Some in progess shots of the two armor kits Im working on at the moment. The SU76M is Maquette kit and eduard PE for the incoming campaign, and the M113 IDF fitter is from academy. The SU76M is an all round disaster ... you name it, and that happens .. all in the negative sense. Nuff said. The M113 is nice .. good fit but all hatches are working and to show the insides,takes a lot of work filling sink holes. The indy tracks with the kit are worse than I have seen from any eastern european company. Every pad has a hole in the middle ... not the push out type, but short-shot type. Are academy M113 tracks usually this bad? All comments and critic are welcome!

I am having the same issue with my Academy individual tracks, having the fill each pad with putty and file it down. I am doing an M113 A1 with Recoilles rifle, circa 1970. Adds a lot of extra work to the process. However, the rest of the kit makes up for it. I have some exploded view drawings of the crane including hydraulics if you are interested.

What the heck is a fitter? I have heard this term many times with M113s but never got an answer

The "Fitter" is a recovery vehicle.
http://www.armouredengineer.force9.co.uk/bucket/fitter.htm

Oh, yes - Academy M113 plastic tracks are just like this. You have to fill a hole in each link

By the way, does anyone know what the interior of Aussie fitter during Vietnam war looked like? Did they have regular benches on sides or benches in the middle as IDF version? Or maybe some completely different layout?...

I started my bucket yesterday - will build M113A3. I will use mostly Tamiya M113A2 parts, but main hull tub and suspension from Academy, as it is easier to modify it to correct A2/A3 height. It is odd that when Academy released their M113A2 (it was their first M113) they made separate suspension arms and added shocks to second road wheels, but copied all suspension dimensions from Tamiya kit - this way all their M113 kits have M113 / M113A1 suspension size-wise.

Pawel

Thanks for the comments guys. I wont bother filling the track pads ... think I´ll go with the indy tracks ... they look OK.
Paul Id be very interested in drawings. I have done much modifications, bu´t if there was something obviously simple, Id have a go. You can e-mail me to;

[email protected]

As to the benches, the instructions include them, for the IDF version, but I suppose they must have come out easy enough if a full load was being used. Australien version?? not a clue! sorry.

I have another gripe with the Academy M113 links. They have the pad as almost square when in fact it's a little more rectangular.

The new AFV club M113 rubber band style tracks do look nice.

Paul

Good looking models! Can't wait to see the fitter completed.





I've got a set of those and I agree. Of course, I'm indi-link-phobic. :-)

Chuck

Chuck,

Did you already used them on the model? I got me one set of them today and to me it looks like they are too long. They may be fine for AFV Club AIFV model (they are included in this kit), but they are some three links longer than Tamiya and Academy tracks... It seems to be impossible to correcty apply them to Academy and Tamiya models... They would probably have to be glued to the top all road wheels and still may have some slack, instead of hangng flat and just touching 3rd, 4th and 5th wheel as in real M113A1. I already think how to shorten them...

Pawel

I actually dont have a problem with indy links and in most cases I would prefer to use them. This time though ... I´ll stick with the rubber tracks. Too much work to fix them.