As a diversion, and because I’ve wanted to do one for quite a while, so I decided to go ahead and get going on this. I picked up most of a kit at a recent show, had an old built kit in the scrap pile for parts, and had Academy’s Merk2 in the scrap pile as well, which meant I had no more excuses. The Academy kit also had Friuls, all the better.
The kit I picked up had a hunk cut out of the upper hull in what appeared to be an unsuccessful attempt to open up one of the air intake grills. A piece from the scrapped Mk1 was cut to fit the damages section and placed in. Pic following shows the piece cut from the old hull:
Next, upper and lower hulls were joined, open grills and vents blanked off, and sponsons covered. Exhausts were added and Tamiya’s rather poorly represented shocks shaved off. Bogies were cleaned up and the search for a good pic of the shocks was begun, which proved to be a real pain. In the end, I whipped up some tubular shocks from some old Academy 90mm ammo tubes, which I’m pretty sure is not exactly accurate, as the actual shocks appear to have a more oval-shape to them. Weird, but I’m going to stick with what I have. I wouldn’t have bothered at all, but I want to model this one with the side skirts off, so something had to happen.
The rear idler mounts are pretty simple, so some changes were made by trimming the front of the mount down and adding gussets, and adding lots of bolt heads from hex stock to the rear.
Bolt heads were also added to the final drives, blending was done to make the front hull and inner final drive housings look like the one part that they actually are, and a few bits added.
Progress so far:
I have a few brass bits left over from other projects, and the Friuls from the scrapped Merk2, but otherwise this build will be from the box with additions from the scrap box and Evergreen only.
More soon, I hope. Thanks for peeking.
