm just staring to mess around with figures. I pretty much don't attempt to repair broken pieces on vehicles. I have paid outrageous prices for replacements before and have bought whole vehicles just for one piece when trying to complete a vehicle. (I think I paid about $50 for 3 parts to complete my childhood Skystriker.)

In my opinion, if it's a matter of reattaching a broken piece and you don't have enough material with which to drill holes for pegs or to otherwise reinforce the bond and keep the reinforcment hidden, I don't mess with it. And if you are trying to fabricate the pegs necessary for the hinges to function because they are missing, I would not even attempt it. Those fins are very thin and are completely visible on all sides which really limits your options.

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Thanks Dusty, on the killer whale I am currently restoring,I have repaired a set of vertical vanes that were missing both linkage bar pegs. Tried carving new pegs out of the same type and color plastic,and glueing them in place but as I am sure you already know, crazy glue doesn't want to bond to this type of plastic,so after looking at the spot were the pegs should connect I noticed that the plastic is a little thicker there,just enough so that a very small screw,(I used the kind that are in the backs of most action figures,actually from the cheap knock off brand of army figures, I had one that had two matching screws and used those. You have to be careful to center it properly so that it won't come through either side, I made a tiny pilot hole to get it started and went ahead and ran the screw through the hole in the linkage bar so that I wouldn't run the screw in deeper than was needed. It's not all original as I would have hoped,but it did work quite well, and the tiny screw heads are only visible if you pick the vehicle up and look at the fan assembly from the bottom, I'll probably paint them to match to hide them further until I do find some whole and intact parts to replace them with. But I am still at a loss on how to fix the broken hinges.