1/35 M70A2 Krueger MBT, Desert Storm, 1991

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Interesting updates. The turret looks great. The antislip method looks to have worked well. Should look nice under paint. Your research and attention to detail does you credit.
Jim

[Guest]

Interesting updates. The turret looks great. The antislip method looks to have worked well. Should look nice under paint.

Thanks, and I do hope the antislip keeps looking good once there’s paint over it

Your research and attention to detail does you credit.

Thanks again My starting point is that it should be credible for this to be an upgraded MBT-70 as it might have evolved from the real-world prototypes. That requires looking at what the real thing was like, and then fitting in later (mainly American) ideas of real tank construction, mainly the M1 Abrams of course. Sure, it’s basically a fantasy model, but I want to make it realistic fantasy.

I still have some tricky bits ahead, mainly detailing the remote gun mount — Dragon’s is missing a lot of stuff that’s clearly visible through the open hatches on photos of German prototypes (though the surviving ones don’t have 100% the same mounting, and one even has the gun fitted back to front …). I’m also going to have to scratchbuild an entire M85 machine gun to replace the 20 mm cannon (I figure the Americans would have reverted to that rather than a 20 mm cannon, and an M2 HB doesn’t fit in the turret — I tried ) and the interiors of the optics, as Dragon has left these completely bare but does provide clear parts. Fun, fun, fun …

[Guest]

The model that just keeps on giving — more work, that is.

I already knew the American MBT-70 had stowage bins on the front mudguards that the German version lacked. Here they are marked out on the kit’s hull:

[ATTACH]349401[/ATTACH]

While doing that, I noticed that the hull shape is noticeably different between the two tanks On the German version, the sponsons (the areas above the tracks) are basically wedge-shaped, tapering from very thin at the front to full thickness above the third roadwheel, with an ever narrower mudguard alongside. On the American tanks, the sponson doesn’t taper, but begins at full thickness above the second roadwheel, and the mudguard seems to be full-width but sits underneath the stowage bin until that point. Compare the hull to the drawing in this photo:

[ATTACH]349402[/ATTACH]

The drawing is from Hunnicutt’s book, by the way, enlarged to 1:35 scale.

After pondering on how to solve this, I decided to cut off the German mudguards:

[ATTACH]349403[/ATTACH]

I left the first few millimetres on, because it has nice hinges Next, I cut away the underside of the hull so I could put some plastic card underneath, extending out the side a little to the depth and width needed to build up the slope:

[ATTACH]349404[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]349405[/ATTACH]

The plastic is 1.5 mm thick, and this works because for some reason, Dragon put the sponson floors higher than the actual sponson bottoms by that same 1.5 mm. It needed an 0.5 mm spacer at the front to keep everything level, though. I’ll now need to fill the gap and once that all sets, I can file and sand everything into shape.

[Guest]

Anti-slip on the engine deck:

[ATTACH]349962[/ATTACH]

Applied in the same way as on the turret, so I’ll get on with the hull front instead Once the sides were done to my satisfaction, I added new side mudguards from 0.25 mm plastic card:

[ATTACH]349959[/ATTACH][ATTACH]349960[/ATTACH]

I put some scrap plastic just in front of the hullside fillets to get the rear end firmly in place, also a spacer about halfway down, and cut the front so part of it fits as a strengthening lip under the hull while the edge lines up with the remainder of the original mudguard. Then it was a matter of adding filler into the gap and shaping that once everything was dry:

[ATTACH]349961[/ATTACH]

All that remained was to add the lids. I first added a bit of 0.25 mm card at the front to form the end of the bins, then cut the lids from more of that same card. Using the drawings in Spielberger’s book, converting the measurements to those of the model, I then marked out where the reinforcements, hinges and clasps were to go:

[ATTACH]349963[/ATTACH]

And one in place on the model:

[ATTACH]349964[/ATTACH]

Finally, I glued all the detail on:

[ATTACH]349965[/ATTACH]

The ribs are from 1 mm half-round plastic rod, the hinges and clasps from assorted strip and rod.

Now to find a good way to make the curved front sections of these mudguards …

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
looking good some very nice modifications and additions.

[Guest]

Jakko,
Starting to come together now and look other than oddities, which is pleasing to the eye.
As for the front mudguards, use the old method of wrapping card around a dowel, and then plunge it inot very ho water for a minute to reall soften it and from there into ice cold water to keep the rounded shape, you can then shape the mudguard to the drawing.
Be an interesting model when it is finished and a conversation piece.
Cheers, Mike.

[Guest]

Starting to come together now and look other than oddities, which is pleasing to the eye.

Thanks, and yes, I’m finally getting there I thought this would be a quick job to replace the engine deck and add the turret armour, but it’s turning out quite a bit more complicated.

As for the front mudguards, use the old method of wrapping card around a dowel, and then plunge it inot very ho water for a minute to reall soften it and from there into ice cold water to keep the rounded shape, you can then shape the mudguard to the drawing.

I was first thinking of pulling plastic sheet under a ruler a couple of times, but that doesn’t give all that consistent results. I think I’ll try your method, or use the kit’s front mudguards. The thing is that the kit represents what amounts to a second-generation German prototype. The first generation was very similar to the American ones, so you can argue that a lot of the differences (like the mudguards) would have made it into the actual production version.

Be an interesting model when it is finished and a conversation piece.

Thanks, and I hope so

[Guest]

The kit, of course, provides German headlights; I had decided on M2/M3 Bradley headlights for this model, partly because I had some spares (the Tamiya Bradley kits provide two sets, and in the M2A2 kit you don’t even need any) and partly because it fits with the mid-70s development this tank would have seen. Whether you go for the headlights of the real thing (taken from an M48A5, M60, M107 or M110 kit, for example) or do like I did, you’ll have to build your own brush guards, though. The real things were made from metal tube (I think — could be rod, but that amounts to the same thing for a model) so I settled on 0.8 mm copper wire. After measuring up the width of the headlight clusters, I soldered three pieces of this wire together, twice:

[ATTACH]350464[/ATTACH]

One is wider than the other because the Bradley’s front light clusters consist of a front light and a turn indicator on the right-hand side, but a front light, a horn and a turn indicator on the left. They’re just three lengths of copper wide, with the ends trimmed straight rather than leaving the points left by the cutter I used, with flux applied, then tinned and finally soldered together. All I did was tape the two parallel legs onto a ceramic kitchen tile, and held the crossbar against them with tweezers before applying the soldering iron. (One has solder on both ends of the legs because of a first attempt that didn’t work well, so I just used the other side of the wire for the next try.)

That done, the fun part began … First, I had to carefully file the excess solder away, which is not an easy a task with parts this small, bendy and (probably) fragile. Even more fun was bending the things into shape.

[ATTACH]350465[/ATTACH]

This is the narrow (right-hand side) one, untrimmed. The crossbar goes at the top, and is bent backwards just outside the two uprights; it then runs horizontally back a bit before bending down towards the glacis plate. The front legs are much the same: vertical and then bent back to meet the glacis plate. The dimensions are very difficult to figure out, because the length of the wire gets in the way and you can’t just go and make a couple of bends to see if it fits, then straighten it and try again if it doesn’t — well, not without an awful lot of effort straightening everything properly first again, anyway. It wasn’t helped by my brilliant decision to glue the front mudguards in place before trying to build the brush guards … I had to resort to drawing the lights’ outer dimensions on the outside of the mudguard — that is, the side away from the lights, where the idler wheel would sit next to — so I could at least compare the brush guard to something for test-fitting.

The ends of all four legs are then bent outward like on the real thing. I still need to trim them to length and flatten them, as they also are on the real tank.

Even better is that I made the crossbar of the wide brush guard too short … after bending the narrow one, I discovered the other one is not long enough to reach the glacis, so I’ll have to make a new one from a longer length of wire. On the positive side, I wasn’t all that happy with the way the wide one turned out anyway, as at least one of the legs didn’t quite attach right to it.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Some very nice work on the brush guards.

[JR]

Most impressive work Jakko.
I esp like the plastic rod frame over the mesh. What size it made from please.

[Guest]

Most impressive work Jakko.

Thanks, and Paul too

I esp like the plastic rod frame over the mesh. What size it made from please.

0.5 by 0.25 mm Evergreen strip, most of it. The centre part of the deck is 0.5 mm plastic card, so I took strip half as thick for the frames so they would actually be visible as recessed parts

[Guest]

Brushguards installed:

[ATTACH]350948[/ATTACH]

And while I was in this area, I also built front mudguard extensions, as I doubt a tank in service would have flat ones like in the kit, and anyway the German prototypes have a tube welded to the top of the mudguard that seems to be intended for attaching something to the front:

[ATTACH]350946[/ATTACH]

The extensions are from 0.25 mm plastic card, formed following the advice of Guest by rolling a strip of the right width around an aluminium knife handle and immersing it into boiling water for a while before holding it under a running tap. The rest is more plate for the side panel, and strip for the lip and the hinges, plus some punched 0.7 mm hexagonal bits for bolts to hold the extension on.

I also painted the part of the hull behind the suspension arms, and the inside-facing bits of those arms, and then attached them:

[ATTACH]350947[/ATTACH]

You can’t really make it out in the photo, but I scratched a cross into the undersides of the four assemblies with the shorter arms (see earlier in this thread) so I could keep them straight and add them into the right positions (nos. 3 and 5 wheel stations).

Even though this tank will be finished in sand colour, I painted this part forest green because real M1 tanks in the Gulf War were that colour and then overpainted sand, so bits like these would remain green (aside from overspray, of course). There are photos of M1s in the Gulf with the front mudguard lifted up, showing green underneath, for example.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
The nice work continues the brush guards look spot on.

[Guest]

I made the side skirts, based on the design for the M1 Abrams:

[ATTACH]351037[/ATTACH]

The main panels are 1 mm plastic card, with strip 1 mm thick and 3.2 mm wide along most of the edges to give the panels the bulk of those of the Abrams as well. These don’t got all the way on the underside because on the Abrams, only the front couple of panels are made of “special armor” (Chobham) while the rear ones are simple steel plate. The “special” skirts on the M1 protect the crew and ammunition, so for the M70A2 I felt they would go to approximately the rear of the turret so as to shield the ammunition and fuel.

On the underside of the sponsons I put plastic card spacers, and glued L-shaped pieces made from Games Workshop sprue as brackets to the skirts to securely attach them to those spacers. A few bits of square rod provide locating points to glue the brackets up against from behind. That will only happen once the model is mostly painted and the wheels and tracks are in place, though.

Unlike the Abrams, I’m not going to depict these panels as hinged to open forward or back, but upward like on the Leopard and late German KPz 70 prototypes. I still need to make the attachment points on the hull, though.

[Guest]

The stowage baskets on the turret sides needed reinforcing bars, but I found it very difficult to make those from plastic card. Punching or drilling holes to fit the spacing of the bars was almost impossible, to the extent that it began to look like I would have needed to make at least half a dozen for each of the bars before I got one that fit. I began looking for another way, and this turned out to be surprisingly easy and guaranteed to fit.

[ATTACH]351614[/ATTACH]

I first cut narrow strips of masking tape and wrapped it around the bars, as tightly as possible.

[ATTACH]351617[/ATTACH]

Next, I flowed superglue into the space between the tape and the bars, letting capillary action form it into a “skin” that fills the gap.

[ATTACH]351615[/ATTACH]

After the glue had dried, I smeared putty into the same area, because the superglue doesn’t form a thick enough layer and leaves a noticeable hollow. The layer of putty needs to be thick enough that it extends outside the tape, to account for shrinkage.

[ATTACH]351618[/ATTACH]

Finally, all that remained after the putty had dried as to scrape it all off flat, flush with the edges of the tape. The tape itself also needed a little trimming here and there, which can be minimised by hiding the end where it won’t be in plain view. I did pretty much the opposite with the tape in the foreground, as you may notice in some of the photos above