Thinking about doing the above using the Academy kit and the lower and upper hull from Dragon M60A2. Is this realistic? What changes/modifications if any would have to be made to the Dragon lower and upper hull. Thanks.

From what I have read on the web, the big problem is that Dragon's M60A2 hull is inaccurate for the M60 family - they put a straight nose on their M48 hull and hoped nobody would notice the geometric differences! There are plenty of other M60 hulls out there that are more correct in length, shape etc...

Bummer. Was hoping I could use it as the Academy lower hull is not very good and lacks detail, not to mention poor fit issues. Maybe I'll get lucky and find the AFV kit at a really good price.
Thanks.

Takoms new R.O.C. ARMY CM-11 (M-48H) Brave Tiger MBT (no. 2090) might be useful? It's a M48 turret on a M60 hull. From what I've read people are positive. It look as detailed as the AFV Club kit but with lesser number of parts. You also doesn't have to bother about the overdone cast texture on the AFV Club kit. The version with the ERA kit can be seen here:
https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/265904&page=1
You can see the hull there. I have no idea if it will mate with the Academy parts thought.

Cheers,
/E

Thanks Erik. I actually have both of the Brave Tiger kits but didn't want to cannibalize them as I wanted to build those kits as well.

The Academy hull can benefit from the Deff M60 hull upgrade set but still will require lots of work.

The Dragon hull is aweful shapewise but requires far less work and you can use the details from the Academy kit (lightguards, boxes, handles etc).

The best choice, as previously pointed out, get a Takom C-11 kit and use the hull. And you will have a nice M48A5 turret leftover for another project.

Thanks Nikos. I'm beginning to think that that is probably my best option despite what I wrote earlier about not wanting to cannibalize the Brave Tiger kit.

I'll second that. I plan on using the non-ERA C-11 hull kit-bashed with the forthcoming Dragon M48 AVLB parts to make an M60 ALVB. Then I plan on using the M48 hull with the M48A5 turret and parts from the Takom kit to build an M48A5. We'll see how it goes. Just need Dragon to hurry up with the AVLB kit.

Take in mind to check the fender supports for differences between the Gal Batash and the simple hull, because of the heavier armord side shields. If I recall correctly the kit supplies them as separate parts.

I have a bunch of Magachs (3) going right now that are Italeri/Esci hulls and Academy or Tamiya turrets, with various aftermarket bits. I'm trying to use up all the old stash before I get into the AFV Club kit I have, and before I load up on Takom's M48H kits. The Italeri/Esci hull is not bad, easier to correct than the Tamiya/Academy hulls, and once the sink marks and push pin marks are fixed, fairly accurate. There are other issues with the simplified suspension and mediocre road wheels, but they build up okay with some old fashioned modeling.
And the kits are cheap too.
The pic below is an example, Esci hulls and Academy and AM parts.
IMG_0759 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
IMG_0758 by Russel Baer, on Flickr