Hi Guys,

Second time around...I just had this post evaporate into thin air, so here it is again. My Heller AMX-13, a work in progress. IDF 1967. It will probably end up as a Golan Heights diorama piece along with a T-34 or SU-100. The tank crew is next to add some life to the vehicle. The MiniArt US WW-2 crew are fine for this era. This kit is not as bad as I've heard, but I am an old modeler and grew up on simple, undetailed and inaccurate kits. I did purchase the Friul AMX tracks which were just great. I hate the assembly but love the final result. The rear idler was pinched from a new Dragon Hetzer kit which (luckily) had some alternate early idlers included in the box, so not a total loss for the one part missing. I haven't added the stowage yet that will come along with the figures, and of course the dust...So, for now it's a single model but soon will be part of a larger diorama. Hope you like it.






Cheers
Ed Okun/ Frogman13

Great job Ed. Can you tel us what you've done to better the kit? I've had one in the 90% finished phase for about 15 years now, with a Verlinden turret. I just never could seem to get motivated to finish it, but yours may change that.
I can't wait to seie it with figures - I love your '73 figures with the sideburns and beards. I have that Mini art set you speak of, and they are quite nice.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your kind words. Off the top of my head the improvements I made for a type specific IDF AMX were:

1. Tracks. That was the best and most expensive item I added but well worth the investment. I used the newly released "Friul" AMX-13 tracks which are nothing short of wonderful and add alot of realism to this basic kit. Let's face it, the kit tracks were evrybody's biggest gripe about this old kit. I was very disappointed with the "Accurate Armor" AMX tracks which come in short resin sections and look pretty much like the kit tracks only harder to work with. A big thumbs down on these.

2. Engine intakes. I had some nice brass screening and basically just covered over the kit impressions. This gave alot of depth to these and I was happy with the result. The side screening covering the muffler exhaust pipe area came out great and it's still possible to see the muffler insde through the screen.

3. Rear idler. The Israelis used the later 6 hole dish type and I had been kicking around the idea of drilling it myself, but I'm getting lazy and time is short for model building so I instead used the Dragon "Hetzer" late type rear idler which is very similar, dimensionally a little larger but not too noticeable after it's all put together. Luckily, the Dragon kit comes with both Late and early idlers included so no big loss, I'll just build a Hetzer with the early wheels one day.

4. Stowage boxes. The israelis are well known for modfiying their vehicles and the AMX was no exception. The right side of the vehicle turret has a fairly large box attached, which I think was purposed to contain a searchlight. I might be wrong about that but it appears to be about the right size. Another smaller box appears on the left side of the turret under the commanders cupola. It's not very big and I have no idea what it was used for but it appears in every photo I have so I added that as well.

5. Searchlight mount. Located on top of what appears to be the turret ventilator mushroom. I cut a disc of styrene card and glued on top of the kit impression of this ventilator. I say impression because I totally ignored it until I realized what it was the detail was so soft. The Israeli army attached the mounting structure directly on top of this vent. The mount itself was disc punched for lightening holes and then bent to shape with a photo-etch bending tool. Soda can material was used to give scale thickness.

6. .03 Browning machine gun and mount. The israeli vehicles that I've seen in photos had a structure welded to the top of the gun mantlet which is the mounting for the Browning machine gun. This was also made from card stock. The pintle was in my spares box. The gun itself was pinched form the Tamiya Tiran kit. I had 2 of these and only intend to build one as an IDF Tiran so some useful parts were available. The Tamiya guns were so nice I couldn't resist adding one to give this kit some sharp details.

7. Removing and repositioning the small idlers. Later Israeli AMX-13 tanks only had 2 of the small upper idlers above the large roadwheels. The kit has 5 on each side. I cut away all of them, filled the holes and repositioned them according to my references. Be aware the the road-wheels are not parallel from left to right sides. The are slightly offset which will then present differing dimensions. If you look closely you can see that the back roadwheel nearly touches the 6 hole idler on one side. I mention this because I mistakenly positioned them opposing and then noticed something looked a little odd. i had to remove and reposition on one side only. Check photos before cutting and glueing.

8. Little widgets. I had some very tiny hexagonal profile styrene rods. When cut into little slivers it made acceptable bolt heads. I added these where i thought it would give some depth and or detail. The forward drive wheel sprockets have a circle of these around the circumference. i also added bolt heads to tops of hatch hinges and attachment points for stowage boxes.

9. Co-axial machine gun. Along the right side of the main gun tube their is a small, short tube which is, I believe the fairing for the co-ax machine gin. I drilled this out. Their is another aperture on the right face of the gun mantlet. I shaved the lumpy detail away and used a very small piece of photo-etch material that I cut to shape. Some green-stuff was applied at the attachment to the turret for effect.

10. Railings. Some of the grab rails broke during assembly and were replaced with appropriate sized copper wire.

11. Headlight guards. Although these photos were taken before I really got into these, they ahould be replaced with brass of a suitable thickness. The kit guards are really bad and they appear toy-like if not replaced. You can see in the photos that I was only half through that task when I realized that I better attend to the headlight lenses or I wouldn't be able to get to them after the guards were built in place. The headlights were painted silver and epoxy dropped into each.

So as far as upgrades, that's what I remember as being the most time consuming. The project is coming together now that I have most of it worked out in my mind. It will probably be includeed in a 1967 Golan Heights diorama that I have in mind and when that's underway I'll post a separate article in the Diorama thread.

Thanks for looking
Cheers,
Ed Okun/ Frogman13

Here are some photos before I painted where it's possible to see a few of the little things done to improve the detail and the additional Israeli modifications. The "MiniArt" US WW2 tank crew were assembled and positioned to finalize in my mind how it will look when completed.

Ed
Looks like an amx13 to me, bring on them figures, one has got to get a beard or weren't they so common in 67
Peter

Hi Peter,

Yeah, one at least will have facial hair. Maybe a short well kept beard. It wasn't too common among the regular army unless they were orthodox and could prove it. In that case they allowed beards. Reserve soldiers had beards and longer hair because they would get bounced out of their normal civilian lives directly into wars. My Tamiya 67 war M-3 half-track driver and forward gunner (I call them the "reservists" vehicle crew from the motor-pool) had crazy facial hair and Elvis sideburns while the infantry squad in back (being regular army) are all clean shaven.

Like it? I love it Ed!

In a time when you see mostly German armor, seeing an IDF (and an AMX too) is quite refreshing.


Thanks for sharing.




Jeff

Nice AMX Ed.
The mods you applied to the Heller kit makes your AMX a middle type one not a late. The 6-hole idler is an early feature as well as the 2 return rollers.

The 6-hole idler was assessed too fragile and later replaced by the model present in the kit. The additional return rollers are present on the late hull AMX13 with the external shock absorbers. On the early hull they were inside the hull.

For those who want to improve this kit, to complement the Friul tracks (or Space Ace ones), there is a PE set made by a French brand. Here is the link to the online shop
http://maquettegarden.free.fr/eshop.htm and select TAMM68



HTH
Olivier

Thanks for the link!


Did you see that workbench in there? AMAZING!





Jeff

Every day I get more and more fascinated with the IDF, and this is a perfect example why. Love the look of all this, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!

-Conor

Here are a few more photos showing the tank with the MiniArt US WW2 tank crew slightly modified. I used "Warriors" Israeli heads by grinding off the 1980s infantry helmets and inserted their faces into the Miniart tanker helmets. Looks better I think with more variation in the facial expressions. The original figures all had the same Russian looking face.


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Cheers !
Ed Okun/ Frogman13

Nice work on your AMX13 and the figures, Ed.
Agree with Jeff ... good to see some unusual IDF stuff here ;-)

Cheers
Walter

Same here, very nice AMX13, good figs. I look forward to seeing it in it's eventual setting.

Hi Ed, a fantastic and excellent job there.
And there is nothing wrong with using older kits, at least you can go crazy with scratch building parts for them.
Maybe someone will start up an Israeli campaign where we could see some more of this stuff




Paul

Thanks for showing!

A very well executed AMX, you made!

Reading about your hate/love attitude to the Friul tracks: the 1/35 version is as bad as the 1/1 version, if it comes to tracks!!

Your comment about the tracks brings back memories of all those awfull moments, the AMX AFV types created if a driver was over enthousiastic in taking turns uphill with too high speed!
I can recall the infantery version, as a young FAO, or, during my basic artillery officer's training, the artillery version running out of track without too much difficulty.
Therefore, loose tracks on this vehicle would create quite some busy hours for the crew.
Nevertheless: good to see this tank version modeled!

Again: great job!