M60A3-Question

I have a Tamiya M60A3 here in my to-do bin right now. It is missing the main gun, but I really don't think I will be doing much with it. You wanna buy it? rofl

I started out on M60A3s as well. I don't know much about the USMC's version of the M60, but the differences that I know of between the US Army's 60s and A3s are the small triangular pieces under the main gun and the laser designator port on the left (loader's) side of the turret are not used. The port is there, it is just hollow with no cover.

Yes, this is correct. All the bits that were in the Tamiya M60A3 kit are contained in the Tamiya USMC M60A1 RISE/Passive kit. The only difference is that the road wheel sprue contained in the ancient original M60A1 and included in the M60A3 was replaced by a several new "G" sprues that contained new all steel road wheels.

When I rode the A3, all of our tanks had a random mix of the finned aluminum road wheels and smooth steel road wheels. Since all of our replacement road wheels were steel, I assume the tanks were initially delivered with aluminum road wheels and the mix occurred as road wheels wore out and were replaced with the steel ones.

The Tamiya USMC M60A1 will give you an all-steel road wheeled A3. Not a common occurance, but not an impossibilty. I thought about mixing the road wheels from the M60A3 and USMC M60A1, but the hubs are different sizes and don't look right on the same model.