This is the beginning of my comparison build of both the Academy and Dragon M60A2 kits.

Start with side by side comparison of hulls: length, width, road wheel positions, front fender widths. It will be fun...

Cool. Definitely following this thread.

Pawel,
yes, I will do that a bit farther down the line,first off,I will be describing the things I notice, as I was a former gunner on one of these,shortly after (as) they were being released to the troops in the first AD. Ca 1976

Following for sure.

So begins the build and comparisons of the
Academy kit number 13296
and Dragon kit number 3562
M60A2 kits. First, I will start on the hulls, and what is right,and what is off, on each.
The Academy hull is a duplicate of the Tamiya kit. As such, it is filled with errors, or as I think “things to model better”.
There are no drain valves, for when rain or other water gets into the hull from the top. The escape hatch has bolts or something around the edge.


Academy roadwheels, have poor detail on the inner roadwheels, the outer ones look better.


The are no mud relief holes in the sprockets.
The Torsion bar mounts, and roadwheel arms them selves are poorly detailed.
The final drives, are from the motorization daze, so their general detail is poor, and there is no drain/check/fill openings ( plugged by an allen bolt)
The shocks are poorly detailed. I am trying to remember, if ours had a thicker lower half, almost the same diameter as the upper part.
On top, the hull has two fuel filler caps, there should only be one, on the right side.
There are no holes in the fender support brackets, which are molded onto the hull.
However
The aircleaner boxes, are just like the ones my tank had. The right shape , and the bracket for the fuel transfer pump is on the correct side.
Thr driver’s hatch is good, use the one with the larger periscope opening, I will show during the build.
The CBSS bulge, for the lower rear hull is good, but lacks foundry markings.
There is a bad flat contour from where the air cleaner feeds into the hull, versus the Dragon rounded one.


There is no bilge pump outlet, near the personnel heater exhaust.
The headlight guards, are missing a brace, which goes back towards the hull, I will show that during the build.

And, the front mud flaps, are missing a row of prominent bolts along the front edge.

Interesting, looking forward to your progress.

I will be watching with great interest. I am planning to use a DEF update set for the Academy kit.

Thanks for sharing...

The things I listed above are areas where Dragon royally FUBARed their kit. It may seem nicer in detail department, but it has some major dimmensional errors.

Now, for the Dragon hull:
It also has the locations for 2 fuel caps, and there only needs to be one.The Academy problem will be easier to fix,merely shave off the wrong cap. On the Dragon kit, there is a mounting divot, which will need filling.


The bottom of the Dragon hull has the correct hull drain valves,and a better escape hatch. There are 2 round covers, which were used for draining transmission fluid, and these need 6 bolt heads around them (Ask me how I know)



There is an M48 style driver’s hatch pivot hole, the A2’s /60 series had a hatch which slid to the right. With the hatch in place, you won’t be aware of it.
The front edge of the dragon fenders are separate pieces,and have the front row of bolts,but they are very faintly molded.


The torsion bar anchor points, are very good representations of the real ones
(I had to change a torsion bar once at Hohenfels, I know them well)


The road wheel arms are better, as is the compensating idler arm for the idler.It does need a small (scale 9/16ths don’t ask) bolt to “lock” the hexagonal arm once it was adjusted. I will show this in the build




The handles for the sponson boxes are molded in blobs, versus the Academy separate units. The middle stiffening ribs on both kits, are correctly shorter.
The personnel heater exhaust pipe is rendered better, it has the clamps which attach it to the fender support properly replicated.
The fender supports are separate,and do have the lightening holes in them.
The air cleaner boxes are different than what I am recalling, the Academy ones are much better.


The M48 style side loader ones are included, and with some minor surgery, I will be able to make the style I saw on 1/37th Armored Bn tanks.
The CBSS bulge, is much better, as it has an attempt at casting marks on it.


The back deck center section, has 2 pins to remove, in the travel lock area. A2’s didn’t have a travel lock for the short gun launcher, so it was a smoother flat area.
The connection from the air cleaners to the engine is properly rounded.


The shock absorbers and bump spring mounts for the first 2 and last road wheel arm are better shaped than the Academy pieces.

Not quite correct drain valves - two front ones are in a wrong spot (should be further to the rear and closer to each other). And shouldn't the escape hatch be oval?



Compare the width of these parts to Academy front fenders. Hint: Academy ones are correct width.

Pawel,
I was wondering about the position of the drains and the hatch shape.I have a video of us driving to Graffenwhoer,and a tank ahead had dropped its hatch,and it looked either oval, or rounded corners.
For the drains,I can find a TM image of the bottom, I know I have a 60 series TM on my other computer. As for the width difference, I would not doubt there are differences, I never took a tape measure to the motorpool,when accurizing my first Tamiya A2,back in the 70's.

In Hunnicutt's Patton book, page 162, there are two photos showing a round escape hatch, although this is from an M60. On page 211, the drawing shows early and late (M60A3?) hatches. So a round hatch could be correct for an M60A2.

Also on PrimePortal, there is a photo which looks more round than oval for the M60A3 walkaround.

The problem with Dragon kit is that DML designer assumed that he can just take M48 hull, modify it slightly and get M60 hull this way...

So front fenders are the same width as in M48, but this is wrong - M60 front fenders were narrower, because the shape of the hull front was very different. As a result of this error, the Dragon M60A2 hull front (the actual hull casting) is some 4 millimeters too narrow, as the designer had to squeeze it between too wide fenders... The hull front armor angles are also copied from M48 kit hull, while M60 had more pointy (longer) "nose"... Also note the shape of the bottom hull in front of the escape hatch in Dragon kit - designer added some weird and ugly "chin" there, which didn't exist in reality.

Finally the positions of road wheels in Dragon M60A2 hull were also copied from their M48 kit hull, with larger distance between 5th and 6th wheel, while M60 should have all wheels at equal distances. As a result wheels from 1st to 5th are too close to each other in Dragon M60A2 hull and the whole suspension is significantly "compressed" in length...

You already pointed out two other features wrongly copied from the M48 hull: pivoting driver's hatch and left side fuel filler cap.

Okay, so it seems that early M60 hulls had round hatches, so round one may be correct in this case. But considering how botched up the whole hull front is in the Dragon kit, the correct escape hatch is little consolation...

Yes, agreed that other issues of the Dragon kit are dominating.

"Also note the shape of the bottom hull in front of the escape hatch in Dragon kit - designer added some weird and ugly "chin" there, which didn't exist in reality."
Agreed,I plan on removing that. I do think our escape hatch was a rounded corner rectangle.
Thanks for the explanation about the roadwheel spacing,and fender problems.
I guess I will see what I can do to readjust those.As for 4 mm width,I will have to live with that,as this is going to be an out of the box,with easy fixes to get either close to good. Oh,
The Dragon Turret does NOT HAVE A 5 GALLON Water can,for behind the gunner's hatch.

From an Army buddy on the M60A2 tankers and Turret mechs FB page:

Rounded rectangle. I remember because KT one of the Sgts in 1st Plt. smashed his fingers when it got away from him when he was trying to install it during my 2nd tour,

Hope you picked up the hatch. They were normally ransomed for a case of beer.

I can't speak for all M60A2 drivers hatches, but I did attend the Missile Transition course at Fort Knox in early 1977 (that's what they called the 4 week M60A2 familiarization program). And I can attest the hatch on our tank was rectangular with rounded corners. Don't ask how I know, but it might involve that case of beer Jeff was talking about above! VR, Russ

First I want to thank you for this most informative and detailed comparison.

I have a few remarks and questions though...






I understand you want to be systematic, but for me it's not that important to have detail that won't ultimately be seen when the tracks are on and the tank is on a base. That's for the poorly detailed back of road wheels (and bottom of the hull). To me dimensional/proportions problems like on the Dragon kit are much worse.

I have a question about mud relief holes, were they on all vehicles? I'm asking this question because I have a seen a pic WITHOUT mud relief holes, although most photos show them.

Cheers,

Christophe

Found this post on Missing Lynx "Stephen Willoughby

Mud chute "lightening" holes not necessarily. February 13 2012, 7:47 AM

They really were for letting the mud and water get out of that deep faced sprocket. But those holes were not universal. The occasional ancient sprocket could pop up on M48s and M88s especially in the National Guard.

I remember this vividly because of shoveling the mud out of the sprocket."

The top-loading airfilter boxes are correct. We had then on our M60A2s.

The escape hatch was indeed oval. It was constantly falling out on road marches, even with brand new seals.

9/16th bolts! I remember them well. During installation of the pack, the 9/16th wrench would always fall out of your hand and end up under the pack. That is why the tank had drain covers. It was not to drain the water. It was to permit you to recover the wrench without pulling the pack.

In any case, your comparaison is great. I am looking forward to following it.

Thanks for your work.

Spot on, Christophe.
I am pointing out details that are poor.Many I will not be bothered with actually fixing. But, some intrepid soul may want to go whole hog and fix everything, just to say they did. I am focused on the visible details,or lack of.The build has commenced,and I have a few images to add later.

Here is my old mount pictured after throwing both tracks at Hohenfels. That's me sitting in the mud. I also have a color shot of us returning to the motorpool (3/33rd, 3 AD Kirchgons) after an alert. If you need some reference as to actual field representation of the A duece please feel free to copy and or save these images. These pics were taken in the '77 -'78 time period.