Greetings,
I am an airplane guy doing my first tank. I am working on the Tamiya Abrams and have a question I hope you can help me with. What is the building sequence when attaching the tracks, wheels and side armor panels? I have the wheels on but don’t know if I should put the side skirts on now and feed the tracks through as one piece and then join the two ends of the tracks or do I put the tracks on the wheels and then the skirts on after that? Looks like the skirts might be tricky as it doesn’t look like there is much of a gluing surface. Any tips on how to attach the skirts would also be appreciated. I sure am having fun with this armor build.
Thanks in advance,
Chuck B.
This comes up often. I build it complete with side skirts and all, except I leave the roadwheels off. Paint the whole thing, roadwheels separately using a circle template (see the “Help Tank Wheels” thread further down) and then attach the roadwheels. I feed the track throught the sprockets and roadwheels and connect them on the bottom. Once connected and dried, rotate the tracks so that the connection point is behind the skirts.
I build mine by putting on the road wheels leaving the idlers and skirts off. I paint my base coat and the idlers and skirts. Then I do the rubber part of the wheels. I paint and install the tracks putting the idlers on as the last step. Then I put the skirts on and paint any camo scheme I’m using. It may help to mask the running gear before camo.
i build and paint all wheels first then lower hull the upper hull then turret. and finnish of with weathering.
Lots of ways to skin a cat.
I leave the wheels off, and spray them on the sprue. Sideskirts on the hull. If the skirts are low enough that you can’t put the wheels on after the fact, I do not glue upper and lower hulls together, and paint them separately. It requires a second coat of paint if you do it that way, though, to deal with the issues caused by the seams on the front and back.
NTM