Hi,

This is my first post for my build of Legends M113 ADATS. I won't go into great detail about the kit other than the casting is exquisite. Pictures of the parts can be seen at

http://35thscale.com/forums/224311&page=1&ord=1

I had problems initially when I purchased the Academy M113A3 base kit from a friend. This mysteriously disappeared in the post. However, he had a second one and we were able to meet up and eventually I got my base kit. It does make me now think twice about a certain regal mail service, having had several things disappear in the post this year.

Anyway, back to the build. The Legend instructions are the usual pain and pleasure, in that they only show the completed and painted kit. Some part placement is very difficult to work out, and references are a must. There is a good walk around at;

http://www.primeportal.net/apc/dan_hay/adats/

Thanks to Dan Hay for that.

When I received my kit I found that there was significant warpage, despite the strengthening bars. I had to resort to the hairdryer to straighten the parts out in order for me to be able to glue them. The initial stage starts with the lower hull tub. The sides are cut 5mm inform the edge. I used the old adage of measure twice and cut once. The only problem is that because of the amount you are cutting you can't tell if everything will fit perfectly until the deed is done. By that point its too late if your cutting is not perfect.

As I said, I cut the lower hull tub and then fitted the two hull side pieces to the rear of the lower tub. I had some issues with this as the Legend pieces seemed to be 1mm or so too big. Either the hull sides fitted along the top of the sponsons but were too high on the hull, or vice versa. After supergluing them several times and not getting a decent fit I decided to try and glue the front hull plate. In this way I hoped to try and square everything up.......

What a disaster that was. It failed completely and I couldn't get a decent fit at all. I pulled it all apart and sat down to come up with a Plan B. What I decided to do was to glue the hull sides to the front hull plate. There were marks on either side of the hull plate that allowed accurate fitting of the side pieces. Once these were in place I would then attach it to the lower hull tub, which should be square as it was plastic. I'll show you the results.....

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As you can see the left rear hull rear has a massive gap. Each of the hull side plates has a groove for the roof plate to fit into. Therefore in theory it should have all glued in nice and square.

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The right rear hull also has fit issues, but there is no massive gap. I used slow setting superglue to allow me to manoeuvre the parts in place and then accelerator to set it.

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A close up of the right rear roof plate shows that there are fit issues and somewhat of a gap. From what I can work out this has come from the hull side plates being slightly too big. This is not helped by the Legend instructions which don't show a step by step guide.

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The last photo shows the hull front plate. This has clearly not glued straight but as you can see the roof plate sits in the grooves nicely. Bearing in mind how the side plates were glued into the front plate where the grooves were it should have gone together nicely. Cleary it hasn't. I don't think that this is all Legends fault, and some of the blame probably lies with me. Again, it may just be that there was an issue with my kit.

So the next stage will be to fill and sand the gaps with a combination of filler, styrene and superglue, then sand the overhanging parts down so that everything looks ok.

All comments welcome.

Toby

Very nice, thanks for sharing! However I believe something happened and you posted this thread swice

Yep the site kept crashing. I wasn't even sure whether it had accepted my post until now!! I'm assuming someone has deleted the duplicate as I can only find one copy of the post now.

Cheers

Toby; I deleted the duplicate when I did my house keeping a little earlier, I should add no problem as IT happens from time to time.

Managed to get some more bench time with this kit, and I'm coming around to really liking it, despite my initial protestations.

I added a plasticard shim to fill the large gap at the left rear. White putty was used on all the remaining thin cracks and gaps. This is great stuff and is water based so I was able to use a moistened cotton bud to remove any excess.

I spent some time sawing and sanding the hull roof extensions and the missile tubes. Because the tubes are a different colour to the firing unit I will paint them separately and add them later. The good news is that Legend provide you with 9 tubes, so you have a spare just in case anything goes wrong. The castings really are beautiful and didn't take much clean up.







Once the basic shell was all sanded and puttied I started to add the larger pieces to the frontal glacis and the hull sides. This is pretty much in line with the instructions, but I find with the Legend instructions, it can sometimes be better to go your own way!! Word of advice; build the the headlight guards first, then add the surrounding etch strip. Glue this to the small piece with the step that attaches at the front of the hull sides. This will then allow you to better align the pieces that butt up to it and beyond. The single piece on the left hull side required a small piece cutting off before it fitted where the instructions indicated.



A small amount of soldering was required on the headlight guards, but they will go together nicely with CA glue if thats what is referred. I also added the two turrets on the hull roof and then found that I was a piece missing. The fuel cap which goes on the rear of the hull roof is missing from my kit. Having only used the lower hull tub to build it I have a full kit that isn't going to get built. I found one of the fuel caps and have sanded it down in order for it to replace the missing kit part.

At this point I became a little bit impatient. I wanted to see what the kit would look like with the hull roof extensions fitted. I managed to glue both extensions on the left side. Be careful when you fit these as they are a ver tight fit, showing just how well engineered this kit is. With a bit of persuasion both parts fitted perfectly.



Having downloaded my photos I realised that all the pictures had concentrated on the left side, so the next set will have some coverage of the right side!!!

The next phase will be adding the remainder of the Legend resin and photo etch to the hull along with the small kit parts. I will then be ready to prime it before checking for any errors or blemishes. Whilst the primer is setting I will then concentrate of the turret, which has a large number of parts.

Hopefully if I get more bench time this week I'll try and post anther update at the end of next week.

Cheers

Toby

Some better pictures added taken using my light tent and tripod.

Nice work filling the gaps at the back and getting your build back on track.

Cheers Darren Finally managed to post the remaining photos taken this morning.

Great build Toby! I'm sad to see you are having such issues with it though! I received mine yesterday from Lucky Models and now, I will use your post for references as to how to go about my build. I must admit that I am a bit anxious to start it now... :-/

Apologies for the delay since the last update, but life sometimes gets in the way. Anyway, I've built up all the major assemblies which just need small amounts of photo etch adding, then it's primer on. Wheels are already built and ready to go. I need to sit down one evening and get the AFV Club tracks built, which shouldn't be too bad.......!!!????? I've had previous issues with AFV tracks, so I'm hoping that these will be different and not keep breaking. Fingers crossed.
The remaining parts went together really well. Almost the opposite of the hull parts, which was very strange. Legend have been very meticulous around their pour gates and this shows in the rapid clean up of even the most complex or fragile parts. Having built older Legend kits, this one is a breath of fresh air in comparison. My only complaint was getting the missile tubes to sit correctly. I struggles to get them to look the same distance apart. Having glued them satisfactorily, I would suggest building a very small "X" shape out of two thin pieces of plasticard. This can then be slotted in between the tubes allowing you to glue them at an equal distance from each other.

I'm aiming to have primer on by the end of next week...

Hi,

Well all I can say is that life truly managed to get in the way of this update!!! Anyway I've managed to get some more done, but my apologies to those who were expecting a quicker build.

I've added about 60% of the photo etch on the build now, which has gone really well. I've had some issues with the tie downs, but that is predominantly due to my fat fingers. The kit does cater for this with plenty of spares!!!

The wheels are on but not glued. The tracks are the AFV Club NATO ones as the kits US ones are incorrect for the ADATS. In any event I think that the AFV tracks are much better than the kit supplied styrene tracks or their link and length. These didn't require any glue at all and only took a couple of evening work in front of the TV.

I would advise you not to add parts 32 and 33 until after the tracks have been painted and weathered, as you won't be able to fit the drive sprocket in and then force the tracks through. I tried it for some time and I couldn't get it to pick up the track. The track itself needs to be firmly pushed into the drive sprocket otherwise it won't fit.

The missile tubes are only Blu-tacked on so they aren't exactly looking perfect. They won't be attached until after they're painted, along with the optical cylinder in between them.

I have a small amount of soldering to do and add more tie downs , chains and other bits and bobs and then she's built.

Roll on primer......

Finally.....there is paint!!!!

All the assemblies have now been completed and the kit was given a wash in soapy water, mainly due to the large amount of resin and my greasy fingers!!!

Primer of Vallejo light Ghost Gray followed by Tamiya XF-67 NATO Green, thinned down. Numerous light coats of this followed by a darkened colou, again thinned down to give a faded look to the paint.

More photos will follow as the painting progresses....

Looking forward to the completed product!

The paintings no has continued with the camouflage colour added using NATO black from Tamiya. Looking at the photos on http://www.primeportal.net/apc/dan_hay/adats/ it would appear that the colours are faded and there are plenty of scratches on it. I've also started to weather the lower hull sides and the road wheels. I'm looking for a lightly muddy, but stationary vehicle, where the exposed metal on the tracks is starting to rust. Consideration being given to a tiny diorama with the vehicle under a camo net, but the Eduard and AFV Club nets don't seem to have brilliant reviews. Any suggestions....???

The gold bands around the missile tubes need some work doing as I probably applied the masking for them too soon and pulled some of the paint off. Not a difficult job, but would have been easier not to have to do it!!!



















The saga continues......

It's all coming together nicely. Nice update!

Here's the penultimate update for this build. All the decals are on along with most of the weathering. Need to do some touch ups and a light spray of dust and then have a look at her. Once done I'll take some more photos at the weekend in decent daylight!!

Nice work Toby! Keep crackin' on!

Finally I've finished her!!! Having painted all the camouflage colours on in the last update and got some of the weathering done I tried to utilise layering rather than trying to do it all in a couple of effects. My aim was to show a vehicle that had been subject to some mud and rain and also sun. To get the effects I wanted I used the following;

1. Added several filters comprising different green and brown Humbrol enamels, thinned with white spirit.

2. A brown coloured pin wash to replicate dried dirt around areas that would collect it.

3. Light dry brushing of certain areas to show some wear. I've always felt that dry brushing done correctly is an asset rather than a model that has been frosted.

4. Looking at photos of the vehicle there doesn't appear to be a huge amount of wear and tear, and certainly not a great deal of rust. As a result I didn't add any rust to the vehicle.

5. The tracks had already been painted, given several washes and dusted with pigments, so were then attached to the vehicle.

6. A thinned down Tamiya brown colour was then lightly airbrushed around the vehicle to indicate a level of dirt, especially around the lower hull, but not forgetting that it may spray up onto the weapons turret.

7. A further two coats of slightly different coloured browns was sprayed over the same areas to show a build up of different coloured dirt and dust.

8. I then used the same colours with an old paint brush to speckle paint around the hull and over parts of the weapons turret.

9. In the back of my mind was the thought that my vehicle showed the platforms raised and when on the move these platforms would be lowered, so should be covered in dust and dirt. This dust and dirt would then be ground into the grille pattern by the vehicle crew. I would normally have shown the paint being worn away in these areas, exposing the steel underneath. Pictures of the vehicle didn't seem to indicate this, so I didn't apply that technique.

10. Once all this had been completed I sprayed a fine layer of Tamiya Buff over the hull , but also anywhere the dust may have been swept up and stuck to vehicle parts. The covered the radar dish as well as the missile tubes.

11. Lastly I added a couple of misted on coats of Flat Varnish just to matt everything down. I didn't see any need to add pigments as the effects seemed to be complete as I wanted it to look.

Here's the photos of the completed kit......

























Overall, my thoughts on the kit are;

Positives
Beautiful casting
Instructions are better than some Legends ones
Extra parts (Missile tubes and other tiny parts)
Weapons turret goes together with no problems

Negatives
I couldn't get the hull sides and roof to match up and fit properly despite plenty of dry fitting
The instructions, whilst better than some Legends kits, are not brilliant and a single view does not always show where a part goes.
A lot of clean up is required before you get to glue anything.
Two additional kits are required (Academy M113A3 and AFV Club tracks) to make this kit correct - This can add up considerably.

Having said all that I did enjoy making this kit. I must apologise To Jim for taking so log in completing it. Over a year from receiving the kit to the completed photos. If I'm being honest I lost my mojo with it because of all the filling and sanding at the start, then life jumped in the way.

For me, the big question is would I build it again?? If I'm honest I don't think I would. The thought of attempting to get the hull sides, glacis plate and roof all lined up again is bringing me out in a cold sweat. To balance that out, I still think its a beautiful vehicle and I love that weapons turret with the missile tubes on it. It will be going to the next club night and I'll see what everyone else thinks of it........