Here is my current project:







Step 1
No issues with Step 1.







Step 2
No issues with Step 2







Step 3
No issues with Step 3

Looks good so far!

Do you plan to build it OOB, or do some extra detailing (in addition to replacing wheels)?

I have M561 kit in my stash and I just ordered M792 from Hobby Easy, as they have a good price and free shipping promotion for it now.

Hi Brent,

Just finished mine about a week ago.The fourth in my collection.I'll try to post pics this weekend.
As usual,a good kit.
Some new parts added,like the fire extinguisher on the dash,Another on the dash,that I don't know what it is and a gun mount and ammo case for the right side fenders,that apparently were not mounted to ambulances.
The down side to the kit is that if you build it to the instructions the interior of the trailer is useless because none of it will be seen.I opted to have the tailgate down and the back tarp rolled up.Scratched from tissue and masking tape.
The driver I had to modify his arms,just because with 4 and hopefully a future dio I can't have all exactly the same.And finally,the typical Tamiya figure ( POINTING).
The original driver does fit very well.

Looking forward to your progress.

Tom

I'm not sure why, but I like this vehicle and was considering getting a kit. As I've heard this version includes details that the first Tamiya offering missed?

Anyway, will be keeing my eye on your project Brent.

Mario

Brent!!!

Nice work! Oh my Look at those nice fine parts! Working on my Panda and I forgot how beautiful the Tamiya kits are.

By the way, Is it still in service? Marine or national guard's still using it?

Jay

No, the Gamma Goats are long out of service. They were only used for a short time in the late '70s to mid '80s. They were pretty much replaced by HMMWVs.

They are still used by some civilian fire departments as brush trucks though.

Pawel....I'm not sure about extra detailing. I may do a little
bit but I'm not real motivated to do much
scratchbuilding. I do want the back to be open though
so we will see what I do to get around that.

Tom....I would love to see pictures of your builds. Especially
the scratchbuilt rear curtain.

There is a walk-around of a Gama Goat Ambulance here on Armorama. I took these pictures in 2014 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.
https://armorama.kitmaker.net/features/6260

I plan to integrate some of these photos into my build log here.

Thanks for your comments guys. Feel free to say more.

Hey Brent,

Here is a thread of my Goat build with a scratch built engine. I used tissue soaked in diluted white glue to form my rear tarp.

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/222150#1870145

Your progress looks good so far.

Dave.

STEP 4:
In this step you are assembling the back wall of the tractor. This assembly consists primarily of the articulation joint and the back wall panel.





The primary challenge here is to assemble parts C8 and C9 to C10 while allowing part C17 and the poly cap to maintain freedom of movement.



After assembly of the articulation joint, you attach it to the rear tractor wall by the means of two injection molded pins. When glued properly, the articulation joint maintains vertical freedom of movement as shown in the following two photos.




STEP 5:
Here are you are attaching the rear panel of the tractor (assembled in step 4) to the tractor chassis.


To facilitate painting/finishing, I am going to leave off part B32 (exhaust pipe) until later in the project. Here is the parts layout for the work that I did in this step.









So far I have had zero flash on the parts. There have been a few injection sink marks but they have been placed in the molding process where the marks are mostly not visible after assembly. I did have to clean up two sink marks on part C10 in step 4.

Coming up in my next update will be Step 6.

Nice model of a very interesting vehicle. I like the way You're showing the building process

Thanks Kuba...One day soon I will get back to HMMWV's. :-)

Step 6

Here we are installing the windshield frame on the front panel of the tractor. Additionally, we are installing the single bar headlight guard. We are supposed to install the clear headlight lenses in this step but I am leaving them off for now. They will be installed at a later time.







The instructions place emphasis on the builder making sure he/she gets the windshield frame vertical during assembly. I temporarily affixed the front panel to the tractor body so that I could make sure I was getting part B20 vertical on part B26 during assembly. I used a couple of small pieces of handytack to hold B26 on the tractor body. There are ejector pins mark visible on the back of part B20. However, these will not be visible after installation of the instrument panel/dashboard in step 9.








Step 7
In step 7 you are assembling part of the tractor interior to include the various shifters on the transmission hump and the driver/passenger seats.





There are 5 ejector pin marks on part B24 that need to be filled in.


Here are the parts from step 7 assembled. I have placed the seats on the assembly for photographic purposes only. Im leaving them off for painting purposes until later in the project.

Step 8

Step 8 has you assembling the front plate of the tractor to the tractor body, installing part of the driver/passenger internal cab and the left side fuel tank/battery box.





There are two ejector pin marks in the tractor body that I recommend filling and sanding. They will be visible after you install the internal cab parts.



Final step assembly




The battery boxes on the Gama Goat have a web retention strap with a metal buckle.






Surprisingly, Tamiya has vaguely molded a representation of the buckle on the battery box part.

Step 9

Here you are assembling the remainder of the tractor cab, adding mudguards and the right side fuel tank/battery box.




Each mudguard has 4 faint ejector pin markings on its underside.



As you can in this photo, the underside of the mudguard is smooth.


I used a sanding stick to sand off the ejector pin marks in each mudguard.


Here are both mudguards with ejector pin marks sanded out.


In Step 9, you must install part B31 BEFORE installing parts B3 and B4. When I installed the dashboard (part B31) it had a little bit of a gap where the dashboard butts up against B26 (front panel). As a result of this, I had to use some filler and sand the gap. As you can see by this photo, the real vehicle does not have any kind of gap where the dashboard joins the windshield/front panel.

Looking good Brent. Your attention to the smallest detail never ceases to amaze me.

Step 10

Here you are supposed add a light machine gun mount (F12,F29), four ammunition cans for the light machine gun (F2-F5), a fuel can (F9,F10) and the windshield frame support brace (F7).




Since I'm building the Ambulance, I'm not using the machine gun mount or the ammunition can assembly. Assembly of the fuel can and windshield frame support brace was straight forward with no issues.

The kit leaves off part of the frame as you can see in this picture.




The fuel can was only placed on the tractor for the photo. It will be left off until the painting of miscellaneous details toward the end of the project.

Step 11

This is a very brief step in the project. Here you are assembling the driver figure, installing the steering wheel and adding on the front lift rings.




The instructions show you installing the lift rings with them resting toward the front of the vehicle. I opted to put the lift rings on with them resting toward the rear of the vehicle as shown in this photograph.



I do not normally do figures so I'm skipping the driver for now. I might try to complete the driver figure later so I'm leaving the steering wheel off. Leaving the steering wheel off will also facilitate the application of decals on the dashboard that still has to be done.

Step 12

In this step we are assembling the wheels (A8,A13,polycap), installing the front tie-downs (F13) and the front bumper (B34).





Parts F13 are extremely fragile. There are four in the kit (2 ea for the front, 2 ea for the rear). I completely broke two of the parts trying to clean them up. I have sent an email to Tamiya USA asking to buy a sprue F to replace my two broken parts.

The instructions put emphasis on installing parts F13 at an angle up against the vehicle body. I questioned this as the tie-down eyes usually hang in a vertical position. After reviewing several pictures of operational Gama Goats, I did not see a single vehicle where parts F13 where not angled back against the vehicle body.



The rest of the step is devoted to the vehicle wheels. Here is a brief look at the wheels provided in the kit. Since I'm not using the kit wheels, I only assembled two of them for display purposes here on this blog.


In this photo you see the seam on the back side of the wheel from assembling the parts. The wheel on the right has had liquid glue applied only. The wheel on the left has been glued and sanded to remove the seam.


Here is how the tractor looks with the kit wheels installed.



I am using a set of Def Model Gama Goat resin replacement wheels.


The wheels are cast in light resin and come with a set of wheel masks and mask instructions. The resin pour plugs are attached to flat part of these "weighted" tires.


The wheel mask instructions are a generic set of instructions.


Front of resin wheel. Note the tire face details/lettering..this is not on the kit tires.


Rear of resin wheel. Note again the tire face detail/lettering that is not present on the kit tires.


Tire tread detail..


Here is the wheel after cutting off the pour plug.


In this photo, I have sanded down the remainder of the pour plug and used a dremel tool to reestablish tire tread where the pour plug was attached.


The resin tires had a faint mold seam that ran around the tire. I sanded this mold seam off with a sanding stick.


Here is the final dressed up tires with pour plugs removed and tire treads recreated in the flat "weighted" area of each tire.


Here is a tire tread comparison.


Overall tire comparison images.





Image showing the tractor with one of each tire on for appearance comparison


Image showing the tractor with all resin tires on for appearance comparison.


Image showing the tractor with kit wheels again.

Step 13

Here we assemble the engine cover.




I have to compliment Tamiya on the vent louvre detail and the fact that they molded on the engine cover side latches.




Assembled engine cover.



One detail that Tamiya seemed to miss is the hand rails across the top of the engine cover as shown in this photo from my walk-around. Perhaps these hand rails are missing from the example they used as reference.

Step 14

In this step we are installing the engine cover, the horn and the horn guard. We are also assembling the side-view mirrors. The side-view mirrors get installed on Step 15.



Here we have assembled the side-view mirrors.


Here is a close-up shot of the installed horn and guard.


I have only placed the engine cover on the tractor for photo purposes. I have a Gama Goat set coming from Perfect Scale Modellbau in Germany that has a different engine cover included. I want to do some more research before permanently gluing the engine cover. Here is a photo of the PSM set.


Here is the model with the kit engine cover in place.

The hinge on the engine cover is missing the bottom half that would be on the tractor which leaves a noticeable gap. I will have to look at a way to correct this.



As you can see by comparing the model photo with this photo of the real vehicle, the hinge detail on the model is actually larger than on the real vehicle. I guess you have to make some compromises in order to show additional detail.

Step 15

Here we install the headlights, blackout drive light, blackout drive light guard, air intake deflector and the side-view mirrors.




The mirror support brace on each side has an ejector pin mark that needs to be filled as shown in these photos.



Assembly completed for Step 15.

Great step by step, thank you!

The part about the DEF wheels comparison is especially useful, I wondered what they brought in term of detail compared to the kit ones.

Two remarks :

-1. some wrote that the PSM engine cover didn't fit right (they did a Gama Goat full kit and the part is probably from that kit).

-2. I think the rear tarps for the ambulance and cargo/transport versions are actually different? Not sure what the PSM one represents.

I do have the PSM hard top update (this also includes the decals and alternate engine cover) which I plan to use on one of my Gama Goats (I'm considering building several).

Cheers,

Christophe

Cheers,

Christophe

A suggestion on your engine cover hinge issue. From the photo it looks as though there is actually a gap between the cover and the body, so to remedy the hinge I would sand off the hinge flange molded to the body and replace it with a strip of brass from an old PE set or a strip cut from a beer can. The actual hinge molded to the engine cover looks pretty chunky compared to the real thing, so if you were feeling really ambitious you could do the same with the engine cover and use a piece of wire nicked at intervals with an exacto knife to represent the hinge itself.

STEP 16





Parts A12 will be left off until after detail painting is completed.

That's because these shackles have offset pins. The others you have seen most likely have the pins in line with the rest of the shackle.

A very informative and helpful series of posts, thanks.

KL

STEP 17:



As you can see in the instructions, you assemble the cargo chassis to the cargo body. I recommend that you at least paint the bottom of the cargo body and the cargo chassis before gluing them together as it will be almost impossible to get to some of the areas for painting after assembly.



As you can see in this photo, you end up with a very noticeable seem between the cargo chassis and cargo body.