Why is the SH168 hip joint so tight? Very difficult to use!!

Aeron · Post by **Aeron** » Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:43 pm

I have a new SH168 made in December. The upper body is fine (the ball joint is very easy to use). However, the hip joint is super tight, like a rock!

One time, I could not straight the legs since the hip joint was locked up so tight. I ended up having to sit on the doll to get enough leverage. However, because other joints were less tight than the hips, when I I sat on the legs and pushed the mid-torso, only the back would bend. I ended up having to sit on the doll's stomach and push on the thighs to get the hips to straighten out, and even that took a lot of work. I had to apply bursts of force multiple times before the leg finally straightened out.

Why is it so tight? I have to fight the entire doll when I try to adjust the hips. Every other joint tries to move before the hips do.

This makes it really annoying and exhausting to position. When the hip joint gets stuck, I end up straining myself just to get it back into position. This also is not my first doll so this is not newbie syndrome.

Mcupplease · Post by **Mcupplease** » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:00 am

I have the same problem with SH165R.
But I think I caused the problem myself by using a vaginal douche wand that was directly connected to the water faucet and pushed water into the interior of the doll. Now the right hip is very stiff and the spine won't move at all.

Wight · Post by **Wight** » Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:51 am

You said one time...maybe after some poses this occurred.
Try the old skeleton procedure. Make the whole leg to the neutral position first, and after that straighten the hip joint.
There may be all kinds of twitsts combined, and some stopper working now.

Aeron · Post by **Aeron** » Fri Jan 25, 2019 4:04 pm

Wight wrote:You said one time...maybe after some poses this occurred.
Try the old skeleton procedure. Make the whole leg to the neutral position first, and after that straighten the hip joint.
There may be all kinds of twitsts combined, and some stopper working now.

Will have to see, but it was super tight straight from the box. I really struggled to raise the legs into a folded position so I could lift it out of the box.

Only one time (out of 3 or 4) did I have to sit on the doll b/c the hip joint felt completely locked up. But all other times, it's still super super tight and a real struggle to adjust.

I remember about one person breaking the back on their SH. I wonder if it's because the hip joint was locked up so when they pushed on the torso only the back bent. I might've done the same thing if I wasn't careful. When it happened to me, I got surprised since the back bent really far back but the hip joint didn't even move a centimeter. I had an oh shit moment and immediately stopped since it surprised me how far the back bent. When the hip joint gets locked up, you really struggle and apply bursts of force to try to get the damn thing to move. After seeing the back bend like that, that's when I changed to sitting on the doll's stomach instead so that wouldn't happen again.

Aeron · Post by **Aeron** » Fri Feb 01, 2019 4:53 pm

Another thing I noticed is that the knees don't seem to bend straight. The left knee in particular is weird. When bending the knee, the calf also rotates. Anyone else have this issue?

Since SH uses ball socket joints, I wonder about the third degree of motion. The first two being the front/back, left/right. Then there's also the rotation of the joint itself. If the leg was completely straight, this third degree of rotation at the hip would cause the direction of the knee and foot to rotate.

If this third degree of motion exists, I'm not sure how to get at it for the really stiff joints since you can't really grab hold of much.