As of today, I'm a new owner of the kit above for x-mas & since this is my first interior kit, I wanted to know if anyone here has any experience with this kit or have any links, reviews, tips, etc. for this particular kit?

I have some pics/drawings in my Achtung Panzer book but don't know much about interior painting colors etc. I plan to build the lower hull/running gear and keep it separate from the top. I want to show the interior and would love to be able to place the subassemblies together as well.

Any suggestions would be great! Looking forward to the challenge and sure I can pull it off with some planning.

It is normally a very light cream colour with oxide red in the area of the torsion bars.

The Panzer Museum's Sturmtiger is painted cream all the way down to the floor, with the floor and torsion bars painted red oxide. I know in September of 1944 the manufacturers were instructed to paint tanks red oxide and ship them out that way, without any other interior or exterior color being applied.Germany was running out of everything by this time, including paint. Would any Sturmtiger built after September be subject to this directive or being something of a speciality vehicle would it still get the cream color interior ?

Be careful when using museum examples for paint schemes. I did about a year of research work before building my full interior Tamiya kit (scratch and Eduard). The Panzer Museum Strumtiger has been "around the block" several times with repaints, and it probably had Zimmeritt at one time too. As far as I can determine, the interior paint for most of them was "Panzer White" which is a cream color, and primer red in the lower hull and torsion bar area, but really there is not much surviving information on the 18 examples produced by the end of the war. You could likely go with the scheme mentioned. And unless you leave the top off, there won't be much visible.
VR, Russ

Ok - thanks, I saw some of rhe pics you mentioned as well so the red oxide goes to the creamweiss right above the torsion bars? Any pics to show me the exact demarcation?

Also, I prefer vallejo model air and wondered what color in that line best matches red oxide for the torsion bar area.

The demarcation would be at the level of the floor in a Tiger 1 as these where all rebuilt vehicles from destroyed Tiger 1's as I understand it anyway. It is also the reason that heavily damaged zimmerit would not be out of place on the hull avoiding adding any to the new portion of the vehicle.

https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/producto/hobby/sets/afv/german-red-oxide-78411/

As far as the Zimmeritt goes, there are at least two or maybe three vehicles that didn't have Zimmeritt- there are photos of the first two "prototype" vehicles without Zimmeritt, and there is at least one photo of a US captured vehicle without Zimmeritt. I have not seen the RFM kit yet, but have studied the CAD drawings, and it looks like it depicts one of these three vehicles. The mortar counterweight, the front glacis arrangement (bolt on armor option) and the forward towing shackle mounts are similar on the kit to the very early models-- which dont appear to have Zimmeritt. The Panzer Museum's Stumtiger (correct title is Sturm Morser VI) has been rumored to have remnants of Zimmeritt around the glacis plate and the rear towing pintle, and this vehicle supposedly came from APG. Photos of it being loaded for transport can be found on line, and it appears to have Zimm in those photos (if the captions are correct). If you build the RFM kit without Zimmeritt, it would likely be painted in Armor Yellow. There were 18 vehicles built, but it doesn't appear any records were recovered showing which ones were camouflage painted, with or without Zimmeritt. So you could probably get away with any scheme you wanted. There are at least 7-8 photos available on line of different Sturmtigers, which leaves at least 10 unaccounted for-- and I think they were all just a little different from each other as no two vehicles (in available photos) look alike.
VR, Russ

I'm not planning on zimmermit and would like to keep the exterior dunkelgelb or similar with light weathering as I want to keep tje focus on the exposed interior.

Any other suggestions on shell colors ? Museum has gray and yellow which looks wrong to me.

Also, any pictures of exactly where that demarcation is ? At the floor level..

Brian,
I’d do some serious googling and see what you can find that way.
Dan

It is at the height of the original Tiger 1 floor.