They look great Paul....
sent a PM to you.

Good looking items Paul. How does the side profile of the Grant turret look once you cut it down? I was fortunate enough to find a vendor at a show who was selling Eduard PE sets at 50% off. I got the M3 Grant Late set (35474) for only $10. Any experience with that set?

I may be biased, but I think it looks great. :-)

Truthfully, it is lower, sleaker and looks a LOT more like photos than the overinflated Tamiya offering. The outline of the Tamiya turret, looked at from above, was pretty much dead on, but the angle of the gun mount plate in the kit is 40 deg from vertical rather than 45 deg as it should be. This raised the roof the amount that the turret is too high and this error was then built into the rest of the shape of the turret sides. There were some shape issues with the contours of the top of the turret, especially at the right side and around the smoke mortar, but I have a lot of photos of the Grant at APG & used them & available photos to rechape it to match. I also added a number of the casting details evident in the APG turret like the pour plugs & mould seams that are evident at various points around the turret. The kit hatch assembly will still fit onto my turret.

BTW anyone ever noticed that the Tamiya Lee/Grant turret gun mounting is only really correct if the 37mm gun is pointing up at a 45 deg angle? The plate was moulded on its back, but it is installed at 45 deg so the view slot in the sighting rotor looks up at 45 deg all the time. I fixed that on both my turrets as it always bugged the crap out of me. Even the ABM turrets have the rotor looking up. :-)



Sorry, no I haven't used it. I tend to scratchbuild a lot of what comes in a PE set so I haven't used that one yet.

Paul

Hi Paul!

I know this is an old thread, but if you still have the corrected Grant turret and exhausts available I'd be interested in buying a set.

Let me know, thanks!

Terry Barrett
[email protected]
Raleigh, NC

Academy do a fare better Grant which although not perfect it is a hell of a lot more accurate than the reviewers originally gave it credit for. They usually for about $40 Aus in the shops and can be picked up cheaply.
THere was a lot of misinformation put out about the turret accuracy of this kit by well know and highly respected US modellers based on a comparison with the Armoured Bde conversion. I measured and photographed two Aust Grants at Pucka and compared them to ordnance drawings which proved they were almost perfect in size and shape. They benefit from a rounding of the sharper edges and a roughening up of the cast but are accurate in size and outline. The major Fault with this kit was the bogies being too high (as are the Tamiya ones) but this has been corrected in the latest release with crew.
The Gun barrel sits too high in the rotor shield and this is where the old Tamiya ones come in handy as replacements or simply shave the block away and relocate it so the barrel is in line wit hthe trunnions.

Another supposed error was the hull angle which again was proven incorrect when compared to actual ordnance drawings and measured on a real vehicle.
There are also missing rivets but beware- having checked many Grants and Lees in Australia there are at least three different rivetted hulls each with slightly different placement and patterns.

I would recommend this kit over the tamiya one anyday - keep it as a rivet donor and steal the gun and mantlet from the turret.

The Academy kit is not the easiest of builds and has minor fit issues due to the complex shape but a great kit can be built from it.

CHeers
Al

Al, you're answering a question asked almost 6 years ago by a former staff member who left the site half a decade ago. At the time, the only options were the Tamiya kit in 1/35 and the OOP Airfix and Monogram kits in 1/32.

I have also seen a number of the round headed rivets with a cut across them, this leads me to believe that when odd rivets were popped the hole was threaded and a bolt added. If you look at the Grant walk around on Armorama you can see this in some of the pictures.

hi sabot! this may be the case but i for one have benafited by reading this thread. it is an added benafit to this site that others can read them no matter how old it is. so thank you al !!!

I guess it pays to read the whole thread and check the dates on forums where you can dig up the dead - DOH!
Cheers
Al

Actually, a number of what are traditionally though of as rivets are actually slot head screws, by design. A number of vehicle types are actually assembled, at least partly, from screwed plates as opposed to riveted plates on several American vehicles.