AFV Club M42A1 Duster WIP - Done with pictures!!

Modeling Subjects Armor
1

Hello everybody!

As some of you might know, I’ve been strugling with a 1:35 Duster for a long time now. I used the Tamiya kit as a base. This struggle is described on my web page here: www.vietnam.net.pl/M42moden.htm.

Well this project stalled a little last year, because of a move and other personal things going on and then the Chinese played a nasty trick on me and released their M42, which was announced just ten years ago or so. I couldn’t let this go on like this. I ordered the AFV Club product and got it just yesterday. I’m starting to build right now and let me post a WIP for you. As I go, I intend to compare the Tamiya kit to the new one, nitpick on the new one and I’ll “transplant” some things I did for my old build onto my new build in order to build the best M42 model you can see on the internet (fortunately there are not so many of them! [:D])

I started with a comparison of the AFV Club lower hull to my old model:

The AFV Club requires only minimal cleanup, is nicely detailed and you don’t have to cover any motorization holes as in the old Tamiya kit. This is important for me, as I like my models to be accurate from every direction [:D]. The large hole the model does sport, is a spent brass ejection chute, a very distinctive and unusual Duster feature, bravo AFV Club! But most importantly the big problem of the Tamiya kit is visible here - grossly incorrect shape of the front hull. This is the reason I’m not continuing my old model - I noticed the error too late and correcting it would mean starting the hull over anyhow.

So, as per instructions, I started adding the suspension bump stops:

The little parts need a lot of careful cleanup, because they have mold parting lines on them (not very heavy, but still) and there are lots of tiny parts. Pay attention to the bump stops on the last road wheel position, thay are different from the rest, and different parts come on the left and right side (Parts E11 and E12). It would feel really bad making a mistake in Step One of the instructions, wouldn’t it?

As the road wheel arms had a sinhole each, I filled them and checked the road wheels themselves. They are not bad, but for my last model I got a M41 Suspension Kit, also from AFV Club, and the wheels from this kit are a lot better. Here they are compared side by side:

Road wheels: My old wheels have the “lip” inside, the kit wheels lack this feature.

Drive sprockets: My old ones have the mud evacuation holes in them, the kit ones don’t.

Track tensioning wheel - my old one sports this cool “holey design”, kit wheel is similar to the road wheels

Track return rollers - here the difference is the smallest.

While we’re at it, maybe you’d like to see the kit tracks?

On the left, the tracks from a seprate AFV Club track set. On the right the kit’s vinyl track. Also a very nice one.

To sum it up, the new AFV Club kit looks very well at first glance and I didn’t have as much fun building for a long time now. Let’s see how things develop, thanks for reading and have a nice day

Paweł

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Sweet! I have a Tamiya Duster with the AFV suspension/indy tracks and Eduard PE set, but have not gotten around to starting it. Major work all around. I am not too wrapped up around the lower hull shape. But I will watch your AFV Club build with a keen eye for any ideas to apply to my Tamiya M42.

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Well, I will be glad to help, but the way I see it you would do yourself a favour by taking the AFV Club kit and puting the PE and suspension to it, they can be put to good use there. Otherwise you’ll spend hours or even days working on parts that are wrong, missing or just plain too thick you’d just cut off the sprue and glue in the new kit. Thanks for your comment, have a nice day

Paweł

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I built the Tamiya Duster and its a basic representation of the real thing , but i guess that was good enough back in the time it came out . If i hadnt put so much time into the kit trying to fix its short commings i would have chucked it into the trash . I’m surprised AFV didnt put the correct wheels in the Duster kit .

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Off to a good start with this one Pawel, interesting to see the side-by-side comparisons. Look forward to watching this one get built up!

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Shellback, wbill76 - thanks for your comments!

Shellback - yeah, the Tamiya realy gives you a lot to do once you start correcting. The wheels on the AFV club are not really incorrect, just not as accurate as the ones from their M41 kit. Funny thing, after looking through the parts I also found another, more accurate set of drive sprockets:

You just have to ignore the kit instructions to meka your model more accurate. The B-sprue sprockts fit the axle a little more tight, too, you would have to increase the hole diameter to make them rotate freely, but there is room for the poly cap inside.

wbill76 - thanks a lot! I’ve got a good time, so let me move on:

I completed the suspension, it looks like that:

This goes together really nice. The road wheel arms have D-shaped keyingon them, so if the track is going to be displayed on a flat base, it won’t be hard to align the arms. If you sand the flat side of the D-shape a little, the road wheel arms fit a little easier and are easier to assemble. It’s still a good idea to check the alignment of the arms against some flat surface and leave it there overnight to dry, just to be sure.

EDIT: On the above photo you can already see the towing shackle mounts installed. Well, thay are installed according to the original instructions, and they are WRONG! I checked the errata for the instructions, cut the mounts off and reinstalled them correctly around 05/27/2012.

While the whole thing was drying I glued the mufflers:

And I started looking at the hatches - I’m going to pose the driver’s and the TC hatch open, with crew figures in the hatches, but I am not going to do the interior. I’m going to replace a portion of the kit supplied periscope with a bit from Verlinder set - those are labeled Sherman periscopes, but fir the reference pictures perfectly and are better detailed than the kit parts. The kit supplied 'scopes suffer from sink holes:

I also made the grabhandle and the latch catch from copper wire - it’s faster than cleaning the kit supplied parts. I think I’m going to replace the hatch spring, too.

That’d be it for today, thanks for reading and have a nice day!

Paweł

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You have my FULL attention now! Always wanted to build a Duster because my father-in-law was the driver of this beast when he served in the Army. A vendor was selling this AFV set at AMPS Auburn but he wanted $70… no way I said. I will look around for a better deal…

Good luck! [Y]

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Hello Andy, thanks for your comment - and nice to hear from you again! In Hong Kong they want about 40$ for this kit, wonder how much the shipping to US would be? Goog hunting, have a nice day

Paweł

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Pawel , looks good .[Y]

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Pawel - Nice to see you start on it. Waiting for mine to come from the orient…$40 with shipping…

Andy just look at ebay.

will be watching

Rounds Complete!!

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Shellback - thanks a lot!

Mike - good to hear from you, I kinda hoped you’ll drop by here, it’s good to have you looking, you know the 1:1 stuff!

As I have a few days off, and am in a good mood, the building goes on. I continued my work on the hatch:

As you can see the spring was replaced, the resin periscope is in place and there’s an extra for you - the latch! Now the instructions won’t tell you this, but you can misuse the part B47 here - just have to cut the handle off, and put it on the other side. One part of the B47 is used for the front door, that would leave the other unused (two B sprues in the kit), that would be a pity! [:D]

I also worked on the small door on the rear armour plate, this door covers the trailer receptacle. After some cutting it looks like this:

I’m also working on the final drive housings, to accept my nice sprockets. I’d like to show you the comparison of the new kit parts, the parts from the M41 suspension kit (on the right on the photo - they are resin in that kit!) and on the top center - old Tamiya parts. The way the new kit parts and Tamiya parts compare to each other is a metaphor for the whole kits…

Thanks for dropping by, have a nice day

Paweł

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more nice details Pawel . I like how you replaced the door spring .[Y]

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It looks like you are off to a good start. The kit looks really nice as well. Too bad they didn’t go with the AFV Club M41 Suspension set though. However, they would have had to give you some extras in the set, like another 2 complete roadwheels. I’ll explain below.

The AFV Club M41 Suspension Set roadwheels are a little nicer and they do have the correct undercut on them.

As you found out later, the instructions are wrong on which sprockets to use. AFV Club does include a set of really nice ones with mud release holes in the kit.

The kit is correct in this respect. The slotted idler wheel was not used on the M42 Duster. It was used on the M41A3, which is what the AFV Club Suspension Set comes from. As I alluded to above, you would need two additional, complete roadwheels to replace the slotted idlers with.

Like I said, a great kit and you’re off to a good start. In the end though, it is better to use the kit suspension as it is really nice and not really noticeable or worth the cost (2 sets) to replace them with the AFV Club M41 Suspension Set.

For more info on the kit , check out the review at Perth

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Here are a few pics of a restored Duster for you to peek at

http://www.redleg2scale.com/walkaround%20gallery/M42%20Duster.html

Rounds Complete!!

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Mike - thanks for the link, nice reference. Be sure to update the kit list though, the new one is worth it. Your web page is one of my favourites!

Gino - thanks a lot for the heads up, you really woke me up here! I don’t know how this idler issue could confuse me that way! Well AFV Club gives you four drive sprockets and a whole lot of extra parts on the double sprues - I guess they might as well go with the M41 suspension set and give you two extra road wheels. Oh well - your message made me scratch my head and what I did was to use my lathe and turn the insides out of four kit’s road wheel halves. I’m gonna marry the rubber tires I got with the hubs of the idlers and this way I plan to get two extra wheels with the correct undercut, as you called it. To be clear here, the parts painted this nice brown color come from this AFV Club M41 Suspension kit.

That review at Perth is also a nice thing - I’ve sen it before, but didn’t read it throughly, now I see there are some really helpful and insightful remarks there.

Apart of messing with the wheels, I also wrapped up the hatches. The inner side of the TC hatch:

The latch is made as previously described, I also carved out the insides of the resin periscope to represent missing periscope - this can be seen all the time on Vietnam vehicles (they broke easily, from what I heard).

The outer side of the hatches looks like this:

And that’d be it for now, have a nice day

Paweł

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Very nicely done. I hope to get around to buying one of these. I first saw a Duster in the summer of 1984 during annual training at Fort Drum, NY. At the time, I didn’t know they were still in the inventory, but the old 50th Armor Division still had them as divisional air defense and had them as late as 1985. Probably had them longer.

I’d echo Pawel’s statements about upgrading the old Tamiya kit. I attempted to do so and just hacking off the running gear from the lower hull is a chore. Even with the Eduard etch and Barrel Depot guns, the detail of the suspension doesn’t look right on the clunky upper hull.

I’d chuck the Tamiya kit up on eBay and let buyers who don’t know a better kit is on the market buy it from you.

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Nice work on the hatches Pawel! [Y]

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Hello!

Sorry, no new photos today - the sun went down too fast, I’ll try to get new material tomorrow. But thanks for the comments!

Bill - glad you like it, and I’m just begenning!

Rob - welcome aboard and thanks for your kind words. I could use your advice here! As for the Tamiya kit - of course it can be upgraded, but as you wrote, the amount of work is basically scratchbuilding.

OK, back to the workbench, have a nice day

Paweł

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Well alright, here is some progress:

I took care of the idlers - thanks again for the tip, Gino! I turned centers out of kit’s tires and installed M41 suspension hubs inside. Came out quite nice:

Now I have 12 nearly identical whels. Check.

I also assembled most of the bits from the lower rear armour plate:

There are still two parts missing - the tanker bar and the towing pintle. The little round object over the pintle mount is a bracket to hold the towing pintle when it’s not installed. But I heard in Vietnam the pintle was installed all the time, so in my model it will be installed too, just like the instructions say. It’s good though, to drill a hole through the holder, so it looks like a small piece of tube - a little work and a good realistic result.

I also started painting the insides of the hull:

The hull won’t have any interior to speak of, but the hatches will be open with crew figures in them, so at least let them have some background. I believe the interior was white, but I’ll verify that.

I also started working on the top armor plate:

I cut off the placeholder for the fire extinguisher handle - I’ll install a proper T-handle and I cut off the 7,62 ammo holds - they were too thick, I’ll make them out of copper sheet. And that would be it for now - thanks for reading, have a nice day

Paweł

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My Forty Duce arrived today. You work so far is inspiring!!

Rounds Complete!!