Hi Angel.

The chassis of British trucks in the era was the same as the body colour it was originally painted in. Engines and gear boxes were a different matter...

For your time period and for Lend Lease, these are the base vehicle colours to consider:
From 1934 to Feb 1939 the basic British vehicle colour was BS 24 Deep Bronze Green.
From then up to August 1941 the ordered colour was Nobels Khaki Green G3.
After August it was SCC No.2 Brown (until April 1944 when it changed to SCC 15 Olive Drab, but that is way outside your time period).

Mike's mixes:
BS 24 Deep Bronze Green
"Mix: 8pts XF5 + 5pts XF62; you will need to apply a satin varnish over this to achiev the correct appearance. "

Nobels Khaki Green G3
There are 2 versions of this, the second is the correct one as Mike determined how to do it after Tamiya changed their mix for XF 62 a few year back.
"New mix is 8 pts XF62 + 3 pts XF59 + 1 pt XF68."

SCC No.2 Brown
"Mix: 5pts XF68 + 4pts XF3 + 1pt XF1. The result is just a fraction strong on the red so go carefull and do not overdo the black as even a slight touch too much darkens the result a great deal. Should be OK with some medium grey added for scale effect."

There is a lot of discussion around 'scale effect' and not using Mike's colours exactly as stated, but with weathering the colour will change anyway so I do not adjust and I am very pleased with his choices.

I'm planning to use his mix of SCC2 brown for my Valentine. I don't suppose you have any pics of anything you've done in that color?

Howdy Y'all
I started my Tamiya 1/48 7 Ton Armoured Car and already messed it up. I started with the wheels. I glued one of the backs on backwards, I even dry-fitted it to make sure I got it right. The glue resulted in one of the tightest joins I've ever made in my hobby career.

I cut some of it back and will see how it looks eventually. I may be doing a vignette of the armoured car coming out of a tall hay field. Or, I may be buying another kit just for the wheel.
A quick question, what color should I use for the interior? I want to use the figure so I'll build it with an open hatch.
Take care and stay safe,
Don "Lakota"

Ha! I'm going to build two P-39 as my next project and one half is a VVS Airacobra and now I can put that in a campaign. That's fantastic! I have just enlisted. This will be my build:

.... and my choice is this beauty ....


The other half of my dual build will be a USAF Cobra and I have started a build blog on Aeroscale just a few days ago. If you like check it out from time to time.

Happy modelling!
Torsten

Thanks for your comprehensive feedback, Peter!

I'll mix the Nobels Khaki Green G3 and will use it as a base colour.

You mention engines and gear boxes are different matter- do you have any idea what colours have been used towards August 1941?
Which colour should I use for the interior of the driver cab?

TIA

Bummer Don. hope you can fix it. Interior colour on British AFVs post mid 1940 were white. Prior to this interiors were Silver, but they ceased so paint production for aircraft was given priority. They went back to Silver after the war (and many post WW2 crews scraped it off thinking it turned into slivers if the tank was hit...)

Nice choice Torsten

Phil, my Thunder Model 7.2 inch gun in the 'Big Guns' Gallery was painted with the mix. My pics are the last 3 on the page (the first 3 uploaded.) I hope these help.

https://photos.kitmaker.net/showgallery.php/cat/31933

Unfortunately Angel, the definitive answer is unclear. Talk is of a light 'mint green' or light grey for the engine, which was common in their commercial vehicles pre war. I would swing toward the mint green myself as I have a few pics, one from an unrestored chassis with hints of minty not-so-freshness and others a repainted RAF QL museum piece that seems to still have the engine and oil pan with original paint.

Thanks again, Peter!

So be it, I'll mix a mint-green and will use it,

OK, this is utter madness, but what the hell. Who are we? WE ARE MODELERS!

I can't guarantee anything, but here we go:



There is surprisingly little after-market help for this kit, but what there it, I got (except for the Cammett flaps and engine. I skipped those.)



The two biggest deficiencies that I know of in this kit are the drop tank, which is covered with huge rivet things, and the cockpit. As I'm building an AVG bird, which didn't have drop tank capability, that's no problem.

The cockpit, on the other hand... Sigh. After all the noise that's been made about this, why can't kit makers get it right? The early P-40 cockpit floor was the top of the centerline fuel tank in the wing. But they keep screwing this up! The cockpit in this kit is even more egregious than most, and is only about 1/2 to 2/3 the depth it should be. And it looks it. So some work is going to be required there, putting my meager scratch-building skills to the test. I have a good reference:



And I have that piece of paper to the right. Those are the 1/48 Airfix cockpit parts blown up to 1/24 scale. Don't know if they'll help, but they can't hurt!

OK, Flying Tigers movies on Amazon and fingers firmly crossed, we're ready to launch.

Michael

It's going to be awesome, Michael. I'm so glad you're in with an AVG subject!

Here's what I meant about the cockpit being too shallow. Those are the Vintage kit cockpit side panels on top of the Airfix 1/48 kit panels enlarged 100%.



A good modeler would build all new side pieces. I'm extending the current parts and making a new floor that is curved, like the real thing, and lower down. We'll see how it turns out. Interestingly the rear cockpit bulkhead on the Vintage kit has a ledge at the bottom that seems to be there for no reason, except that it seems to be in the right place for the actual depth of the cockpit. Hmmm...

Michael

Interesting choice Michael

Have done some work on my VVS Cobra in the last 2 weeks. So the cockpit is done. Okay, here are 2 Cobra cockpit, the soviet one is signed with the red Bella ....

For some reason I thought this was going to be a quick build, but it is not!



I zipped through the suspension which was fun to put together. I was having so much fun I glued the drive sprocket on without thinking about it and didn't realize it until the next morning. I think I was so tickled that the suspension all works and the drive sprocket turns that I just wasn't thinking. It complicates the build because I don't see how I can put the fenders on and still get the tracks on and off, so I'll paint and weather the lower hull and fenders separately, add the tracks, then finish the build.

There's a lot of fragile stuff sticking up from the hull so I decided to move on to the turret. I've now reached the point where I need to attach fragile stuff to the turret too. There's a lot of photo-etch whatever I do next.

It is a fun kit.

Nice work, and an interesting variety so far!

After a few hours bench time, and a lot of measuring (fairly) carefully, here's where I am in making the 1/24 AVG P-40 cockpit deeper:



Perfect? No. Better than it was? Yes.

Michael

Nice progress, Michael!

Have also done some work on my Eduard P-39. Fuselage halves are done, just have to sand the seams ....

.... wings are also nearly finished ....


Torsten

Nice couple, Thorsten!
And very delicate, but rewarding detailing, Michael!

I made some progress on my Bedford QLD build...

Mixed some MS Nobels Khaki Green G3 and sprayed it on the frame.Then mixed a Minty Green and used it for the engine:


Next I built the cabin.
Used Eduard's PE set and some PE leftovers/styrene halfrods to convert the late QLD to an early one:




Cabin interior is painted now and with cabin mounted not much is visible from the engine

I have a set of British wheels 10.5x20 on order and will replace the incorrect wheels from the kit.

Further- I came across a picture from a Soviet album on imported trucks, published in 1941/1942.
It shows a Bedford OYD in a 2 colour camo(dark/light green I suppose).
I might go for this camo scheme too, will see...

The extra detailing and the finish on the cockpits are fantastic Michael and Torsten.

No build is ever as quick as you think Phil, well in my case anyway. Hope the tracks don't end up giving you too much of a headache.

Excellent work on the Bedford Angel. The engine looks delicious..

Yes, fantastic work with that PE parts, Angel! Too bad, that you don't see much of them in the cabin later. But I hope you've made many photos during assembly.

I have also done some more work on my Bella Red. First I did some extra work on the muzzle covers for the .50's. Left photo shows what the kit offers, then I drilled holes in them ....

... my reference photos show, that the muzzles were not completely covered, so I drilled holes in 1 mm Evergreen Profiles and glued them in the covers. Bella Red (I think I call her "Irina" from now on) has just the right length ....

.... further work was done in the past few days and now the kit slowly turns into a P-39 Airacobra ....


The fitting of the clear parts to the fuselage is bad. This is the best result I can achieve. At least here you can see that these moulding forms are the early works of Eduard and over 20 years old. The moulds of their new Bf 109 or Spitfire are a completely different world. I will leave one door open to have some "action" and hope to throw some paint on Irina next weekend.

Torsten

Bella-issimo Torsten

Well, good morning, gentlemen.
I've participated in couple of the projects, but I failed to finish them all. All because of choosing too complicated subjects. So now I am going to build a simple tank without interior. I think I'll finish it in few weeks' time.
This is my entry photo taken last weekend.

I wanted to do quite an early Matilda with the internal hinges on the side armours and with the high commander's cupola. This was my first choice.

But I also like all those writings in english and russian on the sides. Unfortunately I could not find any Matilda with the internal hinges and early cupola and WITH the stenciled warnings.
So my final choice is this.

Early side armours, writings on the sides but also a low cupola.
I like the clean look of this tank. It is almost naked. It would look quite differnetly standing next to australian Matilda carring a lot of stowage on it's back.
Here is the current look of my model.

It will be built mostly out of the box. The main and only improvement is the use of track skid railing from the Firestorm's set.
I've ordered Echelon decals, but I'm still waiting for them.

Excellent! We have a lot of good subjects!

OK, here's where I am with the 1/24 Vintage P-4B:



I've had to exercise some modeling muscles I haven't used in a long time, but I just couldn't leave that shallow cockpit alone.

Next to the kit supplied floor, that's a new one I made, curved to match the extended side panels (the floor in the actual aircraft was the top of the wing fuel tanks). The raised areas on the floor are sheet metal for the pilot to put his feet on. The round part on the floor will have an instrument face added to represent the fuel gauge.

I raised the instrument panel and lowered the rudder pedals on their backing pedestal so the were closer to the correct spacing for the lowered floor. The plastic is VERY brittle so I had to heat the control stick to bend it to more of the correct, curved shape.

The metal part on the left side panel is a bent and clipped pin. It represents a manual pump handle that the kit actually was supposed to have but was missing from the sprue. I also relocated it as the kit had it under the throttle and from the picture in the Detail and Scale book, it's supposed to be above it.

Not perfect, but a whole lot better. We'll see how it all looks under a coat of interior greeen!

Michael

Nice detail work Michael. It is a significant difference in depth you had to add. Reminds me a bit of Dragon's halftrack series where the depth of the firewall is too short. Dragon had to mould their driver as a 'Midget' to fit the space they made.

I can never get rod to line up with the end of a section of rod like you have. I always have look to replace from a natural join to hide it.

Wow, Michael. I'm very impressed.

@Michael and Torsten

Following your advances with interest!!!