My Mud, Sweat, and Gears project is the US Army's T-2 Recovery Vehicle. Some of you may be more familiar with this as the M-31, but T-2 was the development name and it apparently stuck with the field forces as it is used almost exclusively in Belton Cooper's book "Death Traps: Survival of an Armored Division in WW2". I relate to this book because I started my Army career as an Ordnance Officer and my first tour of duty was with the 3rd Armor Division -- believe me, you can't have any more fun than being "Mr Goodwrench" to an armor brigade.

Anyway, the base kit is of course the Tamiya #35039 M3 Lee with all its warts (turret, hull, wheels, rear deck, etc). I have two Calibre35 resin conversion kits: #35008, the M31 Conversion Kit, and #35013, Corrected Wheels & Deck. I also have a couple Eduard PE sets for the M3 Lee and another that goes with the Italeri M32. There are some after-market tracks in my stash; I'm not sure which I'll use yet. (Note: DES also has an M31 Conversion -- I wish I could get a look at it in comparison to the Calibre35 one).

Here is the base M3 Lee kit:

& the M31 Conversion set:



But I am going to kick this up a notch and also have the Verlinden #1807 M3 Lee Interior Detail resin set (shown below). And to go with all that I have, in my spare parts pile, a Tamiya M26 (Dragon Wagon Tractor) and all the Eduard PE sets (M26 Interior, M25 Exterior, Panels & Boxes, DW Detail) -- that should provide plenty of recovery equipment detail stuff. And I have a reprint of the US Army TM 9-739 for the T2 as well as other reference material I've collected. And, as always, I have a goodly collection of Evergreen & brass.




So, the project is really a T2 conversion, with a detailed interior. The TM does not offer (usable) pictures of every nook & cranny, so there will be some "best military judgement" (guesswork) along the way. At this point my focus is on the hull interior & any related portions of the exterior; I have decided against adding an engine & detailing the engine compartment itself but could change my mind if time/energy permits.

I've been collecting this stuff over several years and it is time to do it. I actually started this in the spring, but got side tracked very quickly, so not much has been done. The main work was to start chopping up the upper hull to be ready for both the M31 Conversion & Lee Interior.



I also started sanding down the Interior resin components and the lower hull pieces and glued in the main ones. To this I added a couple rails for the winch. Now I will spend quite a bit of time fitting seats, gear levers, pieces & parts into the hull. It will not be fun. The tool & parts cabinets alone could be a separate build !!!! I also cut down one of the Dragon Wagon winches to make a reasonable replica of the 60,000 lb capacity Garwood used in the T2.




Time now to review my notes, pull everything out of the boxes & get familiar with it all again. I know my one big problem is reshaping the upper (37mm) turret. I have Hunnicutt & have made a rough drawing, but would really like to find the AMPS Boresight Dog Pound article on the Lee of a few years ago. I am also going to look carefully at building the crane and things such that even if they will not move, they can be repositioned to display the model in different configurations.

I'm looking forward to this build, although I hope my buds in "SoftSkins" cut me a little slack on this, an armored vehicle.

As always, any comments and suggestions are more than welcome !!!!

John
PS: I'll get my Journal & Gallery going shortly. The Journal will look much like these posts, while I'll put additional pix in the gallery.
PPS: Unless Stormbringer has other ideas, I'll just keep updating this thread with progress, so it's all in one place.

John you are taking on some very aggressive projects. I have been haveing a great time viewing all your work.

John once again you are proveing your skills and also in this case your versatility as well.

M31 is a welcome change from everyone doing M32s. Can't wait to see it done

John
You carry on my friend, I just look forward to seeing your progress.
Pete

An update, no pictures.

After spending a day with my previous work, the various instructions, and the Tech manual, I found a half-dozen things I had either forgot or wasn't doing right, so I set about correcting same.

At the same time, I started to plan for and work on some new parts & pieces. I'm starting to get back in the swing of this project.

I got the DES M31 conversion kit. It's OK, but the quality isn't as sharp as the Calibre35 kit and the crane is about 3/8" too long. On the other hand, it comes with corrected road wheels (but not a corrected rear hull). It comes with a complete turret, but it does not correct the Tamiya shape. The best part is that it uses alum tube for the crane support booms & that gives me an idea on how to make my stuff re-positionable, or at least I hope so. I have a big bag of alum & brass tube pieces ....

So I'll stick with the Calibre35 conversion & borrow some DES parts where they might be useful.

I also had to address some significant warpage in my crane & a few other parts. I made some balsa jigs to hold parts where I wanted to get the right shape, then put them in hot water for four minuets, then cold water for another four minutes, then let them air dry, still in the jig, for 24 hours & I think I have all the problems fixed.

Should have another picture update next week.

John

Alice in Model-Land
or
If you go down that rabbit-hole, you're screwed.


But first a word from history.

As stated above, I started this a year ago, quit & just now restarted. A good thing I did, because I've put some quality time into research & whatnot and found that I had made some errors of analysis, and had some craftsmanship issues.

So I tore some things out, cleaned up some cuts, and started working on the upper & lower hulls. I've reconciled number & location of seats, storage cabinets, and other things in the hull and am working on building them. So here are a couple pix to replace the ones I began this thread off with. You can see on the upper hull that the side doors have had hinges removed and been welded shut (right keeps vision port, left does not), and the sighting stuff on the ex-75mm mount has been sanded down. Left front vision port has been relocated higher. Inside the hull, I'm working on seats, flooring, and stowage, although you cannot see much here. Note the hole in the floor for the cable rollers -- Calibre 35 provided this, with rollers. I had to relocate it slightly to clear the propshaft. I also drilled holes thru the box and the rollers so I could hold them in with a brass shaft.





Now for the main event -- this was not fun.

We all know the 37mm turret on the Tamiya Lee is too high, too rounded, and for the T2, the old MG turret base is also too high. I know of no A/M to fix this, so using Hunnicutt as a guide, I chopped the top off the turret. Here you see the chopped top; the card thing is the template I used to ensure I sanded level.



But once I got some height out of the turret, I then had a problem with the Calibre35 mantlet replacement which was sized to the uncorrected Tamiya turret. Further study indicated that the turret might sit a bit too high, so I cut off the sides and set about lowering them a bit. You can see this here, along with my new turret top from Evergreen, and a new turret hatch. The Tamiya hatch wasn't right, the Calibre35 hatch looked a bit tall and was closed -- I'm doing the interior, so that wasn't helpful. But that DES conversion kit had a nice hatch ring, with separate hatches, so I used it.



At that point, I went into multiple fit, fill, shape interations. I couldn't get the mantlet in cleanly, so I cut a slice across it to reduce its height by a saw blade. You can see the Evergreen strip filler & all the Squadron putty. This picture shows the original kit turret and my new one in a semi-finished state. I need to primer it and do final clean & shaping. I'm not even showing the inside of the turret -- ugly right now.




OK, Now that the turret has the right shape, I can start on the interior detail, most of which is the fleeting sheave assembly. One problem I have to solve is how to secure the turret so it will stay tightly on the hull, but will still rotate -- you can see I cut all the kit-latching stuff from both the turret & the hull.

I already mentioned the hull interior work. I can also start to work on the exterior of the upper hull. I have pretty well decided that most all interior detail will be mounted in the lower hull and very little will be mounted on the inside of the upper hull. There will be small exceptions, of course.

John