M70A2 Krueger MBT, Gulf War, 1991

[Wardukw]

I'm not going to say a thing about how many AM track sets I have ..I don't want to give anyone any health issues 

Good point, I will keep my mouth shut about my stash of those too, then ... Except to say: don't buy Bronco Sherman tracks.

Hahahaha 😆
Oh you poor sod ..wished I had known you yrs ago matey ..I could have warned ya about all Bronco AM tracks ..oh and Dragon Sherman tracks aswell .
Some of the hardest or stupidest tracks I've ever built..or tried to build are Bronco tracks..the amount of glue is minascule and that means the tracks won't stay together..I just hard glue em together..they still look good and a damn site easier to work with 

[zenrat]

How about Dragon Pz IV tracks?  I've got one in the stash with individual links.  Is it going to drive me mad(der)?

[Jakko]

Oh you poor sod ..wished I had known you yrs ago matey ..I could have warned ya about all Bronco AM tracks

I bought a Bronco Ram when it had just been released. Looked in the box and saw the tracks, looked at the instructions on how to assemble them, and decided they looked far too fragile to build and far too much work to bother with. I sold them on and ordered a set of Panda Plastics tracks for it instead. Neither the model nor the tracks have been built yet, of course And looking at the new Gecko Ram Kangaroo and Badger, I kind of doubt it ever will be, at least if Gecko would be so kind as to also release the gun tank ... The Bronco Ram has a lot of problems.

A few years later, I needed a small number of T49 Sherman track links for a model built to replicate photographs of a real tank that had this some of type of link as spare track armour. The only viable option was Bronco, due to being both inexpensive and easily available locally (that is, without having to order from outside the EU). Putting four or five links together that didn't even need to be workable was enough trouble that I was glad I didn't have to do two full tracks.

Fast forward to last year, I decided I would give them another try for another Sherman-based kit that's currently a bit on hold. I cleaned up a few sprues worth of links but even that was so much bother that I ended up putting them back in the box and the box in the stash, digging out a set of Panda T54E1 tracks instead. At least those are easy to build, as these things go.

How about Dragon Pz IV tracks?  I've got one in the stash with individual links.  Is it going to drive me mad(der)?

Very long ago, I Dragon Panzer III tracks on this:

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That's a Games Workshop Leman Russ converted with parts from mainly an old Italeri Panzer IV and Dragon Panzer III tracks. No idea if your Panzer IV kit has similar tracks, as these are the type they put into the box 20–25 years ago, but they went together well enough.

[Wardukw]

Fred as a builder of over 40 Panzer IVs alone..no kidding on that ..I have used dozens of P/IV tracks .
Now the early tracks did need the odd bit of clean up here and there ...nothing to serious at all really.
Later Dragon released their Magic Tracks..some colour coded ..light  and dark gray..these are magic for sure..go together like a charm.
Oh the colour coding is just to identify left and right ..bloody good idea..
Freddy mate can ya tell me which Dragon P/IV kit ya have and tell ya what you in for ..ive pretty much all of them .

Jakko I honestly do feel for ya ...as a dedicated nutter of tanks for years, I'd built so many Sherman's that I got bored with em and I'd built a heap of brands..Tamiya..Bronco..Academy..AFV club and so on..oh Tasca..wow ..those are amazing.
And as you can imagine AM tracks galore..and in one way or another all early type Sherman tracks suck.
Their fiddly to put together..brittle when put together and in alot of occasions a waste of time dew to the fact that Sherman tracks are kept tight with as little sag as possible.
Easy 8 tracks can be easier to put together but that just depends who made em ..Dragons set is nice and pretty easy..just lack detail and I do like them over the plastic tracks as they tend to curve inwards on the drive sprockets..oh ive also got a quite weird Easy 8 build coming up at some point 😉
It sounds like you and I have both had the Bronco nightmare more than once with their Sherman based variants 😀

[Jakko]

in one way or another all early type Sherman tracks suck.
Their fiddly to put together..brittle when put together

Fiddly, yes; brittle, not my experience. It varies a bit per manufacturer, but the Panda ones are pretty sturdy and the AFV Club and MiniArt ones not much less so — provided you get the AFV Club ones with flat blocks, not the rubber chevron type, because some of the end connectors come off too easily

a waste of time dew to the fact that Sherman tracks are kept tight with as little sag as possible.

The main added value for me is that the blocks don curve around the wheels like single-piece tracks usually do, and that I can still easily install them after painting. But I don't want to spend more on a set of tracks than on the model itself, so my choice is usually for plastic

Easy 8 tracks can be easier to put together but that just depends who made em ..

Not the ones by AFV Club. The end connectors are loose on every bloody link with those, rather than every so often like with their VVSS tracks.

[Wardukw]

Oh I should have been a little more clear..the Bronco Sherman tracks is what I ment about being brittle when ya try to handle em ..the connection points are very delicate.
I've made all of AFV clubs Sherman track sets ..block..rubber chevron..steel chevron and easy 8 ..multiple sets of the easy8 and its hit and miss with those..ive had sets which were great and others like ya said..freaking end connectors won't stay on at all..to fix that I used mini flat head pliers to gently squeeze the track pins to make them wider..that worked ..but mate ..the time is incredibly long and drawn out but when I want something like that..won't stop till I have it.
Tell ya there's only 2 companies plastic tracks I really like ..Tamiyas and Tascas ..the tracks are soft and look very good yet they also sit on the wheels and drive sprockets very nicely ..when it comes to Sherman's with the early suspension plastic tracks are great..Academys tracks are OK  but Italeris always seemed to be terrible..far to stiff .
I built a diorama for a mate who brought a Bronco Bailey Bridge set and it had 4 Sherman based vehicles in it...a Kangaroo..a M3 ARV..a M4A3 and a Priest ..all Italeri based models ..all tracks replaced ..2 with Friulmodel as these were sitting on rough ground and the other 2 with AFV club..these were on a road.
I had to modify all the drive sprockets to fit these tracks then cut off and widen the suspension units so would line up with the drive sprockets...oh all these models had already been built from his own pile .I think had to rip them all to bits as he was let's say ..crap at building models 

Oh couple of weeks ago I had a great score..I got the AFV club M3/M5 suspension set and the track set for about €5 ..great score and very unexpected as I'd never seen these here before .
Still have no idea what I'm gonna do with em 

[Jakko]

the Bronco Sherman tracks is what I ment about being brittle when ya try to handle em ..the connection points are very delicate.

Glad I never had the opportunity to find out firsthand

to fix that I used mini flat head pliers to gently squeeze the track pins to make them wider..that worked ..but mate ..the time is incredibly long and drawn out

Elite Models released a set of Diehl tracks for the M113 about 20, 25 years ago, which was later also reboxed by AFV Club. I had the original Elite release, and in that, the holes in the end connectors are slightly undersize. You could just force them over the track pins, but they would be stuck fast so the track hardly articulated, and in any case, you probably bent or broke half the pins anyway. The only way to build them was to drill out two holes per connector. Two connectors per track link. Something like 60–65 links per side. Something like 500 holes to drill out ... I was glad that job was done.

I built a diorama for a mate who brought a Bronco Bailey Bridge set and it had 4 Sherman based vehicles in it.

That must have taken up more room than I have for my finished models

all these models had already been built from his own pile .I think had to rip them all to bits as he was let's say ..crap at building models 

We all started somewhere

Oh couple of weeks ago I had a great score..I got the AFV club M3/M5 suspension set and the track set for about €5 ..great score and very unexpected as I'd never seen these here before .
Still have no idea what I'm gonna do with em 

Stick them on an Academy M3 to replace its clearly wrong suspension?

Back to the M70! The hull finished, I built the turret. (Well, I did those two at the same time, going back and forth between them, but narratively it works better if I show one first and then the other ) My idea was that the turret would have "Special Armor", but that necessitates flat surfaces. Let me show why with another illustration from the declassified M1 Abrams report:

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Chobham-type armour consists of a stack of relatively thin plates, fixed together so they can move under impact. This will not work properly if the plates are curved, like pre-1970s Western tank turrets almost invariably were, so since then they all got slab-sided ones. This does mean the M70A2 would have a turret from flat plates instead of the smooth curve of the MBT 70 ...

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I first made some templates with thin card to work out the sizes of plastic card I needed to cut. The one for the right side needs a cut-out to accommodate the gunner's primary sight, as you can see once they're glued to the turret:

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On the left I plated over the position for the guidance system for the MGM-51 missiles, as I was going to replace the 152 mm gun by a 120 mm. For anyone wanting to do something similar but retaining the original gun, you would need to keep the tracker there as well.

Then I just needed to cut some more pieces to fill the gaps:

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The undercut at the front is so the turret clears the engine deck. Ideally, I would have just extended the whole turret front down to a point, but it wouldn't be able to rotate past about 4 o'clock that way. This is about the minimum that still works.

I then filled some gaps onboth sides with two-part epoxy putty:

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Around the AAMG turret, I also added flat plates, though in retrospect, this would probably have been unlikely, as there is hardly any room for "Special Armor" there to begin with.

As you can see in the photo above, there is absolutely nothing inside that turret preventing you from looking into the rest of the model, which I consider a serious omission by Dragon. A piece of plastic card was therefore cut and bent to fit:

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Also on the roof are blow-out panels modelled after the ones on the early versions of the M1 Abrams, in this case covering the autoloader instead of a simple ammunition rack. I had to file, putty and sand the roof flat to accommodate them, of course, but other than that they're just some bits of plastic card.

[Steel Penguin]

i didnt expect the Chobham !  but looking good with it      are you going for the plate being extra like with the StillBrew on Chieftain or full re build on the turret giving full thickness simaler to the M1 and Challenger?

[zenrat]

Fred as a builder of over 40 Panzer IVs alone..no kidding on that ..I have used dozens of P/IV tracks .
Now the early tracks did need the odd bit of clean up here and there ...nothing to serious at all really.
Later Dragon released their Magic Tracks..some colour coded ..light  and dark gray..these are magic for sure..go together like a charm.
Oh the colour coding is just to identify left and right ..bloody good idea..
Freddy mate can ya tell me which Dragon P/IV kit ya have and tell ya what you in for ..ive pretty much all of them ...

Thanks mate.  Its at the bottom of one of my stash distribution boxes but i'm pretty sure its an Ausf D.
This one, but in a special boxing with some figures.  I think it has magic tracks.

[Jakko]

are you going for the plate being extra like with the StillBrew on Chieftain or full re build on the turret giving full thickness simaler to the M1 and Challenger?

This is meant to represent integral armour on a redesigned turret — keeping the basic shape, but adapted to fit Chobham-type armour on the front. That's why I went to plenty of trouble to ensure the plastic card bits blend into the moulded turret.

[Steel Penguin]

ahh i see, the latter option    nice one 

[Wardukw]

Fred as a builder of over 40 Panzer IVs alone..no kidding on that ..I have used dozens of P/IV tracks .
Now the early tracks did need the odd bit of clean up here and there ...nothing to serious at all really.
Later Dragon released their Magic Tracks..some colour coded ..light  and dark gray..these are magic for sure..go together like a charm.
Oh the colour coding is just to identify left and right ..bloody good idea..
Freddy mate can ya tell me which Dragon P/IV kit ya have and tell ya what you in for ..ive pretty much all of them ...

Thanks mate.  Its at the bottom of one of my stash distribution boxes but i'm pretty sure its an Ausf D.
This one, but in a special boxing with some figures.  I think it has magic tracks.

Mate that's a D for sure  ...yep I've had that version and it comes with either on sprue type tracks or the magic tracks depending on the age of the release of the kit ...either way it's still a pleasure to build ..oh plenty of spare parts to stuff into the parts box too.

Jakko that turret is looking better than it ever did and with the inclusion of the 120mm gun its going to look even better.
The MBT-70 always looked wrong with such a large turret and such a small gun ..lenght wise .
I'm pretty sure this is going to be one of the best MBT-70s seen .

[Jakko]

After adding antislip to the upper parts of the turret, I also added an M1-style stowage bin on the left as wel as the boxes for spare smoke grenades, of the type also used on the M60A1 and -A3, as well as a tow cable from a Dragon M1 Abrams kit:

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The bin and tow cable are only on the right, there is no room for a bin on the left and I only had the one cable in my spares box. The smoke grenade box is on both sides, though. I also added ribs from plastic strip inside the channel in front of the gunner's sight, to create a series of bullet deflectors.

I then built M1-style stowage racks on both sides of the turret as well:

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I first drilled holes in the sides, bent brass rod into shape and built a rear bracket from some plastic card to hold them in. As this wanted to slip down, I had to hold it in place with Blu-Tack until the glue dried. After that, I needed to build reinforcements between the bars. On the M1 these are basically bits of sheet metal welded between the bars, thin edge outward, so I first tried to replicate that by drilling or punching holes in plastic card, but never managed to get all three spaced correctly, so I had to find another way.

Eventually, I hit upon the idea of wrapping a thin piece of masking tape around the bars, then flowing superglue into the gaps to create a membrane and filling the rest of the gap with putty once the glue hardened:

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Worked well, IMHO

At the rear, I installed the kit's bustle rack:

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However, as the kit represents a KPz 70, it had German-style antenna mountings there, which I replaced by scratchbuilt ones that replicate the M1 Abrams's type. They're really just a punched disc with a piece of rod on top and punched bolt heads around that, the whole thing set on a length of sprue sawed at an angle to fit the turret rear. The wind sensor is also based on that of the early types of M1, again scratchbuilt from rod, sprue and plastic card.

On top of the turret, the MBT 70 had two large vision devices, which Dragon provides (of course) but has left completely devoid of any internal details whatsoever. But if you look up photos of the real tank, they have very obvious stuff inside of them. A big problem there is that the viewers are actually vertical, with a mirror above them so light gets reflected into the viewers. I had great trouble thinking of a way to do this in scale, because it's just about impossible to get a good enough mirror that is also thin enough to replicate this.

Until I had a brainwave: you don't need a mirror on your model, you can just build the optic twice: once vertically and once horizontally at the back of the hood, then just put a piece of transparent plastic between them at the angle of the mirror:

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[Steel Penguin]

the turret side bin and the optics are utterly inspired Jakko     the use of tape and then strengthen and fill is just genius, i had thought that you'd use a thin  piece of platic card and nibble a semi circle and glue against the bars, but that is far more elegant, and im going to steal it, unashamably 

[zenrat]

the turret side bin and the optics are utterly inspired Jakko     the use of tape and then strengthen and fill is just genius, i had thought that you'd use a thin  piece of platic card and nibble a semi circle and glue against the bars, but that is far more elegant, and im going to steal it, unashamably 

Second that.  Always looking out for good scratching tricks.