I was taking break from my Shmira kitmash, when I started poking around my model stash to see what goodies I had laying around. I came across an old Esci/Ertl Ti-67 (Tiran 4/5) kit that I picked up on eBay for a paltry sum. I shelved it without opening it, and forgot that I had it. I pulled it out, removed the plastic wrap and peeled opened the box.

I was disappointed with the contents, which was surprising, considering my expectations weren't that high to start. But the kit had some glaring omissions (missing loader's periscope, for example) along with some glaring errors (the loader's hatch, for example) and the whole thing would take a whole bunch of work to make it look decent.

Or would it?

I thought about putting the box back on the shelf, or in the trash, and that little voice in my head - the one I should learn to ignore - told me to give the kit a whirl. But what to do? I didn't want to spend any money on it. After all, if I wanted to blow some cash, there was Tamiya's T-55 kit to buy, along with a whole bunch of conversion hardware, and then I'd have a nice looking Tiran.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I decided right then and there to try to fix the bugaboos on the turret, using whatever I had on hand, in less than two hours. After that, I'd give up and have another beer and get back to the Shmira.

Now, before the rivet-counters hit me over the head with a micrometer, let me say this: I had about $8 in the kit, a bottle of Tenax, some styrene and a box full of spare parts. I wasn't concerned with being super accurate at this stage; I just wanted to see if a little creativity (and frugality) would turn a lump of poop into...well, a better looking lump of poop. Would it look better when I was done? Probably. Would it be accurate? Probably not. But seeing that the kit wasn't accurate to begin with, I had nothing to lose.

First, I took the T-55 gun from the kit, glued up the breech end and set it aside. Why? I'll tell you in a bit.



Next came the loader's hatch. I saw a couple of Esci Ti-67 models online (as well as one in the May 1992 issue of Military Modeler) that had the correct loader's hatch, but my kit was totally lacking. Not only was the cupola ring not on the sprue, it was not even mentioned in the directions. So, I decided to build one. First, I hogged out the loader's hatch opening with an X-Acto knife and some 100 grit sandpaper, so that it was bigger than the kit hatch by about .020 of an inch all the way around. I covered the resulting hole with a 1-inch circle of .020 styrene, glued it with some Tenax, and cut it out, leaving a base ring in place.



Next, I cut a 1/4-inch wide strip of .020 styrene, rolled it into shape and glued it in place inside the hatch opening. I kept it as level and plumb as possible in relation to the commander's cupola, leaving it just a bit taller than needed, so I could sand it down to the correct height.



After some judicious use of file and sandpaper, I had the inner ring the the height I wanted it. I taped off the rest of the turret, and filled the space between the base ring and the inner ring with some epoxy putty, smoothing it out as much as possible before the putty started to harden.



While the epoxy putty was curing, I turned my attention back to the gun barrel. I sliced the mounting lug off, along with a little bit of the barrel, and ended up with a piece that looked like a top hat.



I sanded the piece down to reduce its thickness, and cut off the first third of the "hat" part, leaving the "brim" behind. Since the barrel is hollow, this left a nice little square opening, which looked remarkably like...a loader's periscope. Hmmmm.



Next came the 5/16-inch hole in the turret, needed to mount the periscope. I eyeballed the location, based on some pics and a line drawing I found online, and drilled it. The epoxy putty was hard at this point, so I did a little sanding there, just to clean things up a bit.



I glued the new periscope in place, put the loader's hatch on, and looked at my watch. It was one hour and twenty minutes after I started - and that included time for pictures!



Of course, there's more work to do, including adding bolt head detail around the loader's hatch, a few items to the periscope, etc., etc., etc. But the bulk of the work is done, I used only the supplies I had on hand, exercised a little creativity and really, had a bit of fun doing it.

Sow's ear to silk purse? Hardly, but at least I don't want to throw the kit out anymore!

Yoni,
Great job!!! Are you going to finish the kit?The kit has alot to rework to make a nice model out of it.But it can be a fun one to do.
Cheers.
Mike.

Nice trick with the periscope! I had not thought about that one.

Looking forward to see more - I hope you will finish it.

Thanks for the kind words, folks!

I guess I will eventually finish the model...as soon as I do a little more work on my Shmira project and get some paint on that M60A1 Blazer that's been sitting on my bench for weeks. But I do want to add a Tiran to my collection, and seeing that I've already started this one, I might as well see it through to the end. I have to admit, it was a fun bit of work, and now I'm curious to see what other "low-tech" solutions I can come up with.

I'm not sure how crazy I'll go with fixing all the kit errors - and there are a bunch of them - but I'll probably post pics of whatever work I do to the kit.

Mike: I take it that you've built one of these Esci Ti-67 kits before. Any tips or pics you want to share would be appreciated.

Jesper: I have to say I was pretty tickled with the gun barrel/periscope trick myself. It was one of those ideas from out of the blue that just happened to work out.

Yoni,
Yes, I have built this Ti-67 kit Two matter of fact these where not built for myself but for people who wanted the kit built up.
When I build a kit I always take "KIT NOTES" so as if I build anouther one I have some knowlage of problems that may show up on the next build.
All see if I can find the notes I made on that kit for you.
If I do all write the info here for you.When the kit came out it was the only game in town for a Ti-67 all in all for the time it was OK not great.
But with a little time it can be built into a very nice kit.
As you can see from the hull it's a T-54 not a T-55 as most of the Ti-67 where on T-54 hulls.
Do you have any Ti-67 info as in referance?
The two I built 1 had the 100mm and the other 1 had the 105mm the one with the 100mm was a 1973 war tank.And the 105mm tank was with the full modifed package.
Cheers
Mike

Mike: I've been poking around the Internet and I've found a bunch of Tiran pics, as well as some basic Tiran info that should prove useful. I'm not an expert on Soviet armor, but I did notice that some of the hull details on the model were not exactly like the T-55 pics I've seen, and I remember reading somewhere that the Esci kit did indeed have a T-54 hull. Honestly, I don't know if converting the hull would be worthwhile, or even neccessary.

I will probably go with the 105mm gun that came in the kit. I think I'll add the MG mount in the middle of the turret, as well as the one on the loader's side. I haven't seen any Tirans with the .50 cal MG mounted on the gun mantlet as seen in the kit, so that's out. I'll probably pick and choose other details as I go along, and I don't even want to think about markings at the moment. Again, I'm really not interested in making this a super-accurate build...just nice enough to shimmy under my "if it looks like a duck" limbo stick.

Thanks for the input!

-YL

Thanks for the info on the kit layout, Gary.

I knew there were variants of the T-54/55 produced in other countries, but frankly, there was no way I would have ever figured out that the Esci kit was a Polish-produced T-55. Like I said, I'm no expert on Soviet armor.

I'm assuming that the kit hull is not correct for a Tiran 5, since I doubt Poland exported T-55's to Egypt...

-YL

Now that I've opened a can of worms...

I've seen three different styles of loader's hatches on T-55s. One is the early-style, flat loader's hatch. The other two are pictured below:



The top picture is a loader's hatch on a T-55A, with the AA gun mount. The bottom pic is a loader's hatch on a Tiran 5.

I've seen early Tirans with the flat style loader's hatch, modified to open to the rear instead of the front. However, I haven't been able to find any pics of the top style hatch (the green T-55A) on any IDF tanks, but I'm wondering if that style hatch/coaming/cupola would be correct for modeling a Tiran 5.

Any input would be appreciated. TIA.

-YL

Well, that clears that up. Thanks again, Gary, for your input. Much appreciated!

-YL

A quick update on the Esci Tiran, which is no longer an 80-minute wonder...although I still don't have a ton of time invested in it at this point.

I had a bit of a frustrating issue with the epoxy putty around the new loader's hatch; it would chip out every time I tried to drill it to add the bolt detail. I took some RTV silicone and made a quick mold of the commander's coaming/cupola, and used this and some "liquid plastic" to cast a new overlay for the loader's hatch. (For those not familiar with the "liquid plastic" trick, all you have to do is add chunks of sprue to a half-full bottle of Testor's liquid cement, and wait a few days for it all to melt. You have to do this a little at a time so you can watch the consistency of the resulting goop, which needs to have a viscosity similar to that of thick maple syrup. I make up bottles of the stuff as I go along, and keep it on hand for casting small parts. It takes a while to fully dry in the mold, but once it's ready, you have a part that can be glued to your model with regular model cement.)

I did some trimming, sanding and puttying work on the newly cast hatch coaming overlay and then I sanded down the ring of epoxy putty until the new piece fit over it. (I probably sanded about half the epoxy putty away.) Then I just glued the new piece down over the old built up section. This took a bit of patience and some super glue (an extra pair of hands would have helped, too), but in the end I had a decent looking loader's hatch with some nice, evenly spaced bolt detail.

Remember the periscope that I made out of the breech end of the scrap gun barrel? Well, I reworked it a little and added some bolt detail as well. I also reworked the kit piece for the IR searchlight mount and added a few odds and ends to the rest of the turret with some stretched sprue and scrap plastic.

This is BEFORE:



And this is AFTER:



Of course, there are more details to add as construction progresses, but I think I have all the major rework done on the turret at this point. Now, it's just mainly kit parts.

-YL

I haven't had a lot of modeling time lately, but I did manage to spend an hour or so gluing a bunch of parts and bits onto the Tiran turret. Mind you, it's nothing fancy, just the kit parts, or mildly modified kit parts, with some scraps of sheet plastic and rod added to the mix.



The loader's side basket did not fit well at all, so there was a bit of shimming and gluing and cursing for that part.



You will notice that I added a MG mount in the middle of the turret roof, since the kit didn't come with any of the parts for the MG ring on the commander's cupola. I don't know how correct this is, since I've only seen this type of mount of early Tirans, not the later, updated versions; however, that's how I built it, so that's how it will stay.



I added a bit of styrene rod to the basket on the rear of the turret, to make it look a little more prototypical. I didn't bother trying to add any detail to the inside of the basket, as I will just fill it with gear shapes and cover it with a tarp. I still have to add the jerry cans and the spare track links, which will probably happen after painting.

As an aside, the assembly directions that come with the kit are so bad, they're almost useless. If I had a bird, I would use the instruction sheet to line its cage.

Yes, it's an ugly, sloppy build. Thankfully, most of the sins will disappear under a coat of paint. All told, I still have less than $12 and 4 hours into it. I don't know how much better it will look than an OOB Esci Ti-67 kit, but I think that any better is good enough.

-YL

Try hunting down Bruce Crosby's article from an old Military Modelling magazine for more good ideas about reworking the ESCI kit, specially in the area of the engine deck. I'll try and work out which issue it was in.

David

Peter Brown of PMMS did a review of the Italeri (reboxed Esci/Ertl) kit, and mentioned the article by Bruce Crosby.

Since I don't have the 1999 Military Vehicle Modelling Special that the article appears in, I'll probably just leave the rest of the kit as it sits. I had contemplated reworking the engine deck in some small ways, such as correcting the location of some hinges and replacing the molded-in plastic engine screen with some fine brass screen, but it seemed to me that that sort of thing - coupled with a healthy dose of AMS - would eventually lead me down the road to damnation. In other words, a simple exercise in cheap improvement would end up being a full-on rebuild...and then I'd never get it finished. As it is, I've probably spent too much time on it already!

I do appreciate the heads up, though, David. If I do come across the article, I will certainly hold on to it. I'll probably end up finding another old Esci kit to work on, too, because I'm crazy like that.

-YL

hi

please finnish it

even if i have to finance it

you did a great job with an impossible kit

please consider completing this project



mazel tov

may also add that the turret in question is not of the proper height

I suggest to add an additional spacer styrene line at the bottom to make it higher before you close the lower part that connects to the hull , this way the turret will stand right

what I mean to say is that the turret depth is too shallow