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| c Dorking Tank Factory |
The base kit really is the biggest pile of crap you could ever imagine. However to be fair to it its 30-40 years old
and was designed to be more of a toy. The first thing you need to do is to get it all to line up correctly and that in itself
is a huge job. Most parts tend to be warped so just glueing it isnt going to be enough. Secondly you have to chop the floor
out as the original holds preformed shapes to tak ethe original cogs and motors(they dont come with the kit anymore). All
I did was to cut out the floor and glue the front glacis and back plate with the sides to the thickest bit of plasticard
I could buy to give me a strong basis to work on. The back hull plate had to have an odd shape removed that obviously held
the drive gear in place on the original kit.
| The tracks are from a Trumpeter 1/20 scale tank |
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| c Dorking Tank Factory |
The tracks are the key to making this kit usable. I happened to have a huge 1/20 scale Trumpeter type 98 MBT which is
a really awful kit apart from the running gear. Its got full link on link tracks which are perfect for this kit. All that
had to be done was to widen the side sponsoons and replace the kits drive sprocket which was just a wheel with central spikes
and the front idler. Thh only hiccup being is that you will see from the pictures that it has no upper return rollers. The
tracks in the kit were so thin and the rollers so oversize that now the new track wont take the old rollers. New ones
are currently being made from bits from the spares box. Apart from that the main wheels are fine just need the edges curving
over and run very smoothly indeed.
Pipes have been run inside the baffles to inside the tank to allow smoke to be pushed out when fitted to the twin GRAUPNER
smoke units inside
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