With all the new M1 kits coming out, no one has done anything decidedly Cold War. Say a 105 mm gunned version, or even the 120 mm, very late 1980s (right?). What would it take to create one? Or should I just hold tight and wait for a release?

The original Tamiya M1 Abrams kit is an early '80s 105mm M1. It is the only kit done of this tank. It is a pretty good starting point for an M1 or M1IP.



All other 120mm Abrams were M1A1s and later M1A2s. The addition of the 120mm gun (among a few other upgrades) made them M1A1s.

If you don't want to do a bit of updating on the Tamiya M1, you may want to wait for one of the current Abrams producers to come out with a 105mm M1 kit.

Any of the current M1A1 kits could be built into a late '80s M1A1. You would need to leave a few pieces off and change the tracks to the earlier T-156 chevron block tracks used at the time. Trumpeter makes a set of them.



Check out my M1 Variants Article to learn more about the lineage of the Abrams.

Simple just build a M1A1 with out the bustle rack mounted apu then apply the NATO 3 color camo

I have done a M1. I used the Dragon M1A1 AIM kit and the Tamiya kit to mix and match.

I guess the question I should have posed; can any of the new kits, the Meng, Rye Field, or even the new-tool Academy, can they be easily post-dated considering they're decidedly new-model M1s? I'd prefer to use one of those as starting point to be honest. But I see all the TUSK gear and think great googly moogly.

Both Meng's and Rye Field's M1A2 SEP could be backdated to am M1A1. The Rye Field would be easier since one of its options is an M1A1. Academy's new M1A2 SEP V2 can also be built as an M1A1. None of them can easily be backdated to an M1 105mm without major work.

I beg to differ. Academy kit includes options for SEP V2, TUSK 1 and TUSK 2, but M1A2 only. Parts to build M1A1 are not provided. The same is true for Meng kit. Of course both can be used to build M1A1, but a lot of parts - like CWS - have to be sourced elsewhere.



Unless you count this one:

I thought Academy's also included A1 parts, I guess not.

Yeah, I don't really count the horrible, old Esci kit. It really didn't build into an accurate version of any M1 at all.

Gino, you speak the truth. It is a fun kit to build, but even to an average builder like myself there is something wrong to the dimensions. It looks wrong to the mk.I eyeball.

The 105mm Tamiya M1 (and M2A0) I built years ago, both as mid 80's REFORGER vehicles. I still have another 105mm M1 kit in the stash that I want to build as a 24th ID M1IP that originaly deployed to Saudi during Desert Shield.

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Nice looking early Brad and Abrams. I plan on doing very similar at some point in the future....eventually.

Here some pictures of my rebuilt Tamiya M1.
A mix of Tamiya and Dragon part is very nice but with some work the original kit can be assemblied in nice model

http://www.assodipicche-pn.it/immagini/modelli_soci/farpie/m1_abrams/m1_abrams.htm

Parts are bagged but bags have vent holes which has resulted in a lot of loose stuff coming out into the box. Box itself is a tight fit but I don't know if I got all the parts or not.

Turret looks to my eyes to be 2-3mm too short. The result is a 1/48 turret sitting atop a 1/35 hull. A T-72 gunner would find it unbearably cramped.

The solution seems to be cut sprue risers for the inside of the turret top, add sheet wrap around the risers (bottom edge of turret top) and then glue a separate sprue 'shelf' around the inside of the risers to lay the turret floor upon. Assuming you line up on the rear corners and the gun mantlet slot, this in turn leaves about a 1-2mm gap running around the edge of the turret between the floor and side walls which needs a final (shaved square) sprue insert to lay into and smooth with Dremel + coarse file and CA.

Still not quite perfect (there is a huge gap under the turret where the ring sits that doesn't match out to photos) but looks a lot better overall. Just be sure to use the floor piece as a guide for shaving the angle of the turret sides or the unit will not rotate in the hull without scraping the raised rear deck.

Though it was good modeling in the problem solving sense, this is probably stumbling block #1 for the average builder.

Hull is period 80s with glueable side panels for the running gear and minimal positive location aides. Nothing special or impossible but do make sure you've got the angles right as this is what sets the level of the molded on swing arms.

Gun is two part but has nearly perfect seamlessness (ESCI plastic reacts really well to Testors liquid, sorta okay to Tamiya Green).

Skirts have very limited positive location which essentially comes down to a single raised piece (part of the hull actually) which fits into a cutout at the front of the hull top and a tab about halfway down the side on which the skirts less slot onto than hang from. These kinds of set ups scare me because you don't want the things sliding around on a lake of slippery phase liquid cement after you have painted and added tracks.

Pin Vice and Paperclip time...

Very finely reproduced bustle racks are so tiny that most of one side broke off at the curve and came out of the bag like spaghetti fragments. The other side looks like it will break if I try and cut it off the sprue. Fishing fly wire bent to shape around the original parts.

This would be deal breaker #2 to most new builders.

T156 track is not bad in terms of sink marks (one on the visible, inner, face) and L&L has the thickness I like to see in tracks but the chevron pad shapes are _very_ bluff, undersized and with little or no hinge detail.

Still working on the wheels and secondary armament. Looks doable but the M2 needs resin replacement pretty bad and the road wheels hub and bolt detail might be a little too tightly clustered (undersized?).

Word of warning: Despite the 'glossy' surface polish, the kit plastic on things like the turret sides and skirts is highly uneven, to the point of looking lumpy under primer. There are also what look like fine hairs visible on the outsides of some parts which are actually the partially extruded arc-sections of some interior ejector pin dents.

Rub down everything to get that squared-off look of real steel.

CONCLUSION:
I'm going to go against the stream here and say that, as a very cheap EBay kit (not more than 20+7, 14+10 is better), the ESCI is a viable basis for an early M1 with a little work or (as with mine) the bottom of an M247 York 'Production DIVADS'.

They are much more readily available and less pricey than the Tamiya 35124/3624 offering and their reduced parts count makes them an easy weekender if you know what to do with the turret.

If you like period 70s/80s experimental camouflage like MERDC and DTG, the early M1 wore almost all of them at one point or another.

Investigating your options with the ESCI might therefore be worth it for an advanced builder as I understand Tamiya permanently altered the tooling to make the M1A1. We will never see a rerelease of the M1 kit.

Worst (least fixable) element is the tracks but it's lot easier to justify a 10-15 dollar plastic track set if you can keep the baseline kit under 30 bucks.

A Dragon or Trumpeter Panther 2 kit has the bits to do up a superior lower hull. The Panther 2 was built on M1 hulls. Since the older Academy M1A1 has a too short turret for an M1A1, it could be a good basis for a M1 with the blow off panels, hull storage and gun changed. Changing the turret storage would not be as hard as you think and you'd have the bustle rack most M1 had by 1990-2.

The Esci turret need only supply the turret blow off panels, turret side storage boxes and 105mm gun. Put this on an M1A1 turret and you have an M1 IP.

I've been thinking about this a lot since I want to do my tank with a self portrait in the TC hatch.