Water, Air, And Ice


At the very top is a front view of the Ga/Le/Ko BOHROK KAITA combiner, and directly above are views from the right, back, and left sides.

Using all but five parts (not counting the dark-grey blocks that the rubber bands ship around) from the GAHLOK, LEHVAK, and KOHRAK sets, this is easily the most efficient use of parts when building a combiner model in the BIONICLE™ line. The only four parts that weren’t used were two of the dogbone gear-bars (used in the BOHROK ‘neck’), two of the ball-pins (used to hold the rubber band on the back of the BOHROK head), and one of the rubber bands.

The one familiar element in the design is the central part of the LEHVAK body, which is used as the head for this model, complete with the snap-attack feature. The rest of this design looks very formidable. With the two GAHLOK hand-shields for pecs, the GAHLOK and KOHRAK faceplates for samurai-style shoulder armor, those twin shoulder-mounted prehensile whip-barb-things, and the pair-mounted hand-shields, this character looks perfectly set to give WAIRUHA a big challenge in a simple one-on-one fight. At least from the front. The backside is relatively unprotected, with only a pair of the snap-attack thumb-triggers serving as armor.

The legs are designed similar to the TOA KAITA legs, but there are a few differences. They’re more streamlined and curved, both due to the single standardized BOHROK limb, as compared to the three different limbs used in the TOA construction. The two halves of each knee are not connected, which seriously hinders the stability of the design, but with the addition of a few well-placed #2 plus-rods, that problem is easily fixed.

Another pair of design oddities are in the forearms. After shooting these pics, I realized that both forearms were oriented the same way, but I checked the instructions, and it is the true design. Rotating the right forearm to mirror the left results in a somewhat more natural looking design. As for the left forearm, it is attached with a #6 plus-rod that looks very much out of place. I switched it out with the #3 plus-rod directly between the back of the LEHVAK brainpan and the two rubber band ball-pin mounts.

The final modification that I made was with how the pelvic-KRANA is mounted. I found that strapping the rubber band across a XA KRANA the way the instructions show results in the KRANA creeping out of the socket over time. If you flip the upper band above the KRANA instead of in front of it, it holds the KRANA down into the socket, and the lower band is perfectly capable of holding it in from the front.

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