Painting the inside of road wheels for a Nashorn.

I cant speak for the Nashorn. But based off my experience with M113 series vehicles over many years, in operations, that will be one of the few areas on an AFV that will be bare metal. Between contact with the track guide teeth, mud, rocks, dirt, etc, the inner faces of the road wheels will get abraded of the paint and primer down to bare metal.

I would paint them DY. Nashorns were not generally "late war" vehicles where you could argue that lack of paint supplies of conservation would have been an issue.

I would go for DY as well, that's what I do on al my German armour. Even the undersides of German AFV's were painted, something I only recently found out.

Stik, that's interesting what you say about M113 wheels. The wheels on our warriors and 432's were painted green on the inside and they usually stayed green up to the point when they needed changing.

Bish,, I cant answer why it was, but it was one for those things that stuck with me that I remember. The undersides of the vehicle hull and the inner faces of the roadwheels being worn bare of paint. Not chipped, but looking like they had been sanded... roughly. And then that little rim area on the road wheel face near the tire that formed a "lip".

I took these pics at the Munster tank museum (Germany) this summer. I hope they are of any help...

Brummbär:

Hummel (she's actually fully operational and they sometimes drive around in her):

The Germans were very meticulous and primered & painted everything. The only exception would be very near the end of WWII where some late armor was operational in partial primer schemes and some aircraft had nm panels mixed in with painted ones as in the case of very late Doras.

Thanks everyone for the responses. I'll go with the DY.

Like I said, "I was curious" and like plasticjunkie says, and I know Carl has mentioned this many moons ago also the Germans were meticulous.

The simple answer is that both are possible...there's an excellent color photograph (well known but which I can't locate in my files at the moment...) of a Pz III coming out of a river on the Eastern Front with a spare wheel mounted on the fender that clearly has primer red inner surfaces and not Panzer Gray like the outer hubs. Which makes sense when you consider the way the wheels were constructed...the rubber was formed directly onto the rim and then the hubs typically painted after their installation on the vehicle. Go with what you prefer IB!

Interesting point by Bill and the above picture. I just wonder if the picture was originally B&W then colorized?  The spare wheel on the LF seems to even have the outside of the rim in a reddish color very similar to the tool handle color. Maybe red mud that got trapped and settled on the rim as the water around the tank has a reddish tone to it?

It does not look like a colorized photo, but I was wondering about the reddish stuff on the uppermost spare wheel as well. It does not match the shade of mud in the water, and I dont recall ever hearing of the reddish muds in Russia.

That's the pic I was referring to. It's an original color photo, hasn't been retouched or colorized. The red mud idea doesn't hold up too well, if you look closely you'll see that the red oxide on the spare wheel is visible on the inner surfaces as well as the outer hub surface and is uniformly consistent. Remember that the hubs have lightening holes in them as well, so pretty hard for mud to collect there at the height and level that would be required to go all the way up the hub sides to the rubber edge. The wheel on the other side shows the same red oxide but slightly different due to shadow/lighting angle. There's other photos out there in this same sequence that show the vehicle moving up the bank that allow an even closer look of the fender and spare tire in question. Last but not least, this is not a Tauchpanzer...it's fording the river at a shallow point and wouldn't have been fully submerged at any point regardless.

Hi,

I would also argue that this is an area where some AF can be applied. I have seen the primer red done a number of times in various modelling mag's over time and it looks convincing.

Looking at Schattenspartans pictures I would lean towards Stickpushers idea though.

The road wheels (probably the entire tank) in that picture have been repainted, looking at the drive sprockets and rubber elements those would have been worn clean of paint after only limited use.

And the track guide horns would have been rattling away between those road wheels with only one way for mud and dirt to escape - up.

That is obviously nothing more then my , as I said initially - go AF.

Good luck on your Nashorn!

Best Regards
Johan 

Good points Bill. So much for my mud idea.

Unrestored Stug wheels, Fort Knox, Looks like there are remains of Dark Yellow. Take your pick, I doubt either way would be wrong....