Morning all,
as a small number of you already know my father passed away at the end of January and I lost interest in the builds I was doing. I found it hard to concentrate on pretty much anything.
A few weeks ago I placed an Amazon order for something small and used this cheap old Tamiya kit to boost the order into the free postage bracket knowing full well that being such an old kit it would need work
I opened the box on arrival and started cleaning up some parts to take my mind off things, slowly worked my way through the entire kit and as usual started updating a few bits
Now the lower hull is around 2mm too wide as is usual with the majority of these old made for motorisation Tamiya kits that were designed around a certain motor and battery set. This time I decided to live with it rather than cut it in half - that way I may complete it this year and even get it painted
That said, it hasn't totally escaped correction and updating.......
the motorisation holes were filled in and the open side sponsons were plated over
the side plates are totally devoid of any detail so I made some suspension arm bump stops and milled some suspension grooves in just to give the impression of there being something there
bit hard to see but the track guards were scraped and scraped with the edge of a straight blade to thin them right down to the point where they were just becoming translucent when held up to the light - they are super thin
It would have been faster to whip them off and replace with pewter but I decided to stick with the kit parts for a change knowing I could change to pewter if it didn't work out
the wheels are a really loose fit on the stub axles due to the need for movement with the motorisation. The centre caps are also made of poly rather than hard styrene (unlike newer Tamiya kits that fit with an internal poly bush)
I had to install short sections of telescoped plastic tubing inside each wheel in order to get a good fit on the stub axles
New centre caps were punched from plastic sheet and detailed with punched bolt heads and a pewter centre dome
A nice feature of the kit is that you get a selection of different road wheel types so you can mix and match - I went with the early cast steel type on all axles
the turret got a scratch built gun made from the usual tubing and filler
Looking at photos showed the surface to be fairly rough castings so I gave it a coat of Vallejo red oxide texture paint
I added the vertical casting marks around the turret ring - some were micro strip and others were the texture paint applied with a cocktail stick as an experiment to see how it looked. Both methods seem to have worked ok and should look fine under paint
engine deck grille was treated to an Eduard etch mesh after carefully trimming out the kit part - still need to add bolt heads to the marked positions on the etch
the small Eduard fret also includes the other engine deck grilles so they were cut out and replaced with etch
New bold heads were added to the back plate to replace the kit ones
Various redundant holes in the upper hull had to be filled - initially with scrap plastic card then filler
Tie downs on the right hull side were scraped off and replaced with brass wire
Storage box scraped flat and tidied up - new lid edge added from micro strip and locking clips from adapted Historex buckles
the early square fuel tanks were a bit lacking so I assembled, filled and sanded them back to basic box shapes then made new outer plates from pewter
New filler caps added from punched sheet
Rather indistinct in the photo but I added the two large louvre blades in the hole on the engine deck - they can be seen through the mesh in the previous photo
stowage boxs on left got new locking clips as well
the never ending pile of track links - been cleaning these over the last couple of weeks and the pile just doesn't seem to be getting any smaller
These are Miniart and seem to be taking forever to clean up
There are still one or two bits to finish off after the tracks are cleaned up but it may stand a chance of actually seeing paint this year :thumb2:
as a small number of you already know my father passed away at the end of January and I lost interest in the builds I was doing. I found it hard to concentrate on pretty much anything.
A few weeks ago I placed an Amazon order for something small and used this cheap old Tamiya kit to boost the order into the free postage bracket knowing full well that being such an old kit it would need work
I opened the box on arrival and started cleaning up some parts to take my mind off things, slowly worked my way through the entire kit and as usual started updating a few bits
Now the lower hull is around 2mm too wide as is usual with the majority of these old made for motorisation Tamiya kits that were designed around a certain motor and battery set. This time I decided to live with it rather than cut it in half - that way I may complete it this year and even get it painted
That said, it hasn't totally escaped correction and updating.......
the motorisation holes were filled in and the open side sponsons were plated over
the side plates are totally devoid of any detail so I made some suspension arm bump stops and milled some suspension grooves in just to give the impression of there being something there
bit hard to see but the track guards were scraped and scraped with the edge of a straight blade to thin them right down to the point where they were just becoming translucent when held up to the light - they are super thin
It would have been faster to whip them off and replace with pewter but I decided to stick with the kit parts for a change knowing I could change to pewter if it didn't work out
the wheels are a really loose fit on the stub axles due to the need for movement with the motorisation. The centre caps are also made of poly rather than hard styrene (unlike newer Tamiya kits that fit with an internal poly bush)
I had to install short sections of telescoped plastic tubing inside each wheel in order to get a good fit on the stub axles
New centre caps were punched from plastic sheet and detailed with punched bolt heads and a pewter centre dome
A nice feature of the kit is that you get a selection of different road wheel types so you can mix and match - I went with the early cast steel type on all axles
the turret got a scratch built gun made from the usual tubing and filler
Looking at photos showed the surface to be fairly rough castings so I gave it a coat of Vallejo red oxide texture paint
I added the vertical casting marks around the turret ring - some were micro strip and others were the texture paint applied with a cocktail stick as an experiment to see how it looked. Both methods seem to have worked ok and should look fine under paint
engine deck grille was treated to an Eduard etch mesh after carefully trimming out the kit part - still need to add bolt heads to the marked positions on the etch
the small Eduard fret also includes the other engine deck grilles so they were cut out and replaced with etch
New bold heads were added to the back plate to replace the kit ones
Various redundant holes in the upper hull had to be filled - initially with scrap plastic card then filler
Tie downs on the right hull side were scraped off and replaced with brass wire
Storage box scraped flat and tidied up - new lid edge added from micro strip and locking clips from adapted Historex buckles
the early square fuel tanks were a bit lacking so I assembled, filled and sanded them back to basic box shapes then made new outer plates from pewter
New filler caps added from punched sheet
Rather indistinct in the photo but I added the two large louvre blades in the hole on the engine deck - they can be seen through the mesh in the previous photo
stowage boxs on left got new locking clips as well
the never ending pile of track links - been cleaning these over the last couple of weeks and the pile just doesn't seem to be getting any smaller
These are Miniart and seem to be taking forever to clean up
There are still one or two bits to finish off after the tracks are cleaned up but it may stand a chance of actually seeing paint this year :thumb2:
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