As I said above my apology's for the lack of updates recently, real life has a tendency to take over sometimes.

Where am I at now? All areas of build are complete except for the skirts and associated photo-etch which is waiting until after I paint and mount the tracks and running gear areas.

No issues completing remaining parts other than much of it was PE and required patience and care.

I hope to get the first coat(s) of paint on tomorrow so stay tuned for another update soon

Are you going with the kit tracks or aftermarket?
If you use Jacques and some other folks suggested removing the front idler axle back locator pins and placing the part at its rearmost possible position (a solution I have not had time to try yet.)

Keep up the build,
Mike

Mike, while I haven't fitted the idler wheel axel parts yet I have test fitted them and they are somewhat loose (The hole is D shaped but to big for the locating pin). This being the case I didn't fix them into position in case I needed to rotate them slightly for a better fit.

I'll be sure to add some more information and pics on that when I attach that area.

Andrew,

take a look on the four ERA blocks wich protect the left smoke discharger mount. They look a little misaligned on the pictures.

Thomas

Thomas, your right they are in fact off alignment (I hadn't picked that up). On closer inspection the mounting plate for the two ERA plates in front forces the support spar up, so I cut the spar and reglued slightly higher. Picture of correction next time.

Removing the track & guide horns from the sprue, trimming and gluing guide horns to tracks took nearly 6 hours for all 320 parts (80 tracks, 80 guides per side) so I recommend some good background noise. On attaching the road wheel I came across an issue, as careful I was one of the wheel attachments is sitting noticeable higher (noticeable now the wheels are on that is not before). Not quite sure what to do about it at the moment. Otherwise no other problems so far, just time consuming.

160 of the little beggers assembled.










Next assembling and painting the tracks (oh the joy).

A little uneven ground work on the base will solve that problem. Looking good. I've just ordered this kit.

Roy

Um...oops? Mind the log?

Looks good. I have the workable track set from Trumpeter and will be mixing them in with the "Static" tracks in strategic places to get the best of BOTH worlds...

How many versions can be built out of the box with this one?

Thanks

Honestly, it may take a touch of time to answer that question.

@ Roy, I may end up making a base later but no plans at the moment.

@ Jacques, how are you finding the kit tracks at the moment? Discovered the possible flaw?

@ Firecaptain, honestly I don't know enough about the BV variants to know.

OK Build section is complete (minus lens's for search lights and tow cables), just painting and weathering to go.

If you buy (or already have) this kit I suggest you consider after market options for two reasons, these were the worst Indy tracks I've ever built for alignment(but I admit I hate indy tracks anyways), second reason is I believe they are in accurate though I will wait for Jacques or someone with more knowledge to confirm this.

I believe the kit tracks have an error in the tread pattern, see images below






Pattern should alternate height and side, Kit tracks mirror each other left vs rights.
I have not been able to find a single T-80 image with this tread style so until confirmed as a error by someone else it is at least very uncommon.

Other then the above mentioned track issues the remaining parts went together fine in less than an hour.

Gold medal job of the tracks...





And the completed build...
















Final two pictures are of the "repair" to the block of 4 ERA blocks on the left turret side.

No, I did not notice that on the Trumpeter tracks until you pointed it out. I do not know if the separate tracks from Trumpeter are the same, I will check tonight, but the Fruils, and both sets from Spade Ace, are correct. Trumpeter did a oops.

I noticed the oops when I was trying to make sure I was lining up the tracks the right way direction, took me a little time to figure it out why it was looking wrong compared to my references.

And here is the kick in the head: Trumpeter's seperate set of working T-80 tracks, kit 02063, are done CORRECTLY! So for only a extra US$30 (MSRP) you can get the correct workable tracks. Oh come on.

LOL, welcome to the new world of Capitalism...

Hi folks,
I'm glad I found this. I've just received the Zvesda T80UD as a birthday present so this thread will inspire me to get it done.

Yours is coming along great.

OK have the base coat down on this beast now. I'm going to go with the green, tan and black camo scheme. So here it next to the Zvezda/Dragon offering.

Overall considering the time difference and limited information Dragon had to go on, side by side I don't think they did that bad a job. Its probably more accurate than their M103?

OK, basic paintwork DONE!

Nice to see you on FB with this.

As for the comparison, and thanks for doing it, I am doing it too for the -B, I can see HUGE differences. But I was a T-80 groupie WAY before it was cool, so I have "the vision" to see it.

What did you think of Steven Sewell's (Cookie) about the tracks? Seems they are not bad after all, just too new for a 1985 tank. Interesting...

Hey,
that is a nice build you have there. I got one on order now. Looking forward to it. I even order the Friulmodel tracks. This will be my first Soviet armour build from Trumpeter. I'm a little disapointed from my T 90 Build by Zvenda. The road wheel supports keep breaking. And I gave up. Back on the shelf it went. May be this T 80 will help me "pop the cherry" in Modern Soviet armour. Is there any good referance books that would be a good investment?

Cheers,
Tom

When you see the two of them side by side, it is comical comparing the scale (or how much out of scale) the Zvezda/Dragon offering is. Thanks for doing the extra work comparing the two.

Tom, if it is anything like their T-72B 1990 kit, it will be a beauty. I was very impressed with that kit, even after bashing it for the Nadboy disks which I now regret.

No one took your comments on the T-72B m1990 as bashing, more frustration. All good in the hood.

The T-80B and -BV are both well worth the money.

The track issue is an actual issue. According to "Cookie" Sewell, since I seem to have a shortage of actual T-80 track on hand, the tracks COULD be assembled the way they are in the Trumpeter kit. The various parts of the track are not keyed and could be assembled exactly the way they are in the kit. The problem is that they never are assembled that way "in nature".

Fixes are:

1. Forget about it. I think maybe 8 people in the world will notice it. The other 7 billion will not, so don't stress about it unless you really want to.

2. Aftermarket tracks. We will see how they all fit. I am not happy with the Fruils, as per my review here on Armorama, but they are correct and do work. Lot of other aftermarket out there.

3. Buy the Trumpeter workable T-80 track set and replace the links that the "teeth" can be seen on with the workable ones. This will solve several problems (like how the links look around the sprocket and idler) and you should be able to fix several kits with one extra box of tracks.

@ Jaques, Not surprised a more experienced person can pick a lot of issues but I was referring more to less experienced people ( I still have trouble differentiating between all the Russian cold war stuff without stopping and having a think).
I also had small chuckle at how Cookie phrased the "in nature" part on FB.

Tom. Jaques would have a better idea than me, I found 4 or 5 books most in Cyrillic (which I cant read) which I used for reference but almost all of my reference was photos and walk around's from the internet (if you want to more info on any of this PM me).

ET, Considering lack of hard reference material Dragon was working with I don't think it was bad effort for its time, I've seen worse from companies that did have direct access to the subject.

As for this build its complete. I would like to do a triple build in the future with this kit, the T-80BVD and Zvezda's T-80U using after market tracks and maybe PE as well. It would be interesting to add a T-84 if it ever gets here...

I sprayed future on, applied decals and tried adding a wash but the future didn't go on very well (still learning this stuff) and the wash bought out all the problems with the future coat so I stripped the future using Windex and I'm leaving it as such. I think it looks fine considering most pictures of these scheme are parade clean anyway.

I'll only post a few pics at its not really much different from the above pics.(If you want more just click on link in my sig)











Thankyou all for viewing and to those to posted critiques and encouragement