It seems some people in Korea already received the sample kit and started building it, and this blog in particular claims on its latest post that the gap between 2nd and 3rd wheels on the right side is too narrow. What do you guys think?


http://blog.naver.com/afvmodeler

Yep, they made a mistake. The distance between the second and third torsion bar plates is too small... It's going to take some serious surgery to correct it.

So looks like Meng M1 Tusk is the winner

If they dont fix the mold i believe its not very hard to fix this problem on our own. There is no need to shorten the torsion bar.

Blue tag r the one which is matching while green tag r the one which is not matching. If the button part is right then the red zone should move further right to fix the gap between 2nd and 3rd road wheel. (perhaps 3mm to 5mm)

If they dont fix the mold i believe its not very hard to fix this problem on our own. There is no need to shorten the torsion bar.

Probably I'm being dumb (it's been a long week...) but I don't see how that fix changes the spacing between the 2nd and 3rd wheels.

TBH I'd want to see some accurate measurements of the real thing before deciding if there's a problem - and whether its significant enough to worry about. The guy on the blog compared the Academy kit to the Meng one, but is the Meng kit accurate? A quick survey of the Abrams kits in my collection shows the wheel spacing is slightly different on all of them. Which is right?

Hey Pawel

So what are the Meng's m1 tusk mistakes?

The only obvious inaccuracy I noticed so far is too long rear section of the belly armor piece. Some parts are simplified a bit more than I would like, but those are design choices, not mistakes. Maybe there are some more errors in the kit, but I have not built it yet and just looking at sprues I don't see more.

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Blue tag r the one which is matching while green tag r the one which is not matching. If the button part is right then the red zone should move further right to fix the gap between 2nd and 3rd road wheel. (perhaps 3mm to 5mm)

If they dont fix the mold i believe its not very hard to fix this problem on our own. There is no need to shorten the torsion bar.

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Probably I'm being dumb (it's been a long week...) but I don't see how that fix changes the spacing between the 2nd and 3rd wheels.

TBH I'd want to see some accurate measurements of the real thing before deciding if there's a problem - and whether its significant enough to worry about. The guy on the blog compared the Academy kit to the Meng one, but is the Meng kit accurate? A quick survey of the Abrams kits in my collection shows the wheel spacing is slightly different on all of them. Which is right?

It is also interesting to notice that the Dragon's M1A2 SEP V2's sample photo seems to show similar characteristics.

There r people mention above that the gap between 1st and 2nd road wheel on the right r shorter than the others, but this kit seems too short after all.

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It is also interesting to notice that the Dragon's M1A2 SEP V2's sample photo seems to show similar characteristics.

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It is not a good idea to compare to the built Dragon kit - the fit of the suspension arms is not very tight, so it is easy to mis-align them what results in wrong wheel spacing.

But I admit that my memory failed me and the above statements about equal distances are wrong... I checked my references again and actually the distance between the second and third road wheels on the right side of the tank is indeed slightly smaller than between 3rd and 4th and other wheels. It is correct in Dragon kit. It is the result of the different shape of the larger torsion bar plate used for the first, second and seventh road wheels - on those plates the distance between the suspension arm pivot point and the torsion bar anchor point is different from that on the smaller plates used for other wheels. This means that while distances between 2nd/3rd and 3rd/4th wheels on the left side of the tank are equal, on the right side of the tank they are not.

Academy just overdid it a bit - the distance between 2nd and 3rd road wheels in their kit is too small, to the point that wheels touch (or almost touch) when 2nd road wheel is lifted.

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There r people mention above that the gap between 1st and 2nd road wheel on the right r shorter than the others, but this kit seems too short after all.

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The problem is between 2nd and 3rd road wheel, not between 1st and 2nd.

Got mine today. Minus the 2nd/3rd wheel issues that have been noted, this looks to be a great kit. I was pleasantly surprised, parts look crisp, very nice detail, nice subtle anti slip. I was disappointed with Academy's M1151 and thought maybe I would see a similar type of kit, but no this is a very nice kit