Over the past couple of days I have been poking this with the ole' modeling stick to see what shakes out. This is an older kit, and is far from great....not even that close to good considering what we have to work with now, but hey, its what I've got. The sprues are very heavy, flash and mold misalignment are very prevalent, and detail somewhat basic. So I figured I would try to evaluate what needed and could be done with this for a couple of reasons; 1) I have a limited modeling budget and want to make sure this will work before I invest any more into it, 2) I have decided (based on past experience) that if something hits the bench from now on, it will be finished, unless it is so craptastic that it just needs to be thrown out. Well, I think I can make this work and get a decent result, but it will take some elbow grease.
The sprue attachments are sometimes in really poor locations, such as the turret bottom. The large sprue gates are right on the bottom surface that sits on the hull :facepalm
Test fitting the top of the hull reveals a decent gap on either side of the glacis plate where it should fit between the fenders. Some Evergreen shims will need to be added to fix this, but not much of a big deal.
The biggest problems with the kit concerns the lower hull and running gear. The fenders are very thick, so I thinned one as a test, using a Dremel tool and course sanding sticks, I figured if worked I could save on buying replacements. Plus, by thinning the fenders to as close to scale thickness as possible it would eliminate a potential large step between the fender and etch mud guards when they are attached, also if I choose to not add a mud flap the fender will be the correct thickness. While the picture is not great, the fender on the left has been thinned by about 2/3 its original thickness.
Did I mention the running gear is very poor??? The kit road wheels have a lot of flash and mold seams to clean up and the return rollers are more oval than round due to mold shift. Fortunately the parts boz coughed up a sprue of Italeri Pz.1 running gear, from which I am using the road wheels, return rollers, and possibly the drive sprocket. The hubs on the Italeri road wheels have a larger axel hole (well, the kit ones don't have a hole, you have to drill them out!), and the center hub is thicker by about .020. I think I have a solution, in that I made new axels from .030 Evergreen rod, sanded the center hub down to the same thickness as the kit hub, and made new mounting pins for the unit from Contrail tube. I will need to use the large rear idler wheel from the kit, as well as the swing arms, after a lot of clean up, but this might just work. The main concern is getting all the wheels to line up correctly so the track will run true. This photo shows the Italeri road wheels with the kit wheels to the right, and an Italeri return roller with the kit ones above.
And this is the mock up of the revised suspension unit using the kit swing arms and Italeri wheels with scratch built axels and mounting tube.
So far so good.
Ernie
