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Crusader Mk II Gun Tractor Mk I

The build

As with any build read the instructions first. I took me a little time to feel confident enough to start as with many conversions the first thing that comes out is the saw and of course if you make a wrong cut, things could be over before you start. As it turned out there was little to worry about the main alteration to the kit is the removal of the turret ring and front portion of the upper hull from the Crusader kit. You make the cut immediately behind the raised platform and then cut forward on either side to immediately behind the angled bracket at the top of the glacis plate.

Once that has been successfully removed you lower any of the remaining side walls to the level of the track guards.

With the top hull dealt with you can then add the suspension fixings to the lower hull. Once set in place remove any locating pins that enter into the lower hull.

You also need to remove all the rivets from the glacis plate including those beside the tensioner holes then remove the diagonal bar form the jacking block location. Remove the rear light detail from under the louvers, remove the middle tow bracket flanges on the rear plate, and on the lower nose plate remove the upper and lower bolts immediately left and right of the centre line. Finally remove the spare track holder from the front left track guard.

Once you’ve done all that then you can start to clean up and test fit the replacement parts.

The Testors kit was my first experience of the older style kits with the slightly harder plastic parts and un-numbered sprue parts. Removing the detail was not that easy and took more effort than I thought it would be so I take my hat off to those who built through that period, not only is the dark green plastic hard to see detail on but having to jump around the instructions as the sprues were unnumbered was a pain. Fortunately all the replacement parts are well marked for identification.

The build itself is a fairly straight forward one, you build and add a drop in crew deck for the driver/commander and a rear bulkhead. After that you add the drop in bulk 17pdr stowage, and add the frontal armour and rear top plate. All seems fairly simple but of course nothing ever quite is, so a look at how thing went together.