Here's an image of the rear deck as it looks before wash and weathering:

Thanks Cristian, that does look pretty good, I will see if I can get the same result.

It has been a while since I posted, life got in the way for a bit and then I decided to tackle the tracks. Each link consists of 3 pieces: The pads, track pins and shoes/guide horns:

There are 84 links per track, times 3 pieces, times 2 tracks....hmmm...well...504 pieces total. I could have just entered this kits tracks in the 500+ Campaign...each piece has two sprue connection points that need to be cleaned up, plus a fair number of the pad pieces had some significant flash:

and almost all had flash to a greater or lesser extent around the ejection pin marks. Although this is hidden between the pads and guide horn pieces it still needs to be removed as the tracks will not snap together properly. So anyway, a lot of cleanup is required, but eventually I had everything ready to go:

Now, Meng has designed these tracks to snap together and be workable, which they do pretty well, but I found some would pop back apart, and the inner guide horn pieces are quite fragile and easily bent, resulting in gaps on the outside of the tracks, so I resorted to a small drop of Tamiya Extra Thin in each of the two locating pin holes. No more issues. There are 4 sprues of track parts, and each has a little jig that is used for assembling the tracks. First the outer pads go on:

Then the track pins which are arranged in groups of 6:

Then the inner shoe and guide horn pieces:

When you trim the sprue off the pins you get a little section of nicely workable track:

Do 27 more of these and then join together in two runs of 14 sections and after many hunchbacked hours, you have two sets of tracks for your Leopard!

Whew! On to the turret now!

Glad to see you're over the hardest part of this kit. The flash is really annoying although I didn't had one piece of it on my sample. The pin marks were also visible on mine but I only had to clean a handful of them to make the links snap together. Strange...

By the way, I finished mine for the Big Cats Mk. IV campaign

Hey Cristian, I did some research and found that the second set of screens (the ones on a separate fret) are a correction to the original kit screens, they have some added bolt detail and are the ones to be used. No mention of it in the instructions though...

BTW, did you freehand the camo or did you mask? It looks great!

Thanks for the information on the PE parts. I assembled the wrong ones then as I was simply not able to tell the difference... Oh well!

The camo has been freehanded. The green went on first followed by the black with a 0.2 needle then the brown with an 0.8 needle as I was not able to get it to flow through the 0.2 one.

Nice kit but the labor intensive tracks and working suspension are not worth the trouble just to put the kit a shelf id rather use some of the A7 spacic parts to upgrade my Tamiya Leopard 2A6 to a Leopard 2A7

Some more progress on the big kitty. I will be leaving the side skirts off for painting but there is some assembly work to be done on the front part of the skirts, 9 pieces each:

The rear part of the skirt comes molded as one piece.
On to the barrel. It is disappointing that it comes split lengthwise in two pieces plus the end piece, although there are some good a/m barrels out there as mentioned earlier in this blog. Meng's placement of sprue gates is questionable as one is located very close to a locating pin and is on the mating surface of the barrel so you have to be careful not to remove the locating pin when cleaning the sprue gate away. Also there are a number of those odd casting tabs within the barrel that must be removed before the two pieces can fit together.

That said, the barrel does fit together fairly well, although there is some cleanup required to get rid of the joint seam. The mantlet (for lack of a better word) with gun site goes on next. There is no breech detail (basically no interior detail at all in this kit). The pivots for the barrel fit snugly into poly caps that are located in the gun mounting brackets, allowing the gun to be elevated and depressed and stay in position nicely. The gun is mounted on the bottom half of the turret and left for the glue to set. The vision blocks are added to the upper turret and the upper and lower turrets are joined.


The add-on armour for the front of the turret is next:

Everything fits together quite nicely but there is actually more flash to clean up than I would expect from such a new kit, and more of those casting tabs that need to be removed and cleaned up so that parts will fit together properly.

When adding part D14 in step 20, be careful not to glue it in place as it needs to pivot and slide as the gun tube elevates and depresses. This is not mentioned in the instructions.



It's starting to look like a tank now!

Time for a (somewhat tardy) update. I have been working on the multitude of detail bits for the huge turret. First off, cleaning up all the smoke grenade launchers. There are 16 of the little buggers, each with a mold seam that needs cleaning.

I will assemble them on their rails shortly, but for now will jump ahead to the commanders and loaders hatches:

and the commanders PERI Panoramic sight, display and gunners EMES sighting system:


The PERI sight mounts on a poly cap and can rotate, while the doors on the EMES can open and close, although a bit of judicious trimming is required to make the doors work properly. There are also some ejection pin marks on the inside of the doors that need filling.

Now it is on to the multitude of storage boxes and baskets that hang off the back of the turret. The two mesh baskets are provided with PE mesh and templates for properly shaping the mesh. After annealing the PE over a candle I formed the two pieces using the supply templates. Piece o' cake!





I then practiced my soldering skills attaching the hinges to the lids.


Some detail of one of the baskets

The various baskets and bins:

The largest one is actually the air conditioning unit. This assembly gave me a little bit of grief as one part of it was broken on the sprue some some emergency surgery was required, and some thinning of the sides was required to get it to fit over the alignment guides on the back shelf. As provided, the sides were cast to thick to allow it to fit properly. All the bits attached:


The turret is mostly done now, just the smoke dischargers and a few more detail bits to add. One that is done I can move on to the RWS! Cheers!

Looks great, Colin!

Looking very nice!

Colin, those odd casting tabs are there to pull the part out of the of the mold instead of pushing it out. This is used for really detailed parts when you do not want push pin marks on the detailed side.

Regards,

Eric

Looking good Colin and thanks for sharing.
Building this one myself and those PE storage baskets have made me very nervous as they have been giving me a very hard time.
I`ll try your annealing method and see if they will be a little easier to work.
I am seeing about what you have described and to add I saw and had to deal with flash on the track parts which was a little too much for a new mold kit.
Other than that this is a pretty nice kit and pretty easy to assemble.
Thanks again for the build log Colin

A few details upgraded, shaved off molded on grab handles and replaced with bent wire:

and being a sucker for punishement I decided to add the retaining chains for the smoke grenade launcher covers:

Cables & RWS to go and off to the paint booth! Skirts and tracks are just temporarily fixed on.

Started on the Live Resin RWS and I am very impressed with the level of detail they have achieved, although sometimes it is at the expense of brittle, easily broken detail! Just for sh*ts and giggles, I put the Live Resin offering up against the Y-modelle version. I have not checked the accuracy of the two kits yet, but I think the LR offering is ahead in terms of detail. Here are the two grenade launchers, LR in light grey, Y-Modelle in dark green.

Here are the spent shell baskets, the LR kit comes with spent shells to put in the basket.

Smoke launchers, the Y-Modelle kit comes molded as one piece while the LR version comes with all separate launchers.

Here's the launcher mount, both have good detail

The instructions for the LR kit have to be downloaded from their website, they consist of 3D CAD renderings and are pretty straightforward although a bit more detail would be nice in some instances. Worked on the mount, the parts fit together very nicely, only a tiny bit of trimming and sanding required.

Added the gun cradle and smoke launcher mounting bracket

to be continued...

Well done so far on the build.I have 2 on the shelf , waiting in line to get done.....

Anthony

Author Canadian Leopard Series Project

Thanks Anthony, it has been fun working on this one. I finished off the RWS, added the grenade launcher and smoke canisters


Then mounted it on its pedestal mount, ammo and sight:



The Live Resin kit builds up into a beautifully detailed little unit, and was generally a pleasure to work with considering this was my first time working with resin so I took my time with it. Overall I found the parts fit together quite nicely 90% of the time, but there were a couple of instances where the delicate parts were damaged before I even got to removing them from the pour tabs, and one where my own fat fingers did the damage, so a little repair work was required.

Time for primer, but it is Canadian Thanksgiving and my older sons 18th birthday this weekend, and I have a houseful, so we'll see if I can sneak some painting time in!

So got some painting in while our 30lb bird is in the oven (Sesame Street will be missing a major character!). Primer:

Base coat of NATO Green:

wow..outstanding build.
Thanks for sharing it and addressing some of the construction issues with this kit.
i acquired this kit 2 months ago but still dont dare yet to tackle this kit due to the parts count. hahaha..

will follow your build closely



and Christian, your leapard is awesome!!

Sil

Thank you, Sil!

What kind of green is this, Colin? I'm always using Revell's Bronzegreen as the NATO green which seems to be a lot darker. Or have you lightened it up expecting it to get darker under the following coats?

Great build so far.
Thanks for sharing your experience with the LR FLW200. I have the one with the 0.50 cal MG to go with a Boxer and your comments will be useful.

Olivier

Nice details and build. Looking forward to get one too.

Thanks and you're welcome all, it has been a fun build along with my first crack at working with resin.

Cristian, the base coat is Tamiya NATO Green XF-67, and I have added a highlight coat of Vallejo NATO Light #213.

It is directly under a fairly bright flourescent light so it looks lighter than it actually is.

Camo is now on, first attempt didn't turn out to my satisfaction, so started again and here is the result:

Time for detail painting, Future and decals!

My goodness but that turret is HUGE!!!! Almost as long as the hull...are there any other tanks with turrets this large compared to their hulls? Regardless, great work, and looking forward to the rest.