What's a Slammer, you may ask? It was the Soltam, Ltd company's proposal to compete with the M109 in IDF service, a 155mm gun in a fully enclosed rotating turret on a Merkava chassis. It was kind of pricey, so the IDF stayed with the M109, but what if Soltam stayed after it and married the French AUF 1 turret to a Merkava hull? I had to do it when the Meng AUF 1 TA 155 kits got down to $35 on Sprue Bros, so I snagged two (accidentaly, I only wanted one, but hey, what the heck). I've had a Meng Merk3 kit around for a while that's missing some turret parts, so while I was waiting for clear to dry today, I started.
Pictured below is the Merk turret ring grafted onto the AUF 1 turretbase, which by the way has ejector pin marks from HELL.
IMG_1358 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
And the hull top with the turret base on, looks like it was made for it.
IMG_1357 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
The original Slammer (apparently two were made) looks like it was based on a Merkava 1 hull, and I thouoght about using one of the several Tamiya hulls I have, but skirts are not fitted, and I didn't want to deal with the sketchy Tamiya suspension, so I gave myself the okay to use a Merk 3 hull. I'm okay now.