any way you can make a resin cast of your finished product to sell off? Maybe we should send them to Dragon and say "HEY WE FIXED IT!"

Can someone kill the misery for me are we going to see an accurate kit made by someone im looking at the corrections and if a resin correction was to be done it could end up being very expensive due to the comprehensive amount of corrections a little while ago someone eluded to a new kit is this true.

Cheers Ben.

on to the rear grills:
The M103A2 has a different hinge arrangement than the M48/M60s. Since there is a thick flange present for bolting the final drives to, there is a cutout at the bottom outer corner of each door. This flange also means that the side hinges are not there. The doors do not simply pivot open. They have to open outward and then pivot, if that makes sense. Anyway, compare the real thing:


and what i came up with:


The hinges are moved upward as well due to those drive mounting flanges. Dragon comically addressed this by changing their fantastically bad grill doors. As you can see, they took the already incorrect part from the M48A3 Mod.B kit- armored guards and all, and simply moved the hinges upward. I had a set of grill doors from DEF Model that are fantastic aside from being pretty warped.


Some additional detail:


Also redid the lifting lugs on the front hull... Dragon's are too thin, too small, and angled too steeply upward.


Pawel, as you can see the nose is pretty blunt.

Beautiful man!

Yeah, I had to redid them too...


Looks good indeed!

Certainly no-one has publicised that they are producing a new M103. In fact, I'd bet a fair amount that we will not be seeing a new injection kit of this vehicle for many years (if ever) with the Dragon kit on the market. I also heavily suspect Dragon will not retool it because there is so much wrong with it, it would be pretty much an entirely new tool to correct the errors, which is big, big bucks.

And with the cost of resin kits (one for this would be in teh $200 range if not more from overseas) I also suspect this kit has sucked the air out of the room for them as well. Faced with a $200+ accurate resin kit versus a $40 (from the remainder bin) Dragon kit, almost everyone will have one of two responses: a) the resin kit is too expensive, I'll live with the Dragon kit or b) the resin kit is too expensive and I'm willing to do the work to correct the Draqon kit to my satisfaction.

The number of people who are not willing to live with the Dragon kit and yet _are_ willing to shell out the big bucks for an accurate resin kit is likely too small to entice a resin manufacturer to risk the big bucks that tooling up for a M103 would entail.

It's one of the reasons I was sooo p!ssed at Dragon as their kit has pretty much sucked the air out of the market for anyone else to make an M103 for a long, long time.

Paul

Nope, this is it.

Found yesterday on Facebook of all places! Our thanks to Michael Green.

Beauty!

Thanks!

Work continues on these damned fenders. I'd work faster, but apparently counting rivets and being arrogant takes up a lot of time

I chose to cut apart the fender sections to see what was usable. Turns out it wasn't much. I'm reconstructing following how it goes together in real life.

The outboard section comes from Tamiya. I know, ironic isn't it?

Here's one side mounted. The M60 style boxes were too small and were therefore replaced with Tamiya/ESCI pieces.

I also glued in some L bracket to support the fenders since they'd be a little floppy when mounted.

Some TM sourced diagrams:

Ohhh nice pic! The variation (due to oil picking up dust?) on roadwheels 3 and 5 plus the sprocket is interesting too.



Brian - great stuff correct this ....... kit. These blogs (yours and Pawels) really are more of a scratchbuild with some helping parts. Fantastic source material and inspiration for anyone else game enough.

cheers
Brent

From Cookie Sewell's review of this same kit over on M-L.

"Overall this can be built into a reasonably good model of the M103A2 if the gun barrel is replaced and a mantlet cover added."

Hmmm.. Wonder what's in those cookies?

Ha, I read that too. Cookie tends to give a pass on accuracy issues. I think he's softened in his later years.

Having actually built the kits myself, I've found many of his reviews have been completely off base. That's why I no longer even go there. I only stumbled upon it today looking to see if anyone had identified the same errors I've found in the Sho't Kal Gimel.

Nice work Brian. I always like to see your model "porn" as Rob would call it. Clean building and the incorporation of the "other" model parts to make up the rear mods for the A2 is genius. Hopefully someone notices this effort and translate it into the M48A1. I really want to make a F-40 Armor vehicle at Checkpoint Charlie in 1961.

Rob,
Do tell about the Sho't Cal Gimel inaccuracies as I have that kit in orbit around the bench as I have the Orochi M3A3 build for an AMPS review completed.

Sorry for the minor hijacking

John

Brian, commendable work so far. You probably should call this "Scratchbuilding an
M-103 Using Some Parts From Dragon". What a project to tackle!

Best wishes,

Ian

Hey, someone remembered my "model porn" statement!
I'll PM you the Sho't Kal deficiencies so we can keep this one on track. Doing a build review of it right now.

Thanks Amigo

Model porn, eh? I'm far from your Larry Flynt then. I'd say this is more akin to a "Saw" movie

Here's the latest image heavy update. I can't avoid the front fenders forever, so here they are. I wish evergreen was gray. White really gives you contrast problems, especially when you're knocking on 40 like me and your eyes are starting to get bad





Every bolt head has a corresponding nut showing underneath the fender. They are very noticeable in 1:1, and probably in 1:35 also. I tried punching out circles and got tired of it, and fell back to my old standby: The Armor tiles from the Tamiya Marine M60A1.



Complete, with the fender tool stowage boxes on.





The #4 outriggers (preceding the air cleaners) were uniquely angled on the M103A2, presumably to clear more space for the fuel filler caps due to the large overhangs of the turret.



On to the final part: The curved rear fenders. Dragon's were par for the course: Short and incorrectly shaped. I'll probably make a couple of tries in order to get the proper curve.



And i'm getting some sprockets cast by a friend. The A2 used the "heavy" sprocket face from the M51 recovery vehicle and M88. The M48/M60 type (left) is incorrect for this vehicle. I sourced this one from an unbuilt M88 in my stash. I'll need to fill in those small depressions between the teeth.



Took this to my local IPMS meeting on Saturday. Got a resounding thumbs down from the resident OOB guy who had done the M103A1 for a review. Oh well, Onward and upward!

Note: The #1 outriggers in the very front are incorrectly done. I stupidly kept the angle laid out by the kit parts. I realized too late and it can't easily be cut apart now so i'm just going to have to live with it.

Thanks John. Hijack away. It's all topical so i am copacetic. Berlin standoff M48A1 has been on my wishlist for a long time. Nice excuse to make it very clean, and a little glossy

Bizarre but typical. One of the problems with the Modelling fraternity imo is lack of positive support. Even if something isn't to someone's personal taste how can anyone not appreciate the amount of work being put in here ...

Lovely work on the fenders Brian. And I feel the things that niggle you would be impossible for most to spot, Pawel maybe lol

cheers
Brent

[quote]

Nah, I'm too busy now tearing the M48A1 CAD drawings apart to nit pick on Brian's work

[quote]


I'm done throwing fuel on that particular dumpster fire

I'm now running it as a private show for Dragon only So hopefully modelers building that kit won't have to go through the same pain as we had with M103s to get reasonably accurate model...

Pawel,
Let me be one of the first to thank you publicly. Perhaps there might be hope for the M48A1 yet, provided DML listens to your "advice"

My personal druthers are to get a kit that reasonably looks like the 1:1 version but has room to improve things. I am not looking for perfection from any model company.

John

Agree completely John. I don't think anyone, Pawel included, is advocating for a 100% accurate kit. We can all acknowledge that it would be impossible. For me, I simply want the manufacturer to get close with the major details. That's what the apologists can't or won't ever understand. Of course, in this case even the major details were wrong in some way which brings us all here.