I just need to vent.

I'm in the middle of building Trumpeter's old M1 Panther II mine-clearing tank. It got OK reviews in its time and looked decent enough in the box when I got it. Plus, it was cheap. Now that I'm building it, I realize why it was cheap. It's a dog.the vinyl wheel hubs have a gap around them, there are sink marks sprinkled throughout, and the engineering leaves a lot to be desired. For example, Trumpeter incorrectly placed the locating holes for the bustle rack, put the tabs on the wrong bustle rack supports (thus making the holes pointless) and included more holes than tabs! To top it off, the lower bustle rack rod is shaped differently from the other two, so it doesn't match up. The metal poles that hold the remote view cameras are supposed to be identical parts (and are both numbered identically) but the camera holder bit on the top is different in both parts. That means that one part is wrong and needs to be surgically altered to fix it (you have to cut off the L channel and a knob and reposition them on the top platform). Now I'm noticing that some of the details on the MCR also are in the wrong place or shaped incorrectly.

I was hoping to make this a quick OOB build, but just fixing things in order to build it to a half-decent standard is taking a while.

OK, done venting. Now back to beating this kit into submission.

Edit: Darn autocomplete on the title!

I took the liberty to undo what autocomplete had done to the subject/title. I also emphasised the PAIN to be more in line with the context of your post.

BTW: I happened to find some comparative reviews back then so I bought the Dragon version instead. Your post quite emphatically confirms that I made the right decision

/ Robin

I purchased one several years ago just for the mine plow mount, chucked the whole thing.

Thanks, Robin! You certainly made the right call. I also have the Dragon kit, and it is much nicer.

James--yeah, the mine plow is not good--there are really questionable engineering decisions (why break up the skids into two parts? Why put ejector pins right in the middle of the TOP of the skid?) on that part of the kit. It looked bad enough that I chose not to build it and went with the the mine roller instead. We'll see how bad that is--I just started it last night.