Off to a good start on a cool subject.

Nice subject and off to a good start. From reading your comments, it sounds like its not just the figures they have taken from Dragon.Seems like they have taken on Dragon engineering and instructions as well.

I did this one a couple of years ago, and yeah; it was a pain at times. You're right that the suspension is a little unstable and delicate. Those little pins molded as bolts are details taken to the extreme, imho. The tracks take awhile but seem to work real nice in the end. This was my first one with PE, and I did a lot of complaining on this forum about it. I didn't even attempt the PE headlight guards and went with the plastic ones instead. I never could get the latches for the driver and bog hatches in their respective spots. I'm sure you'll do fine with this, but it does take some patience. Good luck with it.

Good luck with her, looks good so far. 

I bought one a couple years ago and haven't had the guts to tackle it. 

AlanF

In fact, I would say that this kit is way over-engineered and not in a particularly good way. For example the headlight guards are 4 small pieces - seriously! And the suspension system is a nightmare of small parts and tiny attachment points which makes me doubt the overall stability of the drive train, but here we go anyway.

As I'm currently trying to finish a Bronco MPCV I understand your trepidation, it is well warranted. In my case it was over-reach, I'm watching to see a better builder than myself tackle one of their kits,go to it.

In spite of the difficulty, it must be better than the old Italeri kit!

Bill Morrison

Best way to learn is to dive into it! Looks like you're learning! :)

I didn't get much done this week and what I did was an exercise in frustration. There is such a thing a over-engineering where parts are created solely for the purpose of saying there are tons of parts.  That's not good design.  For instance the hull has one piece where the turret goes but then the remainder of the hull is divided into 6 small parts.  There is no reason for this and it makes for a weak upper hull. Crazy, but I'm working with it.

The hull fits inside the bottom tub.  Not exactly great since the fit is very, very tight and you have to stretch the hull apart and pry the top in. However, the instructions had you put all kinds of tiny bits on BEFORE. Ouch. Not a good combo. Also, try putting in  3 pieces that stretch across the hull with no good attachment points. Wow. Challenging.  I have 3 more to go.

So, I spent a good amount of time trying to fit the upper hull in, re-gluing some small tiny bits that fell off during the process, making parts that got lost to the great carpet monster we all dread, and filling in gaps and elevation misalignments. It's a good learning experience.  I think it will be one of those kits that after you finish, you will want to buy another to do it right now that you know all the pitfalls.

Notice the green part that was frabricated from a "spare" part.  It's not perfect, but not all that bad either.

Slowly but surely I plod on.

Thanks for all the comments and encouragement.

Good to see you sticking with it. It does sound like they have taken Dragons worst bits and taken them a few steps further. One thing that annoys me is when you have a loads of parts for the running gear, such as bump stops, axel arms etc and then slap great big road wheels in front of them.

I think your right, its just so they can use the parts count as a selling point.

Looks good Alan, again my hat's off to you for actually building this. I've got serveral Bronco kits but now that I think about it haven't built any of them. 

AlanF

I think it will be one of those kits that after you finish, you will want to buy another to do it right now that you know all the pitfalls.

Hell,they're all like that.

One of my pet peaves on instructions. They show a part with an arrow leading to who knows where or who knows how it is to be placed or the direction it is to be placed in. Without detailed books or tech manuals sometimes you just have to guess.

That's a shame, honestly. I hate models that are engineered like that. I agree that it's all a "parts count" marketing scheme. What a shame. Well, from your review of the build here, I know I won't be getting one. Give me the old Italeri kit and some aftermarket tracks, and I'll be good to go.

Sorry, I didn't get much done on the Chaffee last week.  My free time was spent with taxes - ick. Since that unpleasant task is over, I hope to make some progress this week.

Again, thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I plan to push through to the end; although there have been times I felt like the great trash can monster was calling.

I really do understand your frustrations with the Chaffee. Several times, I considered putting my kit in the trash also, but kept at it anyway. Those separate panels for the rear deck used up several hours of my time as I filed and sanded them to fit. You've already done better than I did with with some of those PE pieces, so kudos to you there. Once I got it painted ( to cover a myriad of mistakes) it looked much better. Hang in there!

Well, I made some progress this week. The upper hull is done complete with all the little bits. What is strange is that there was no PE for the big grate but there was for the little ones. As can be seen, filler was needed. I used a combination of Tamiya Extra thin with plastic sprue dissolved in it and some putty.  I still need to do some sanding and take of some super glue and finger prints.  

This was a real pain to put together. My suggestion is to NOT follow the directions and to place all the main pieces on the upper hull and then all the small bits or you are going to lose a lot of them. Also because of the instructions not showing the proper angle for the grab holds on the hatches, it looks like they may need to re replaced since they may interfere with the turret. Sigh.

I didn’t put on a lot of the small PE bits. I just don’t have the patience or the hands to do it.  I’m not happy with the PE but it may end up being fine with a coat of primer and some weathering, which covers a multitude of sins.  The back rack is off. I’m debating ripping out one side and trying again.  There were no fold marks so it was a bit of guessing.

Now for the good news. The tracks are wonderful. Yes, they are a bit of a pain to clean-up but they fit like a glove and they will be workable, if I want.

As always, thanks for all the kind remarks and suggestions.

I might have to take back what I said earlier . . . the Italeri 1/35 Chaffee might be a more user-friendly kit to build.

Bill

Your troubles with this kit remind me of a project which gets farmed out to a bunch of suits while the actual engineers are left out of the decision-making processes! It seems like a lot of non-modelers sat around saying something like "Well based upon what we read on forum X, this would be a cool feature to use. It would be a great marketing trick to break down this piece into five subassemblies..."

Good on ya for your persistence. I"m just curious what you're going to tackle next as a tonic for the frustration that this kit has put you through?!

the doog

Your troubles with this kit remind me of a project which gets farmed out to a bunch of suits while the actual engineers are left out of the decision-making processes! It seems like a lot of non-modelers sat around saying something like "Well based upon what we read on forum X, this would be a cool feature to use. It would be a great marketing trick to break down this piece into five subassemblies..." Good on ya for your persistence. I"m just curious what you're going to tackle next as a tonic for the frustration that this kit has put you through?!

It does seem that way. Plus some of the PE is broken down in such a way that doesn't make sense. Four separate pieces for the headlamp guard! I don't see any way to really assemble that nicely without solder. (Then again, some people do wonders with PE. I'm just not one of them.) Same breakdown with the plastic and no way to assembly that without doing it on the tank but the instructions show you doing it by itself - really! Good luck with that. 

I have a nice Tamiya M4A3E8 Sherman Easy Eight looking at me right now. That should be a relaxing build.

Despite your problems she's looking good Alan.

And yeah I've thought about picking up the newer AFV Club kit, but I did buy the Bronco one so I HAVE to build it someday.

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks.  I had to take a bit of a break from this kit. Every time you think it maybe be going good - nope.  Nothing is easy in this kit. Take, for example, the tracks. They cleaned up nicely, went together with a nice snap, and it appeared they would be stable and workable.  Nope. The system used is fairly flimsy and unlinks with only slight pressure making putting them on a nightmare. So, they had to be glued together which kind of defeats the purpose of linked tracks. At this point rubber band tracks would be preferred.

Don’t even get me going on the fenders and side skirts. It is simply one thin edge of plastic against another - no alignment or glue points. Sigh. What engineer thought this was a good idea?

Progress so far:

The hull, tracks and fenders have been put together.  At this point I wasn’t going to put on the side skirts as most of the pictures I’ve seen lacked them, plus I wanted to show off the tracks which I thought would be nice.

I also removed the photo etch bucket in the back and repositioned it.  It was uneven and driving me crazy.  In the process the delicate photo etch got a little bent - war damage I’m saying.

At this point, it was apparent the tracks were a nightmare and had to be glued. It’s still a tricky job.

Not the best of jobs.  They are a bit wavy, but hopefully it will be masked by the fenders.

I made the decision to use the side skirts to mask the upper tracks. They were time consuming to put together since it was literally a tiny edge of plastic against the other.

To make that join more robust, I used sprue dissolved in Tamiya Extra-Thin to add some plastic for stability.

That’s it for now.  On to the turret.  Can it get any worst?

Thanks for all the encouragement.

I feel your pain! I didn't worry about putting the sand shields on either. As you said, most photos show them removed.

As for the turret: The gun breech and shields don't have a lot of definite glue points either just like the fenders. Lots of tiny, delicate parts for the outside surface of the turret. I lost at least one part that's supposed to be there and I lost part F15 for the .50 Cal mount. I never could figure out where part E38 went on the hatch edge of the turret.

Keep at it. I'm sure you can get it done. I'm actually pretty happy with the way mine turned out after paint and decals.

Hi AlanF, Good problem solving and thanks for your tips and step-by-step pictures.

She looks awesome so far. 

Yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about the shields- looking though Jim Mesko's 'Armor in Korea' and didn't see them fitted on most M24s, M26s, or M46s past the very early stages of the war.  

And I bought the Korean War tiger face version- as if building the thing wasn't enough work do I want to do all that masking too??? 

I’ve made a little bit more progress.  I needed to put on a coat of primer before attaching the fender/skirts since I wouldn’t be able to get at the tracks otherwise.  It really doesn’t look all that bad with a nice black primer coat!

M1GarandFan

As for the turret: The gun breech and shields don't have a lot of definite glue points either just like the fenders. Lots of tiny, delicate parts for the outside surface of the turret. I lost at least one part that's supposed to be there and I lost part F15 for the .50 Cal mount. I never could figure out where part E38 went on the hatch edge of the turret. 

Yes, you are correct. The turret and gun assembly is a mess of unclear instructions.  Take the sub-assembly #23. How do you really attach those parts? Looking ahead doesn’t give a clear indication since the left side is never shown.  If you do this as a sub-assembly - good luck getting everything aligned. The solution is to ignore this step and actually assemble it with the main gun. (Good advice for most of the sub-assembly instructions so far.)

Doing so allows you to see how the parts are positioned and gives you addition support and attachment points that the sub-assembly lacked.  There are lots of small parts but it is looking good.  I still need to do a bit of cleanup and re-alignment but so far I’m happy with it.

´

Note:

If you are going through the cost of printing a nice instruction booklet, at least spend some time actually making good instructions.  Show the parts assembled and from various angles. I really have no idea how to attach the tools, the instructions are so vague but they did go into a lot of detail on the photo etch parts the hold the tools on, not so much as to how to actually place them and no pictures/drawing showing them placed. Grrrhhhh….

GlennH

Those tweezers have a lot of character and look like they seen many builds.

 

LOL. Yup, they have seen better days but nothing that some sandpaper, to keep them sharp, can't fix. I should break down and buy some new ones.

Alan

I certainly agree with you about the instructions. They use all the fancy CAD generated drawings, but that doesn't help when the rest of the instructions are poorly done.

What you did, building the #23 subassembly on the gun itself, is exactly how I did it too. I think it's really the only way to locate the parts correctly.

I’ve made a lot of progress since my last update.

The side skirts have been applied and they actually fit well.  The tools on the other hand are probably wrongly placed. The instructions were very unclear and there were no pictures of the final assembly.  I think the shovel needs to be on top of all the other tools but this crew decided otherwise! I’m not sure what I am going to do for tie downs. I’m not using the PE but I might use thin strips of masking tape or just leave them.

Some other bits needed to be placed after the fenders and side skirts went on.

The upper half of the turret was assembled. There were 2 main issues here.  The large hatch did not fit. I could have assembled it opened and bypass the fit problem (and I should have) but at this point I wanted it closed.  I needed to slowly cut out the plastic between the hinges and test fit.  It finally came together.  The ammo box was another issue. What engineer thinks of making a small scale ammo box with SIX individual poorly molded sections and then wrap it in PE. Like that is going to fit ok?  I did attempt it and, well, it wasn’t pretty.  Fortunately I had a spare from another kit and it fit well.

The lower half of the turret went together fairly well. The main problem was with the gear/wheel assembly placement.  There is no way it could be placed according to the instructions. I looked at some pictures online and placed it where i thought it should go.  I had to modify it a bit later on since the top of the turret wouldn’t fit with it as placed here.

With that done, it was time for some more primer. I used Stynylrez Black for the outside and Stynylrez grey for the inside. (I need to buy some white.)

Now it was time to paint the inside of the turret white and weather it up. Online pictures were all over the place - white everywhere, black or white gun, grey floors, white floors, grey. I decided to try using some Tamiya Smoke over the gun to give it a “dirty/used” look. I also added some black dirt washes. You aren’t going to see much with the one open hatch but I liked the way it came out.

With the upper and lower turret halves assembled it was time for a final primer pass.

She is already for painting now and for all the struggles, she’s looking pretty good at this point.

As always, thanks for the views and comments.