M70A2 Krueger MBT, Gulf War, 1991

[Jakko]

that 120 has balanced the entire vehicle out perfectly.

It does look rather better than the stubby 152 mm, definitely. Though if I do another, it will probably be a "what if" Dutch Army vehicle that's pretty much a standard KPz 70 with things like Dutch smoke launchers and other things that the Leopard 1(NL) got compared to the German version. Maybe even a KPz 70-V ...

As for the markings on the ammo cans..well that's so other units don't try to let's say "borrow" things 😉

I doubt it, because the boxes have the crew functions stencilled on them

[Wardukw]

that 120 has balanced the entire vehicle out perfectly.

It does look rather better than the stubby 152 mm, definitely. Though if I do another, it will probably be a "what if" Dutch Army vehicle that's pretty much a standard KPz 70 with things like Dutch smoke launchers and other things that the Leopard 1(NL) got compared to the German version. Maybe even a KPz 70-V ...

As for the markings on the ammo cans..well that's so other units don't try to let's say "borrow" things 😉

I doubt it, because the boxes have the crew functions stencilled on them

Don't doubt it mate...you'd be amazed at how we would get certain things which were deemed "very important " 😉
and cans of spray paint are very easy to get from the motor pool 🙄
It's been going for absolute decades..in the Vietnam War when M-134 mini guns got mounted onto armoured vehicles in combat for the first time guess how the first guns were acquired?? 😆
Things like 40mm ammo boxes weren't easy to get for armoured vehicle crews as they didn't use 40mm apart from the M79 GL..so when ever they could "borrow" em they did.. great for dozens of things including being used as a washing machine 
It's known as a Permanently borrowed item .
Today its much easier cause of automatic 40mm launchers like the MK19.

[Rick Lowe]

It dates back even further than that...

One story that's a favourite of mine is how the NZ Armoured unit during WW2 in Italy found and appropriated an entire T2 recovery vehicle...!  

But I'm sure even the Roman army had the same issues... or the Hebrews of OT time.

[rickshaw]

I served with a Warrant Officer who had served in Vietnam.  His favourite story was how he "acquired" a Jeep from the US Army over a card game,  When he turned up at the Australian Task Force his superior said to him, "That he either gets some 'roos on it by tonight or it goes back, understand?"  He had some 'roos marked on its bonnet sides immediately and he drove it the rest of his tour and handed it onto his successor.   He used to run Local Purchase for the Task Force and some amazing stories to tell.

[Wardukw]

I know where you guys are comin from ..heard the stories ..been on the receiving end of a British army BDU winter jacket which I won't say anymore about 
I know what us mud monkeys are like and you get told about nailing everything down so it won't get nicked..that's why we have crow bars 
Vietnam was the place I heard alot of stories about ..nailed down..welded shut...bolted and welded and still didn't stop em 

[Jakko]

Don't doubt it mate...you'd be amazed at how we would get certain things which were deemed "very important " 😉

I know that, but what I meant is: stencilling the crew functions on the boxes wouldn't help with that — putting, say, the tank number on it would, of course, but "DRV" could be the box of any driver in the army.

[buzzbomb]

So good to see this. Said it before and will say it again. Everything just works on this build

[Old Wombat]

OK, so those last images were from 2021, are there any later images & when are we going to see the finished build?

Impatient people (me) want to know!  

[Jakko]

I'm trying to keep you all in suspense I'll continue soon.

[Jakko]

On with the tracks!

This is a tank in the desert, so there would be no rust on the tracks — that tends to get polished off really quickly by the sand, resulting in shiny metal parts. I first sprayed the tracks with Tamiya NATO Black, which is actually very dark grey. To get them to look more like rubber, I then put on a wash of thinned Indian ink, and once that had dried, painted the metal parts with a light–medium grey, though not all the way into all the recesses:

You cannot view this attachment.

The next step was to put GW Boltgun Metal over the grey:

You cannot view this attachment.

This because doing the metallic colour straight over the dark grey would have made it look darker than I wanted. I also, again, tried to not cover the grey completely but leave some in the deeper areas.

Then a layer of Army Painter Strong Tone to shade the metal areas:

You cannot view this attachment.

With on the left side of the track, without on the right, to show the difference.

Both tracks done:

You cannot view this attachment.

Note I skipped part of the end connectors, as those will be on the inside and therefore, completely out of sight.

And then I drybrushed the rubber parts with dark grey to bring out the detail and enhance the "rubber" appearance:

You cannot view this attachment.

By the way, if you decide to also use Indian ink for rubber parts, beware that a wash made from acrylic paint plus water is likely to have the ink run. A quick coat of matt varnish over the ink prevents that, though. I didn't do that here because I wasn't going to put a wash onto the tracks, but I discovered this small problem the hard way on another model.

To attach the track to the tank, the idea was to wrap it around the wheels and then pull the ends together with thread to get the track on tight. I drilled two holes through each of the end links for the thread to go through, but couldn't pull the thread taut and tie the ends together because of the limited space I had to work in, coupled to my never having been a scout or a sailor (hence lacking in the knot-tying skills department ) so eventually I gave up and used copper wire instead:

You cannot view this attachment.

That went much better.

Except ...

You cannot view this attachment.

The idler mounts are weak enough that the track pulled the idler at an angle So I cut the wire again and instead, superglued the track to the wheels:

You cannot view this attachment.

[Wardukw]

Lovely looking tracks mate..clean and defined 
But don't ya just hate that annoying cockeyed drive or just road wheels in general when they don't sit square? .
I've had it on cheap models and bloody expensive ones..even had it with that Strumpanther Panther and mate the roads wheels sucked dew to being very tight.
Now I didn't make build those wheels..I scored 3 partly started models in a deal ..all Meng ..the Panther ..M3A3 Bradley with the extra interior set for $90nz ..if i had built them I would have found out early how hard they are to fit ..or just read a review and found that way..which i did in the end anyway 
This looking bloody fantastic bud and I'm looking forward to more pics 📸 😀

[rickshaw]

Suspension seems to be Dragon's weak point.  I have an M103 which regularly sheds road wheels at the suspension points.  Trumpeter seems to have the problem licked, I have their AFVs which seem much more solidly designed,   

[Wardukw]

Suspension seems to be Dragon's weak point.  I have an M103 which regularly sheds road wheels at the suspension points.  Trumpeter seems to have the problem licked, I have their AFVs which seem much more solidly designed, 

The biggest problem with Dragon is they try to make their parts as close to spec as possible with makes then weak..torsion arms are basically never seen and Trumpeter know that so they make the back side thicker.
I've had dozens of models from both those two and I've noticed many times that the torsion arms are bending under the models own weight..it's a real pain.

[Jakko]

But don't ya just hate that annoying cockeyed drive or just road wheels in general when they don't sit square? .

Yep, though this one was really my own fault for pulling the track too tight

This looking bloody fantastic bud and I'm looking forward to more pics 📸 😀

Thanks

Suspension seems to be Dragon's weak point.  I have an M103 which regularly sheds road wheels at the suspension points.  Trumpeter seems to have the problem licked, I have their AFVs which seem much more solidly designed,   

Trumpeter kits are often a bit more clunky, though Not my favourite brand, though they do have a lot of things you don't find anywhere else.

[Jakko]

Naturally, I also painted the machine-gun turret:

You cannot view this attachment.

Most of the gun and mounting are black with gunmetal or grey drybrushing, with the interior of the turret and its hatches in forest green. The little connecting rods that open and close the hatches automatically are still unpainted here, as you can see, because I only attached the hatches once I had glued the gun mount into the turret.

Time for an overall view of the model as it stood at this point:

You cannot view this attachment.

Fitting the mine plough was straightforward enough, but I discovered I had left off something reasonably important:

You cannot view this attachment.

On the M1 plough mounting, there are two eyes that I didn't understand the point of, so I hadn't made them for my replacement mounting. It turns out that these are for attaching some of the chains that go on the plough, so I had to quickly knock some up from plastic card. They were painted to match the rest of the model after I took the photo, of course. (The other white areas are where I scraped away the paint so the brackets holding the plough arms can be glued in place later on.)

Those chains go on like this:

You cannot view this attachment.

The chain, BTW, comes from the Tamiya M1A1 kit that also supplied the plough itself. However, Tamiya's instructions for how to fit the chains are not that great, IIRC. It took me a fair amount of looking at photos of the real thing to figure it all out. I then glued the plough arms to the tank, with all the other gubbins attached to them, and put more chains on, of course:

You cannot view this attachment.

The brass roller part lying on one of the skids is also supplied by Tamiya. Very nice, and much better than Dragon's plastic version because if you model the plough with the roller hanging between the skids, as it would while actually demining, its weight will pull the chain down correctly. The thing appears to usually have been stowed inside one of the skids otherwise, though, so that's why I glued it there.

And how the other chains run from the mounting plate to the rear of the blast shield:

You cannot view this attachment.

After that, I painted the chains, which is trickier than it sounds. I had to pull them taut with the rear end of a brush while daubing paint on them with another, else there was no way to get it on the chains at all because of the way they kept moving.

That done, I added the pull handle for manually releasing the hooks that hold the ploughs up:

You cannot view this attachment.

The handle is also included in the Tamiya kit, as is the copper wire I used. On the M1A1, this handle appears to have been tied to something high up on the glacis, but the only real thing to tie it to here is the headlight guard. I later painted the thread I used blue, to represent some random bit of nylon rope the crew must have found.

And another overview of the whole model, now with the mine plough:

You cannot view this attachment.

Oh yeah, the various periscopes that don't have clear parts were painted matt black and when that had dried, "coloured" in completely with an HB pencil. This gives them both depth and a sheen that isn't apparent from all angles, and IMHO makes them look much more like glass periscopes than just painting them does.