While today is Halloween on the calendar, it's really just another Saturday and therefore prime building time at the workbench! This particular kit is one of the older kits in the DML catalog and the parts count shows that...the front of the box lists it as having 237 parts and even with that low count there's almost an entire sprue that's marked as not for use. Of course that's due to the fact that the tracks are one-piece DS tracks instead of individual links, otherwise that would add another ~220 parts right there to the total count. I will be replacing those DS tracks with the MK Elefant set and also using some Lion Roar PE for the details. Zim will be courtesy of the Atak set which also includes a resin replacement turret to address the accuracy problems there with the original DML turret. After I opened up the kit I also discovered that it has a split two-piece barrel, so I've got an early Tiger I barrel on order from JB Models that's not pictured but which will be used.
Diving right in with Step 1, I assembled all of the road wheels and since I will be replacing the DS tracks with the MK set I added the necessary spacers to give the road wheels the correct width. The road wheels are originally designed to fit together using posts as you can see in the pic below and with half the wheels the spacer negates that so I held off joining the wheel halves together until I could use the suspension elements to help align them and avoid potential problems down the road.
Steps 2 and 3 assemble the suspension elements for both sides and I left them semi-workable by not gluing down the bump stop to the cylinder just yet. By doing this, I will have some flexibility with the wheels to insure a level stance when they get installed. This is even more important due to the addition of the MK spacers since the mount pins on the suspension elements won't make contact as originally designed by DML.
Step 4 calls for the installation of the suspension elements to the hull. This step also calls for the installation of the mud scrapers, parts B13 and B14, for the front drive sprockets but if that's done before the sprockets are installed, the sprockets can't be fitted correctly so I left them off for the time being.
Using the suspension arms as a guide, I applied glue only to the MK spacer disks and carefully assembled each wheel individually. After the glued had started to set up, I used small amounts of blue tack putty to mount the wheels on the arms and made minor adjustments as needed to insure the wheels sat level.
The wheels were removed and put off to the side to finish setting up. While I could go ahead and install them permanently at this stage since they are all steel wheels and there's no rubber rims to paint (even though the DML instructions indicate otherwise), it will be easier to paint the bare metal contact surfaces with the wheels off the vehicle. Continuing on with Step 5 and 6, I installed the front and rear sprockets. The front sprockets are designed to be static but the MK set includes an adapter that allows the sprocket to be adjusted. The adapter was added to the interior hull side and since the sprocket parts themselves can't rotate, this will be a key feature when installing the MK tracks and adjusting for tension.
Step 7 is a simple step that installs the horizontal front plate above the glacis. Some minor surgery is also called for in this step to remove features that were seen on the Elefant but not on the Tiger (P). These include the large molded on bolts at the hull side rear and some smaller bolts at the front. This needs to be done on both sides of the hull even though the instructions only indicate to do this on one side.
Next up will start the work of adding the Zimmerit panels and various parts to the hull. I need to check and see if that horizontal plate had zimmerit or not since the box art suggests it should but the Atak set doesn't include a panel for that area. If it's supposed to have zim, I'll have to do that section myself so some research is in order before I proceed tomorrow!