The towing pintle and bracket were not added until late in 1943, after 12603 was built. The armored exhaust deflectors were added in 1945 and were certainly not on the tank as built. Looking upward and behind them you can see the line of bolts that held the radiators, and the turnbuckles that held the deflectors in the lowered position. When folded up for access to the engine door the turnbuckles attached to the lugs visible on the rear upper hull to either side of the star. If you are modeling the earlier sheet metal exhaust deflector these lugs would not be present.

The engine deck area is notable in that it is essentially in the as-built condition. Most surviving M4A3 have modifications and additions in this area, like the three hinges at the rear edge for a folding blanket roll rack (applied starting in 1944). There should also be a bolt at the four inside corners or the engine grills. The single piece plate behind the grills was a feature of small hatch M4A3s. Later tanks used a two-piece plate with a splash strip over the joint.

On the left side of the tank there were three gasoline filler caps, as seen here. The two rear fillers (mirrored by two others on the right side) empty into the main engine tanks while the one inside the turret splash ring is for the auxiliary engine. (There is no corresponding filler on the other side, rather a ventilator for the fighting compartment.) The rectangular block on the hull in the lower right of the photo is actually sheet metal and is open at the rear; it is one of the brackets that holds handle end of the pry bar. The point is held in a triangular bracket by the hull lift lug while a leather strap through the loop by the middle filler cap held the pry bar in place. The fitting to the left of it holds the towing cable.

The overhead shot of the driver's hatch shows the final configuration of the small hatch. The counterbalance spring, hold-open latch, and periscope guard were all introduced after production started. The two double hooks are for the driver's foul weather hood and are not present on the co-driver's side.

Looking at the appliqué armor on the co-driver's side you can see how the ring for the MG dust cover was bent to run onto the appliqué. The appliqué was notched to clear the MG socket at the time of installation so it may not look exactly the same from tank to tank. The series of parallel weld beads seen on the appliqué and glacis joints is typical for large welds. As a rule of thumb for modeling, the weld joint width at the surface is about the same as the plate thickness down to about 3/8 the plate thickness, depending on the type of weld joint. Weld beads are between ¼ and ½ inch wide so it is much more common to see this sort of arrangement rather than the "one big weld" commonly seen on models.

The headlights were removable from their sockets and the hole can be seen in the base casting. A plug (missing) was to be used when the light was removed or stored in the small tube on the headlight brush guard otherwise. On the earliest Shermans this tube was attached lower on the brush guard and aligned parallel to the glacis.

The differential housing attachment bolts protrude above the housing, which was ballistically undesirable. A cast in splash guard was fitted introduced on three-piece housings and standard on the E4186 single anchor brake housings shown here. Later E8543 double anchor brake housings left this part of the casting thick and machined recesses for the bolt heads so they were fully protected from bullet splash. Small hatch M4A3s were made with the E8543 housings starting in August, 1943.