I''d like to try out some IK on something like a walking Mech model. However, the only free ones I found on TurboSquid were > 100,000 polys, which looks nice and all, but runs slowly :-) Does anyone know of a place to download free mech models? I didn''t find anything on polycount.com. (MAX would be preferred, but I can import many popular game formats too)

I have come across a few sites with low-poly mech models in my searches. 3D Cafe has 1 or 2 and Amazing3D has some more. Try searching from Google for something like "free 3d sci-fi models"
You are bound to get a decent result from somewhere.

Nukes rule 24 7