The version I’m modelling, the BTR-80A, actually sports neither of the above types of tyre. In the box you don’t even get the versions depicted on the box art! The A road wheels look like this:
http://dic.academic.ru/pictures/wiki/files/66/BTR-80A(2).JPG
Unfortunately I tried to get the resin version of these from Miniarm but everywhere I tried was out of stock so I settled for the SP Designs wheels that are for the regular BTR-80. The hubs, as far as I know, are correct- the tread and width is not. But for me the SP designs wheels were a good price and they look a lot better than the kit versions.
As you can see I substituted many of the kit parts for PE ones from the Eduard BTR-80 set. I would really recommend this as it does add to a lot of areas and fixes a lot of mistakes. As far as I know most of what I have done is correct but I have made mistakes, some intentional, some not. Based on other threads I believe the wave deflector is an incorrect size but it looks fine to me so I left that.
I also made the mistake of pushing the leftmost light on each side into the metal frame when it should sit inside it a bit. The rear-view mirrors should also be back further than they are on mine. I also added a small horn on the left side near the light assembly, just from a few scrap bits of PE.
The only other bits added here were the dampers?? for the wave deflector. The kit parts are totally wrong and the PE parts only fix the problem on the BTR-80. The A version has a different kind of damper which is square with a little bit of rubber?? on the inside. I sratched this from plastic card and brass rod.
The side doors on the kit are another problem. The fit is pretty bad and unfortunately it means the final shape is not right at all- for a start there are gaping holes either side of the side doors when the hull halves are mated. This was filled with pieces of plastic strip which were trimmed to shape. Magic Putty was then smoothed over this to correct the shape of this area.
Another mistake in the kit is the fact there is no grab-handle set beside the door on either side. This is clearly visible in all references of the BTR-80A. It was easily replaced with some brass rod.
The rear of the BTR is relatively easy to correct with the PE parts. However, the Eduard PE would have you shave off the rear lights on the kit and replace it with a pair of PE parts for either side. I’m not sure what they were doing here but the metal parts appear to be quite a bit wrong (unless they are depicting some sort of light cover?)- the kit parts are just fine.
As most people building the BTR-80 kit have mentioned- there are quite a few areas to be filled and sanded when the hull halves are mated. I found most of the join problems were minor, a bit of Vallejo Putty sorted it out just fine. My only real problem was a gap of a few mm’s on the underside of each side. I cut pieces of plastic card and glued them in place before doing some filling with putty and sanding.
Most of the hand-rails in the kit were very flimsy and suffered from a lot of flash. They were also fairly brittle. I replaced most of them with brass rod. The rod on the crew doors on the deck and the commander and driver hatches were added by drilling holes in the mounting parts and running the rod in between and cutting it to length.
Unfortunately the mounting hinges on the kit were mostly all broken off when I received the kit so they were all glued back on. They don’t look quite right though and I think a few people here have described them as ‘toy like’. I simply cut and sanded them down when the glue had set to give a better appearance.
I think the turret in the BTR-80A kit is actually a newer mould by Zvezda (2004) (unlike the rest of the kit which is a DML copy) and the detail is much better. Unfortunately the Eduard PE set is useless here as it is only for the BTR-80 turret.
Overall the fit of the turret is good except for the access hatch at the front which, when first glued, stands proud of the rest of the turret. This was sanded flush. The other problem is the hydraulic arm for the main gun. The kit part is an accordion bag that, when fitted, would elevate and fix the gun in the most upright position. I didn’t want this so I cut it but it would no longer fit correctly. Then I started to look for more references for the BPPU-1 turret, specifically pictures showing the hydraulic arm.
The kit parts were therefore not quite right anyway, so I used a piece of brass rod and sprue cut to size to model the hydraulic arm and some magic sculpt to model the accordion bag.
I must also say thanks to Jacques here for giving me some info on how smoke grenade launchers work on APC’s. The finished vehicle will be set in a small diorama with a figure and I wanted the smoke grenades to have been used, thus I modelled them hollow using various widths of drill bit to continually widen the hole without breaking the plastic.
I’m hoping to get some primer on tonight and I’m planning to use the AK Interactive 4BO Russian Green color modulation set to do the painting.
The wheels I have already finished in Vallejo US Dark Green for the hubs and Black Grey for the tyres. They’ll be given a coat of matt soon and then weathered.
Well hopefully I’ll make some good painting progress this week. Thanks for reading. Comments etc are very welcome.
-KARL187-
