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The hull
I had to remove from the hull all of the nuts, bolts, rivets and washers
because they were either badly cast or just wrong in size/shape. To make all
of them I used a round and an hexagonal "Punch & Die" sets. The washers are
a bit more tricky, but after "squeezing" my brain a bit, I found an
effective way to have them done at a 99% rate of success (it means with the
inner hole centered), if you're interested in how I made them, just
read
this thread.
At the sides of the hull there are two moldings holding the lights needed to
safely move at night during road transfers. The resin one provided with the
kit were so badly warped and with casting errors preventing their proper
installation, so I scratchbuilt them using plasticard and copper foil to
reproduce the lights housings, replicating the lights with plasticard half
round rod. It was time to fill the incredible number air bubbles using
Tamiya putty thinned with acetone and applying it with an old paintbrush. I
was able to fill the bigger ones, but for the tiny ones there was no other
solution than using CA glue. This was the ugliest part of the building
because I had to fix several hundreds of bubbles (that kept coming out after
every sanding). I was seriously tempted to throw the hull against the wall
and destroy it but in the end I made it. A few other details had to be
re-scribed to properly highlight the relevant panels and hatches.
My idea was to portray the vehicle with the first two wheel axis steered,
but the suspension coming with the kit did not allow that. So I scratchbuilt
a working test suspension from copper tubing, metal rods and springs, I put
it in place and... the wheel steering was preventing it to properly fit in
its housing. I had to step back and go for the straight wheels
configuration, because to modify of the hull at this stage could have
unpredictable effects on the model both in terms of results and time needed.
Another tough task that appeared from the very beginning were the wheels. In
my view they were coloned from the very first Centauro from Model System
Trade. I made this assumption due to the fact that minor enhancements were
done to the older set, and both of them share the same errors on top of that
over 50% of the tire pattern was missing the most part the bolts. The first
idea was to scratchbuild a brand new wheel and then clone it, but it was not
possible to have the new wheel set done before the campaign deadline. So I
filled the missing part of the tires with Milliput and re-sculpted all of
them to re-create the pattern. All of the bolts were removed with a scalpel
and substituted with scratchbuilt ones. I'm not 100% happy with the result,
but I had no alternatives.
Once finished with the hull, I had the feeling that something was wrong. I
have several hundreds of pics of the Centauro, so I start to dig in them and
here came another nice surprise: the hull coming with the kit is from a
second series vehicle, while the turret is from a first series! Once more I
was going to throw everything out of the window, but in the end I came up
with the resolution to check who was the tougher between the model and me!
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