AMT DOZER TRACKS

Well you could always go out to any construction site and take a look at some. Really all depends on how you want them to look. Right off the assembly line , after a days work , or after sitting around while it has rained for a week. I spend most of my days around them and while they are working they are a bright shiney steel. After they sit for a few days they start rusting pretty good. Right out from the factory they are the same color as the dozer it's self , probally yellow.

I'm building this kit too, I got a few pics for reference that might help. The D5 is in regular use, I found the D8 sitting in a construction yard in the desert, I have no idea how often it gets used or when the last time it moved was.

D5M




D8H




Personally I'm going to go with silver and a liberal dose of rust over that. Dirt is a great rust scrubber but they get a light coat of rust pretty quick, so unless you are going to have yours in a working diorama I'd plan on a mild (been on the lowboy for a day or two) to heavy coat of rust (been sitting in a field for months or years). Brand new the tracks are painted yellow just like practically everything else on the dozer.

Also you might find it helpful to know Krylon makes CAT yellow in their Farm & Implement line of spray paints. There is an Old CAT yellow and a New Cat yellow, I haven't been able to find a solid date for the change, some say the 50's others say the 70-80's so I guess pick the one you like better.

Hey since you guys are working on this kit (this is also a father son project of mine) do any of the kits have the parts actualy numbered??? This is the first time I have seen a mass market kit without one number on any of the parts or trees. My son was just getting used to reading instruction sheets when we decided to build this one and boy did it slow us down

That sure would make it tough alright .
CFR

Yes its a pain, sort of like one of those memory games I had as a child, "ok heres 37 on the chart now where is 37 on the sprue ). The AMT fire apparatus kits are like this too (American LaFrance Pumper, Ladder and Snorkel), I don't know which other kits do this, maybe all AMT truck kits, I have the AMT / Ertl Paystar and it has numbered sprues but it started out as an old Ertl kit, not originally an AMT kit so maybe thats why it has numbers.

Its not too bad for the big parts but the little parts can be a real pain to find, what I do is try and locate some obvious parts then use those as landmarks for finding the smaller parts. With the exception of the instructions I'm finding the kit to be a rather pleasant build.

Yeah the kit it self is great. My son and I started breaking it down to even smaller groups then the instructions have, find maybe 5 to 10 parts, lay them out on the sheet by the number it should be, and build up these small groups. Seems to be working for both of us and only one miss-glued part so far At least the instruction sheet has great drawings of the subassemblies.

That is one of the pains with the ALF kits as well. And what makes it worse is when those little pieces fall off with the way the cram a bunch of sprues into one bag.