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.

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.

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

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

Bill Morrison

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.

Good luck with her, looks good so far. 

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

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.

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.

Off to a good start on a cool subject.