A very productive Sunday today, I started in on this one wit a vengeance. The first step in the instructions calls for the assembly of the hull tub, an interesting surprise to be sure, but one that allowed for some nice detail on the hull sides. The hull side panels test fit well, but just to be sure I got a good alignment I went ahead and also prepared the fighting compartment bulkhead and floor for installation at the same time to insure a square alignment. I snapped a quick pic before installing them to show the results of the step. The holes on the front hull panel for the spare track holder were filled in with putty since I will be using the Eduard items for this instead of the kit parts.
Step 2 is a two parter, first part is the installation of the fighting compartment elements mentioned previously. The second is the installation of the upper hull and rear hull panel. Some ejector pin marks needed to be sanded and filled while others were just removed with a sharp knife depending. The fit of the top hull to the bottom was very good with only a small gap on the right side near the driver's hood that was easily filled with a little putty. I also took advantage of this opportunity to remove the solid molded on engine hatch handles and replaced them with the Eduard items. These consist of PE frames with 0.5mm diameter styrene rods for the handles and the Eduard instructions have an error...they say the rods should be 3.5mm when really they should be 2.5mm. I put a length of rod down on some masking tape and used a ruler to cut 4 sections and then glued them to the PE frames with CA. The handles were glued to the hatches after the old molded on parts were removed with liquid glue and some gentle pressure. Last but not least, the towing pintle brackets were added to both sides of the front hull.
Step 3 deals with the installation of the suspension. The suspension is non-workable and the leaf springs had some prominent seams that needed to be carefully removed to get them in good order, but nothing major. The return rollers were left off for now to make it easier to paint them later on.
Step 4 dealt with the road wheels, sprockets, and idlers. Since I'm using an MK set for the tracks, a spacer insert needed to be installed on both the sprockets and idlers to give them the right width to take the links.
The inclusion of the spacer means that the sprocket and idler halves no longer nest firmly with each other, so I had to be careful to keep them properly lined up with each other until the glue set. I also neglected to install the poly caps for the sprockets the first time around and had to pop them open again to put them in and reglue...fortunately I caught it in time! All of the road wheels had their mold seams removed with a sanding twig and along with the return rollers were set off to the side for now.
Step 5 calls for the installation of the rubber band tracks and this was skipped. Step 6 began adding details to the upper hull in the form of the driver's hood front plate and hatch, the poly cap and retainer for the gun mount, and the base shield for the gun mount. These all installed without incident. In addition, this step also began the detail work on the interior of the fighting compartment and the first elements of the Blast set were put to use. Kit parts G58 and G35 were replaced with the Blast parts and the MP40 mount removed with a sharp knife and sanded down to allow for the Blast replacement and ammo pouches. Not shown in the photo but installed afterward were an extra box for the floor that the kit didn't include and the installation of the gunner's seat on the right side.
Step 7 deals with the construction of the ammunition racks and while the Blast items contain some lovely detail, including canvas tarp covers molded to them, they were damaged in transit to the point of being unusable and the kit parts updated with the Eduard bits instead. The racks have 27 holders and the Tamiya brass ammo sets each have 14 rounds (7 HE, 7 AP) to go in them, so 2 sets is just enough to do the job. I added the Eduard retaining brackets to the mouth of each ammo tube, a slow and tedious process, but produces some nice detail IMHO. The smallest rack of 3 tubes turned out to be unable to accept the brass rounds since it's not wide enough to take either the brass supplemental or the kit supplied spare rounds, so their retaining brackets were closed and those tubes will stand empty to add some variety to the interior.
I left the rack halves dry fit for now while I decide on the best way to paint them and still be able to install the ammo rounds. So far so good!