What if I would try to combined the Academy ( M7 Priest )and Italeri (Kangaroo) , trying to get the or more correct detail ? Is it possible
or am I fighting a lost cause ? Should I wait and buy the PE kit to
do the modification ? HELP ME !!!

well as a rule I always grab a P.E. set for what ever I am doing, if cost is an isue look on ebay, should run you about $10. Now what are you building? are you looking to modify the M7 into a kangaroo? Looking at the Italerie kit there is not much there to help you convert, I'm lanning on replacing most of the sheet work with plastic stock . I'd say go with what ever reserch you can and plan on scratch building a bunch of shielding and panels for the Priest.
The old Squadron book has some OK shots in it.
good luck!

I thank you for the info. I'm trying to build the M7 105. My main objective is the machine gun tub .I have noticed through my references that on this model the tub was longer instead of the short hight it is molded with. I was think about taking that side from the Kangaroo and placing it place of the original. Would that be to much work or should I just drop the idea all together.

this the vehicle your looking for


i have one about 10 minutes down the road if you need more photos

Yes , that would be great !!! THANKS , Bill

Michael I believe that is a M7B2, a Korea M7, they changed the machine gun ring to accommodate the need for a higher angle on the 105, basically its higher to clear the main gun.
Bill if you want to do an early M7 then the tub is fine, otherwise yes, you'll have to lengthen it. The Italeri kangaroo has the same short pulpit as the academy kit. My plan to make a mid/later production version was to just make a form out of a similar curve (dowel etc.) and bend warmed sheet styrene around it. The Squadron book has a good pic of the inside of the taller pulpit.

There were three different machine gun pulpit styles with the M7 series H.M.C. The Academy kit has the earlier style shallow pulpit. Mid/late production M7's had the one with an additional section added to the bottom of the pulpit: (photo from my website).

The M7B2 shown in one of the above posts would be for the Korean War and had an additional section added to the top of the pulpit. This was due to the raising of the gun mount for the 105mm howitzer. So, if you want to do a Korean War M7B2, you'll need to raise the 105mm howitzer mount along with the pulpit. If you want to do the deeper WW 2 style pulpit, do something similiar to what Stoney suggested.

For more pics, click M7 and M7B2.

Chris "toadman" Hughes
Toadman's Tank Pictures

i didnt know which version it is. being active duty, every post i go to i take pictures of all the vehicles i come across. just in case i ever want to build one. i just happend to take these the other day. along with a weird vehicle, i think it is a M24 chaffee chassis and some type of howitzer piece mounted to it.

i will head back in the morning and climb in and take some pictures of the interior and post them for ya.

Cool, thanks Michael. They are neat vehicles thats for sure. I found a few old sherman chassis up in the mountains around here last year, took about 100 shots of the wear and tear of 60 years on the bogies and wheels. They were being used for a mobile drill rigs, there was a VVSS and an HVSS, very cool. Alas my laptop with the shots blew up, so I have to go looking again.

Hey Eric,
This is a bit but I was walking out of one of my LHS a few years ago and I spied what looked like Sherman drive sprocket plates just sitting in the bed of a pickup truck.
Sure enough, they were from an old VVSS Sherman chassis that had been used for mining or logging here in B.C..
Talked to the pickup's driver, he was an avid car modeler , and he told me that there were a number of old tank chassis sitting around at his work camp.
What a neat find !!
Cheers

jjumbo

yeah, there are a bunch around. A few friends of mine are old loggers and said at one point there were 20-30 on the sunshine coast where I grew up. So I was thinking.... if you had the running gear... and a bunch of steel plate.. and a good TIG welder... where would you get a turret? hypothetically of course.

Overall shot of priest turret


Turret floor


Turret floor and holders on right side of wall


Better picture of brackets


Turret ring


Ammunition Storage left side (looking towards front)

Drivers compartment


Floor behind gun


Gun and mount


Gun assembly

Well, whether it's too much work is really your own decision. You could just start with the Italeri Priest if you want to do a late war M7 variant (they were built into 1945). You can correct the Academy kit if you want an early variant, or you can mix and match parts for a mid production variant. The new Concord book on US self-propelled artillery should provide all the reference photos you'd need. As for photoetch, there are parts on Sherman family vehicles that are particularly hard to mold in plastic, like the headlight and siren guards, and late M7's also had a pair of wire baskets on top of the sponson boxes which can only be done in metal, so yeah, I'd advise picking up some photoetch.
If you want to do the Ford-engined M7B1, you'll need an Italeri M7 and an M4A3 Sherman tank as a donor hull to provide the upper and lower rear plates and exhausts, as well as the engine deck. You would have to scratchbuild the extensions on the sponsons from styrene, as the M7B1 upper bodywork was longer than the M7, which was based on the Lee hull. However, very few of these were deployed to Europe, and they only turn up in photos from 1945. And for the Korean War M7B2 as shown in the photos here, you'd need to raise the gun mount and add the extenders to the pulpit.