Spent last evening building some "linkage" for the Cat.: August 20, 2015.




More details to be lost forever once the floor is in. Gotta do it anyway!

p.s. Also added the linkage for the throttle control but not until after this photo was taken.

Noice! while not as exact as the stuff in the Miniart kit- gotta give you respect for making the effort to bring the best out of that Mirror kit for yourself. It is a shame a lot of this detail will be lost...

Thanks Jet, I started to model all the hinges and connecting clevises of the linkage but then it occurred to me that the current level of detail is probably acceptable given that all these items will be just shadows, barely seen through some of the openings in the floor.

But thanks for your comment and your compliment - I don't know what it is about this little dozer but I have really tried to up my game on this one!

Which kit of this bulldozer would you recommend, Mirror or Miniart?

Mike

For fit, excellence in model engineering and ease of construction the Mirror Models offering wins out. But if absolute maximum detail offered is what you are after then the winner would be the MiniArt D7.

Note: Right now MiniArt is having supply problems with the plastic they are using and that is the cause of the overly brittle small parts breakage on their kit. However MiniArt now says those production problems have been solved so it is possible the difficulties building the MiniArt dozer are about to go away.

If the plastic problems are solved then the MiniArt kit wins for maximum detail but the two kits are so close in any competition that you really cannot go wrong with either one!

OK, here is a general mechanical ( heavy equipment ) question:

Why is there a large open box access port where the driver can see down into the clutch assembly? At least it is open on the Mirror Models version of the Caterpillar tractor. On the MiniArt offering this access opening is covered with a square plate that has a large locking nob in the middle of it. To my knowledge you don't oil a clutch but maybe there is such a thing as a "dry" clutch like in a car or light truck and then there are "wet" clutches in heavy machinery???

Well I did some more research and yes there are wet and dry clutches but it seems the wet clutches are used more often in motorcycles so I am still confused.

Anybody have an answer because I am stumped?

HEAR, HEAR!!! How many model manufacturers have turned out "NEW!!!" Tiger Is in the last 10-20 years? Between DRAGON, TAMIYA, ACADEMY, AFV CLUB, ITALERI, ZVEZDA, and the new (I forget the name of the new company) Initial "AFRIKA KORPS" Tiger I, I think that the market is over-saturated with them... OH! Wait a minute! There's A SCREAMING NEED for more Tiger Is to come from MENG, TAKOM, TRUMPETER, HOBBY BOSS, BRONCO, ICM, MINIART and AMUSING HOBBY, just to name a few.

Tiger Is are way over-rated anyway...

I say, bring on more US/ALLIED subjects...

Dennis, what can I say? The Germans had the sexy looking stuff with the high survivability rates and the biggest guns so even models of such equipment tend to be more attractive to the model buying public than Allied equipment.

The Allies only won out by swarming the enemy with shear numbers and they lost a lot of good men along the way.

I started my armor modeling career infatuated with the German stuff just like so many others but finally got bored of it. I then got more into the history and development of the equipment and found the design and mechanical dependability of the US stuff much more interesting.

Perhaps the general model buying public is starting to go in the same direction?

Maybe this lubrication chart would help ?



H.P.

Well that certainly gives us a clue. Thanks H.P.

IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT:

I felt the driver's seat had several problems that I was not happy with. First the cushions were just too plane and undecorated for my tastes, they needed a bit of dressing up.

Secondly, there was an unsightly gap between the rear of the seat cushion and the top of the gas tank. You could view directly into the hollow interior of the seat. So I had to repair this gap. I started by thinning down the depth of the seat back and then adding some sheet plastic to enclose the rear of the seat cushion.





Now that I had a solid seat back to work with I needed to add the edge welting, piping, cording (whatever you choose to call it) that holds the seat cloth to the heavy backing board of the vertical cushion.




Using small dia. Evergreen rod I added this welting to the edges of both the seat back and the seat bottom cushions.

As you can see I also carved some separations into the bottom cushion to create a little more variation and visual detail.

Certain types of upholstery piping (welting) is made with a hemmed flange along either one or both edges. Many of you may recall furniture you have seen in your lives that has this flanged edge held down with a continuous row of brass head bullet shaped decorative tacks.

For this affect I cut a very narrow strip of plastic and used a very fine compass point to put a long row of indents into the strip which when the strip is turned over will appear as raised tack heads.

Finally I installed this "strip of tack heads" next to the welting across the top of the seat back. (In the left hand photograph the white "tacks" on the white plastic did not show up in the photo so in this case I retouched in the tacks.)



On the right hand photo you can see that I have now done the same thing adding the tack strip around the welting at the front bottom edge of the seat cushion as well.

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A small side bar here: I wanted to reduce the future complexity of installing the floorboard so I cut the heel board off the plastic floor piece and attached it to permanently to the front edge of the seat. One less thing to hassle with!

Please don't think I am making all this up about how the bench seat of the Caterpillar would be put together. I come from two generations of furniture upholstery professionals. My Father, my Mother, my Uncle and my Grand Father - Joseph B. Koenig - all ran and/or worked for many years at my grand dad's upholstery shop in Louisville, KY.

When very young I was an occasional helper to my Father but I kept my eyes and ears open and learned more than a bit about the kraft.

I for one, admire the attention to detail. Looks great Michael!

All that's needed is a flat-screen and a remote!

—mike

Hi Mike - the whole build looks great, but that linkage assembly is beauty!!

Almost doesn't matter that it might not be too visible when you're done - who cares? You figured out how to do it! And did! Nice work

Cheers
Nick

Another addition: - I also fabricated the grab handles
for each side of the seat as well as the riveted side
panels that support the arm rests. (Left side photo.)



Alright; the finished seat is shown on the right and it is 3am so I am finished for the evening;

Tomorrow maybe the armrests!

I apologize but I really enjoy these overall progress photos - hope nobody minds.
It's probably ego on my part, I don't know.



I have the feeling that fitting the floor plates is going to be a real challenge. I plan on carefully cutting the metal tread plate into several pieces to fit the sections around all the control stalks.

Awesome work! Your attention to detail has turned this into a work of art Michael.

Mike, Haskell, Colin; thanks so much for your positive comments and your support.

Cheers

Mike

Hi, Mike! The Allies didn't just win by overwhelming the Axis by sheer numbers alone. It took A LOT of guts and improvisation on our part, plus INDEPENDENT thinking. The US Military was, and still is, taught to think on it's feet- Allied Infantry got so attuned to German tactics that they could anticipate German Artillery firing-patterns, thusly avoiding being turned into so much hamburger. It should be remembered that many US/Allied Tankers and Infantrymen were lost because the Germans were on the defensive, and much of the time, THEY WAITED FOR US, CONCEALED IN AMBUSH...

US Tankers very quickly learned how to destroy even the "vaunted" Tigers I and II by adopting smarter tactics. Yes, they would swarm over German Armor from all directions, but that wasn't the the way to really kill a Tiger- They had to figure out what kind of AMMUNITION would finally do one of these beasts in. The "Willy Pete" (White Phosphorus) round was found to be the most effective against ANY Armor. A "Willy Pete" would be aimed at the most likely spot on the enemy tank, such as hatches and the best place; the turret race, where the furiously burning "WP" would seep into the turret/fighting compartments, and that would be the end of the story. It's just too bad that our troops didn't get the T26/M26 "Pershings" until war's end, but that's another story altogether...

US/Allied Tankers and Infantry also relied very heavily on Close-Support Tactical Airpower and Artillery, of which both forces were EXCELLENT in destroying ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in the Ground Troops' paths...

As to the German stuff being "sexy"- IMO, I find the German stuff to be excessively "blocky" in appearance, but that's just my take on it. To my eye, our stuff is just more visually intriguing. What's so "sexy" about a giant BRICK with Tracks..?

I share your hope in that the general model-buying public will gradually become more interested in our "home-grown" equipment...

GREAT WORK, Mike! I ALWAYS follow your work with avid interest!!!

Even more dio ideas

Improvised armor on this D7 :






H.P.

As you know I like to jump around to different areas while building any kit. However in this case, building the tracks is going to be a long, time consuming process so I thought I had better get started wheather I wanted to or not. Three parts per link. 70-72 links total - 35 links per side.



15 track links down and 55 more to go.

And then I also jumped over to start on the twin drum winch.


There should be metal brake bands around those winch drums. I have a couple of brake bands left over from a scraped out Dragon Wagon recovery vehicle. I will check tonight and see if I can make then work for the Cat.

Any time that I open a kit of a tracked vehicle, I experience a "cringe" inside my mind because of the tedium of track-building... To some extent, for me, the DRAGON US vehicles which supply the "DS" Tracks are a lot easier for me to take, since most US tracked vehicles use/used "Live Tracks". Exceptions being some Self-propelled guns and howitzers, and recovery vehicles such as the M88, M98, M102, M106, M109, M110, the M113 and M113 derivatives, and of course the amphibious LVTP-5s, and AAVP-7A-series of the Marines...

It's good to hear that MINIART has corrected the problems with their brittle plastic, so since I'm a "detail nut", I'll be investing in a few of the MINIART D-7 kits...