The Hobby Craft T-59 is actually a Trumpeter T-55, and an old one at that. This kit is full of flash, but I can say that a great amount of attention has been paid to correct placement of locator holes (some of which need to be bored out from the underside of the hull super, according to which version you're doing).
This kits needs a lot of filling and sanding. For one thing, having build the Tammy T-62 and now this, I don't understand the need for kit manufacturers to produce these four-piece fuel drums. The seams take forever to sand down sufficiently, and it's difficult to get them to ever look just right. I started with these, knowing that by the end of the build I might be too frustrated (or tired, or lazy) to pay proper attention to them.
In these kits, the fenders are molded into the one-piece upper hull super, and some of the fender supports are molded in place while others are on the sprue. All are entirely too thick, about two or three times too thick.The real ones are so thin that you can just about buckle them with your boot heel. I cut off all the molded-on supports from my fenders, filled most of the locator holes for the tool boxes and fuel panniers, and also filled in the holes for the pioneer tools (Iraqi tanks seldom carried tools of any kind - in many cases, even the buckles, straps & tie-downs were removed).
The parts that widen the bustle ring need a lot of putty also. Shouldn't be a big fat seam there.
Next came the sanding. Where the turned front & rear ends of the fenders attach to the fenders themselves, a lot of filing and sanding is needed. You shouldn't be able to see any seam at all, and if you want seamless, you have to putty & sand. It's still not where I want it to be, yet.
The kit's fuel panniers (those rectangular boxes with the rounded corners) are entirely too small. Because I used AM ones on my T-62, I had the T-62 kit panniers available, so I used them here, and they're a beautiful fit. I used an On The Mark PE set to replace those fender supports, and the kit's own tool boxes.
So that's where this project stands at the moment. What do you guys think?
~J