I think a good detergent and alcohol will work with a tooth brush to scrub a bit. There's a lot of wax on there and the turpentine does not break up the wax for some reason. I emailed the company and am waiting for a reply but I did a little with the alcohol and the primer seems to have taken.
There are a lot of little issues with the Tamiya kit. The Turret is not one of them IMO.
The tracks, you have to get the aftermarket ones. I just put them together. It was easy after the first few inches and I just sprayed them with flat. At first I looked at those pieces and just wen OMG but it was easy. Now I have to try and make them look real....I said try.
The front, it's supposed to be pointy, use putty. The whole chassis is mostly cast so you need to add that texture look like Doog did to the chassis and turret.
The ride height, definitely too high, easy fix. Cut down the struts on the shocks and glue with CA.
The hard fix is the rear sprocket, it's the drive sprocket. It need a complete rebuild. I did it but it came out sloppy. I will fix that with some red Nam mud. But they are wrong big time.
The driver periscopes need lens's or something in there.
The basket on the turret and the fender holder or whatever they are called, struts, can be sanded a bit. Thin down the basket wire a bit or replace. I think sanding them both helps. Next build I will try to build the basket with wire.
I didn't on this but will on the next one, make real handles on the tool boxes. There are some other little things here and there and it really depends on what year and if it's a Marine or Army M48A3.
I could have done a lot of things to make it look better and more realistic but it's for a diorama with a lot of other things going on.