The Hull Exterior Suspension
and Tracks This
was my biggest disappointment with the AFV Club kit. It's a complete mystery why
AFV Club should produce road wheels without finished backsides. I pulled out Fort
Duquesne's VVSS Update Set, a popular replacement for Tamiya's wheels at the turn
of the last century. Bob Collignon made the pattern, complete with grease nipples,
and they fit nicely in the AFV Club bogies, which are moveable, as you can see
above. I chipped the wheels a bit before securing them in place, to give them
that battle-worn look. You
need to be careful during assembly since the levers and arms on the AFV Club suspension
lack detail on one side, which should be faced against the hull and not outward.
I finished
off the suspensions with LionMarc's 1/35
Sherman Brass Skids with Nuts & Bolts, carving off the somewhat
thick plastic skids and supplying the three missing bolts on the bottom of each
of the pin mounts (inner side too). Finally, I drilled the four bolt holes on
the open side of the spring guard. The
Fort Duquesne set comes with excellent rear idlers, front sprockets, and final
drive housings. Somehow, I temporarily misplaced the idlers during a lull in the
action, so a pair was pulled from the spares box. The inside of the sprocket housing
is not equipped to handle the large axles (the set is designed for Tamiya, Italeri,
and Nichimo tanks), so I was forced to use the TWS sprockets, which are not as
well formed as their plastic counterparts, resulting in significant gaps around
the retaining hub. (Must find that mud recipe....) As
mentioned earlier, it was not until I was painting the hull that I wondered...Hmm,
is AFV Club's straight roller armed really correct for an M36 built on a Sherman
body? Or should it be the raised arm style? A moot point that far into the process!
But I'm doing some research and will update this article if I find the answer.
But until then, this is something that you might want to consider before
you build and paint the kit.. Pictures
tend to show the M36B1 with chevron tracks, either the T54 steel chevrons as seen
below, or the all-rubber T48 version. And they were commonly equipped with extended
end connectors (EECs). I had a spare set of T54s from a Tamiya M4A3, so that option
was a no-brainer for me. Once I had the bogies glued to the lower hull, I pulled
out the Tamiya rubber band tracks and guess whatthey were short enough so
that the track bowed between the two sprocket plates. Comparing the AFV Club hull
to a finished Tamiya M4A3, it appears the AFV Club's suspension spacing is a little
farther apart that Tamiya's and there might be a difference in hull length. It's
also possible the Fort Duquesne wheels are differently sized from Tamiya's. In
any event, the rubber band track was not going to do what I wanted it to do. So
much for the easy way out. I'm
not wild about individual links but it seemed I was going to have to go that routeand
add the EECs as well. The donor kit comes with a sprue with couple dozen or so
T48 links, only six of which need to be used in the spare racks. They required
some cleaning of the ejector pin marks, as I feared. I set aside the half dozen
spares, and made up two short runs with the remainder to see how they ran around
the TWS sprockets (this was a problem I ran into my Tamiya Lee project when AFV
Club tracks didn't align with the Tamiya sprockets. Fortunately, things came together
correctly this time, leading to a several-month quest to find AFV Club T48 links,
which appear to be out of production. You
will also note in the photo of the front end of the vehicle near the bottom of
the page, the sprockets, when placed on the axles, are out of alignment with the
wheels behind them. The axles had to be ground down to properly seat the sprockets. Turret
Ring The
upper hull has a thick pour gate in the turret ring and thick flash there and
in engine deck opening to remove. The turret ring opening is not wide enough to
accept the AFV Club turret, so you must carefully carve it wider and wider until
you get the proper fit all around, roughly one millimeter in thickness. You may
need to scrape this out a bit later after it gets a coating or two of paint. Likewise,
the hatch openings need some clean-up. I supported the thinner areas in the deck
around the hatch openings with some Testors contour putty. Deflector The
deflector presented another speedbump in the project. The TWS instructions note
the exterior components it provides to add to its M4A3 hull. But it doesn't fully
note other AFV Club parts used or the crrect trailer hitch and antenna base absent
from both kits. I thought perhaps a page was missing from my instructions, but
that was not the case. But
again to complicate matters, my box from TWS included extra pieces to create the
two-part exhaust deflector commonly seen on earlier Shermans. This was puzzling
since the full-width deflector is more appropriate (as seen in the photo at right
of an M36B1 from Zaloga's U.S. Tank Battles in Germany). However, since
the instructions don't address the completion of the kit, I was puzzled by the
presence of the two-part deflector. It took a couple emails to clear up the fact
that these parts were improperly included in the TWS set, and the AFV Club deflector
is the one to use. However,
there's a problem
affixing the donor kit's deflector onto the TWS fishtail exhausts: the exhaust
mouths are long and rounded at the ends, while the receiving holes in the AFV
Club deflector are shorter and squared off at the ends. So they don't join together
like one supposes they would. As
seen on the rear ofthere
are sand shield plates on either side of the deflector. I don't know if those
were necessary, but they are not included in the AFV Club kit. So
it took some additional research to determine if and how the shield plates (from
which the deflector spins up or down) could be installed. I happened to have Formation's
deflector set, designed by Mike Canaday, (who offers us a good deflector
how-to article). I blanked off the open portion under the overhang, fixed
the AFV Club deflector in place (after adding the adjustment vane) and created
the side plates using the Formation parts as templates. The end result looks good,
but the TWS kit should supply these parts and address this area of construction
in its instructions since this is an important part of the conversion. Another
"hitch" is that the towing hitch from the AFV Club M36 is different
than the kind used with the Tamiya M4A3. This is another item that TWS should
provide. I had to liberate one from an old Tamiya kit. The
Rest of the Fittings After
getting the major work done on the hull halves and masking off the openings, I
glued them together, using super glue and a lot of pressure to get the front and
back ends to get the parts to mate correctly. The
front fenders needed some adjustment once the upper hull was glued on the lower
hull. While I was able to get the TWS front bolt strip to align with the top of
the AFV Club housing, the fenders were off-kilter. I had to shave down the left
fender's outer edge, but the right fender somes up short as seen in the photo.
And some unevenness in the TWS upper hull where the fenders are joined to the
glacis became apparent. I tried smoothing it out with an emery board but it was
tough with the front bogies now in the way. I used some putty to conceal the gap.
More mud please.... I
lost one of the TWS rear lift rings when it snapped off. Even after washing, the
resin parts do not bond together as well as other resins I've worked with, and
this was a problem several times during the project. I pulled spare lift rings
off an old Tamiya kit. I also needed to replace the TWS bow gun armor shield which
I severely maimed while removing it from the carrier. I pulled out a spare from
an Academy M36, which has the bow gun for the Korea War version. ("See honey,
these kits come in handy even when I haven't built them yet.") Both
of the TWS rear lights had air bubbles requiring putty. The gas caps are separate
items, and I lost locking pin to one somewhere along the way that I had to replace.
I added chains to the pins, Eduard brush guards to the rear lights, and wire grab
handles for the engine deck doors (they will probably be removed because of stowage).
The
travel lock for the barrel was not glued into place until I decided on how I was
going to load the deck with stowage. I've seen the lock both up and covered in
photos. TWS does not provide the outer jaws of the ring, and the instructions
do not note that you can pull them from parts (A13) provided in the donor kit. I
had pulled the Kirin sandbag set off my shelf, thinking it would come in handy
if I needed to conceal the hull problems. I've seen one photo of an M36B1 with
some minimal sandbagging on the classics, but none with the full side racks. But
it's certainly conceivable that some of these tank destroyers did opt for the
extra (perceived) protection. The
Kirin parts fit well up against the hull. After some debate, I moved forward with
installing the glacis fittings, figuring that if I ended up using the sandbag
armor these areas would be covered so any damage to the finish would not be seen.
I did hold off on the antenna mount, which was fixed on top of an upsidedown "L"
shaped bracket welded to the glacis until I was sure what direction I wanted to
go in with the sandbagging. I
hollowed out the plastic headlights to accept MV lenses after the hull was painted.
I drilled a hole for the siren wire, and used the Eduard brush guards instead
of the parts from TWS, which had broken. When
I compared the TWS hull hatches to some I had on hand from Tiger Model Design,
I had to go with the latter: Better detailing and "glueability," and
the receiving sleeves for the periscopes were more squared. I wanted to have the
periscopes stowed while the crew was rearming the TD. I added wire grab handles
and Eduard latches to hatches. Because they are opened, the TMD hatches work fine
with the DML hull even though they are designed for the Tamiya Sherman. |