Panzer Fan - this is what I normally do the the Tamiya (AP Bayardi too because the conversion was cast using Tamiya's body pan) M151 to improve the look of the rear suspension:
The underside during construction. As Al mentioned above, I'll add simple details to the underside of the Battery Box and Fuel Tank that is missing in the Tamiya kit. Really easy to do. As Kevin mentioned, I do punch out three .010" discs of sheet styrene to insert into the two holes cast on the body pan where the rear suspension springs locate - before gluing in the springs themselves. They cannot be seen in the end result - but do raise the rear suspension up enough that the wheels do not come in contact with the sides and tops of the rear wheelhouse.
As Al mentioned above about drilling out the lightening holes in the tire rims; I like to replace the wheels altogether with pairs taken from AFV Club's 105mm Howitzer kit. The holes are already open. Fitting them to a M151 is easy - using the Drums supplied in the AFV Club kit.
My Davy Crockett Transporter/Launcher M151A1D truck is glossed to protect decals and markings in the above photo. It is here to show what the result of inserting the punched discs to raise the rear suspension looks like when the tires are fitted to the model. This method works for all the 1:35th scale M151 models out there that suffer from this problem.
Hope this helps.
Gunnie
