Israeli M247 DIVAD

[Jakko]

Your name is Ile Arsi?

I thought I would refrain from asking if his name really sounded like Arse

In typical Takom fashion, the instructions want you to stick all kinds of detail to the upper hull before gluing it to the lower hull. But because there will be seams between the two halves, I didn't want all kinds of fragile bits in the way of filling and removing those, so I instead stuck the upper hull and the engine compartment sides to the lower hull:

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And we're at the first bit of actual conversion work already. Because I want to fit the Merkava-style tracks, I also need to install the drive sprocket from the Meng Magach kit, and that means its final drive units as well, else the sprocket won't be at the correct distance from the hull to fit the track.

Here is the Takom final drive in grey on the left, the Meng version in sand colour in the middle, and a Meng inner part with a Takom outer on the right:

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As you can see, it's possible in theory to use the inner from one kit and the outer from the other, but they don't fit well. You would have to remove the locating ridges on the outer part, but that's not a big deal. More important is that the parts from the two kits are different enough in shape and size that you can tell they don't really go together. So I discarded that option.

But just putting the Meng final drives onto the Takom hull is also not as simple as it seems, because their mounting holes are completely different:

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Takom's parts have two holes to fit over the large bosses you can see on the rear hull sides in the first photo in this post, above. Meng's have two small holes top and bottom for locating pins instead. A poor design choice by Takom here is that you can swap the left and right parts, but if you do, they will end up too high on the hull side — whereas Meng's parts have a thicker pin at the top than at the bottom on both sides, so you can't put them on the wrong side. (As I had already removed the Takom parts from the sprues and put them in a bag in the Meng box, I had a great time trying to work out which was which using the sprue diagrams in the instructions. This is why I carved the part number and L and R into them.) Even stranger here is that you can't put the outer parts on the wrong inner part in the Takom kit, while Meng gives the exact same outer part for both sides.

Anyway, to locate the final drives correctly, I needed to make holes in the Meng parts. I put the parts from the two brands together (left Takom on top of right Meng and vice versa) so I could mark the holes with a pencil and then drill them out using increasingly larger sizes of drill. The smaller, front hole is 2.5 mm, the larger, rear/upper hole is 4.5 mm.

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However ...

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... I had only actually marked out the rear hole, not the front one, because the Meng parts have a little bump on the inside with some bolt heads around it, which looks like it's in the same place as the front hole in the Takom part, so I drilled the 2.5 mm hole in its centre. Except it isn't — it's slightly further back. I'll have to enlarge it forward a bit so the final drive housing will actually fit.

[Jakko]

After scraping down the seams between the hull parts, filling gaps between them with putty, and attempting to recreate the texture that got lost, I added the engine deck and hull rear:

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[buzzbomb]

What a difference already.

Cross kitting generally comes with fitment issues, but perseverence pays off 

[Rick Lowe]

It's almost as if they're not made to be interchangeable with another manufacturers' product. Strange...

As for over-engineered kits...      

Another reason, aside from price, why the simpler kits will get (most of) my money.

[kerick]

Years later the M-48 hulls were getting old and worn out so the upgraded turrets were transferred to overhauled Merkava hulls.......

[Rick Lowe]

Years later the M-48 hulls were getting old and worn out so the upgraded turrets were transferred to overhauled Merkava hulls.......

Let him get this one done first, before you give him ideas for the next one! 

[Gondor]

The back end of that M48 looks horrible! What were they thinking when they came up with the A5 engine deck? 

[Jakko]

Cross kitting generally comes with fitment issues, but perseverence pays off 

Only to be expected, of course. The main problem was drilling holes that big in the thin plastic. With a hand drill, the 2.5 mm holes were doable, but by the time I got to a 4 mm bit for the larger holes, it caught in the plastic instead of going through. I had to actually turn it in reverse to make the hole, and the 4.5 mm bit did exactly the same. Had I forced it forward I would have destroyed the part

It's almost as if they're not made to be interchangeable with another manufacturers' product. Strange...

Odd, that ...

As for over-engineered kits...      

Not sure I would call it over-engineered, but it does suffer from the usual Takom problems in that fit tends to be rather tight, and that the instructions seem to have been written by someone who's only ever built kits on the computer rather than in plastic. They always have you put together parts whose alignment is critical to fit somewhere on the model, yet instead of building it there, you're supposed to make them separately and only then fit them. This it is not the worst example of that, though — try building their recent M29 Weasel kit by following the instructions from start to finish.

Years later the M-48 hulls were getting old and worn out so the upgraded turrets were transferred to overhauled Merkava hulls.......

Let him get this one done first, before you give him ideas for the next one! 

I like it. One that I want to do (at some point) is an M247 hull with a PRTL turret, as what the US Army could have had. That needs three kits, though: this M247, a Takom Gepard, and the Perfect Scale PRTL conversion ... An M247 turret on a Gepard hull seems unlikely, so maybe stick it on a Merkava hull instead?

The back end of that M48 looks horrible! What were they thinking when they came up with the A5 engine deck? 

This is the M247 engine deck. The M48A5's looks like this:

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That is, exactly the same as a late-type M48A3.

For the M247, they needed extra room in the engine bay for I don't know what. More powerful hydraulics and APU, that sort of thing, I suppose, but I can't actually find out what's in the extended bit of the engine compartment.

[Gondor]

Ah, my mistake. I thought the conversion was simply putting a new turret on top of an existing hull. Might have been a bit easier to get working if they had done that like the Marksman system.

Gondor

[Jakko]

Ah, my mistake. I thought the conversion was simply putting a new turret on top of an existing hull. Might have been a bit easier to get working if they had done that like the Marksman system.

Probably, but I'm guessing they had a genuine need for the bigger engine compartment And since they were using existing M48A5 hulls, this was probably the best solution. Gepard/PRTL also had a very much modified hull from the Leopard 1, but because they were newly built it's nowhere near as obvious. Or as ugly

On to the suspension:

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All of it is fully working. Here the idler mount and front two roadwheel arms:

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The arms are just stuck on the torsion bars without glue here, they're tight enough that they don't fall off. The shock absorbers work due to being in two pieces, and the idler arm also moves back and forth via the linkage to the front roadwheel arm. If you glue the arms carefully to the torsion bars, you can keep it all working, too.

But I want it to be fixed, and they don't quite line up properly on their own accord. I first stuck the hull to a pane of glass with some Blu-Tack, then carefully levelled it. I could then press the roadwheel arms down against the pane of glass and flow liquid cement into the joins. However, to prevent them coming back up, I still had to employ a ruler:

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The tweezers just serve to weigh the ruler down so the arms stay lined up.

Notice also that I didn't glue the front roadwheel arm and the idler mount yet. The front arm is longer than the other five, so just pushing it against the glass would result in it sitting too high. Once the glue has dried on the rear five arms, I'll use the ruler to line up the front arms too and glue them down.

[Rick Lowe]

If you're only using bits, and the turret is accurate enough, why not the Tamiya Gerpard, instead?
You'll be spending enough anyway, and it'll be miles cheaper than a Takim kit.

[Jakko]

True, but the question then is whether the Perfect Scale conversion set fits the Tamiya turret, and if it does, whether I want a 1980s-detail turret on a 2020s-detail hull ... In any case, that combo probably won't happen in the foreseeable future, as I have plenty of other things I also want to build (and/or finish) that I don't have to first buy kits for.

[Jakko]

The hull is now almost completely built per the instructions:

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The only things missing are the wheels and track, the air cleaners (which go in the empty spaces on the mudguards) and a few other bits that I think the Israelis would have removed or fitted elsewhere. The air cleaners in the kit are the later top-loading type, that was also used on the M48A5 and M60A3, but going by photos, the Israelis seem to have kept using the older, side-loading type from the M48A3, M60 and M60A1 (and which they also fitted to their Centurions). So now I need to either modify the kit parts, or find acceptable side-loading ones somewhere.

When building this kit, and presumably Takom's M48A3 and -A5, beware that the supports for the mudguards are all a very tight fit. Most will want to go in eventually with careful pressure and liquid cement, but both H13s (the ones behind the air cleaners) still won't. The slots for them are simply too narrow, which is a bit odd because H12 (in front of the air cleaners) looks to be exactly the same as H13 but will fit in its own location — but also not in that of H13. I widened the slots on one mudguard by scraping with a knife, while on the other side, I filed down the tabs on H13 slightly. Both methods work, but filing was much quicker and easier, so I would recommend that.

[Rick Lowe]

True, but the question then is whether the Perfect Scale conversion set fits the Tamiya turret, and if it does, whether I want a 1980s-detail turret on a 2020s-detail hull ... In any case, that combo probably won't happen in the foreseeable future, as I have plenty of other things I also want to build (and/or finish) that I don't have to first buy kits for.

Plenty of time to decide, then. 

[Jakko]

And to see if I happen to come across any of those kits for cheap