the title says it all. TankCarl was kind enough to send me a Italeri M24 Chaffee tank kit to do. But he also included a Verlinden engine set, a metal barrel and a set of MK tracks for it as well.

So here is the start of my first full Armour model!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All comments welcomed.

Here is the start. The Verlinden engine set followed by it assembled & in the lower hull .

Cliff

With your skills and the ingredients you have to work with, I can hardly wait to see the finished product.

Looks like a great start,Cliff.As we were discussing in the chat there are some things to tweak now to make it nice nice on those engines
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Master of softskins starts his first hardskin...nice start sir no doubt it will be great as usual..good luck

Nice work! Keep us posted with the results!
Cheers and happy modelling!
Prato

Nice work so far.

Having just finished a Tiger II i must say, that a Chaffee in my opinion is classified as a "softskin" due to its quite thin armor.

So lets classifie it a "softskin" ... :-)

Cliff
Looking good so far Welcome to the dark side :-) :-)

Cliff, some nice af bits you have there mate! Please don't take this the wrong way, but a few of the parts you've installed so far look a bit 'crooked'? I think as a consequence of this the left engine block comes out too far and may create problems later.

Vinnie

TANKS alot for posting this. Welcome to the DARK side. No more wheelie tings 4 u! :-)

The infernal regions must have froze over last night :-)

Looks really clean Cliff--it'll be a shame to cover it up. Welcome to the "good side of the force" (ie armor )

Steve

Vinnie thanks for the comment. Yes you are right. The engines did not really want to fit in there so I fumbled it a bit. I will try and fix it before I do anything more to this bit.

Thanks for all your comments

Cheers
Cliff

Ola Cliff

Well that looks like a very clean built to me. I`m also on vinnies side that you could add some more work to the engine compartment but with your modeling skills I don`t see problems with that.

Looking forward to see more of it

Pretty good and clean build
Pretty lucky to receive duch a nice gift .
Pretty nice model will end i am sure

Hey

Nice start. But I'm wondering....how are you gonna paint the engine now that it's already glued in the hull? I always use sub-assemblies to make painting easier and I'd have painted the engine seperately if possible as well .....just wondering

Are you gonna built it as a WW2, Korean, French (Indo-China), or something else?

Martin

yes I know I do too but I forgot about it this time so I just may be trying to unassemble it with acetone to remove the motors.




I have pics of the war office (british) doing trials in Queensland and New Guinea in late 1944 of a Chaffee so this will be that tank.

Thanks for the comments guys I appreciate it

Your off to a great start Cliff. I am looking forward to seeing what you can do with this tracked beast.

Not to worry about painting Cliff.
As I mentioned in the chat,I saw one being rebuilt at our BN in Germany.The engines were shades of black and gloss black.
The solid panel on the rear deck hinges up,so only the engine block itself,and part of the exhaust piping and generators will be visible .Don't forget the wiring for the spark plugs,that'll be fun,16 wires,ooooooo :-)

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another reason to try and get the motors out again LOL.

Cliff, you are hanging over the edge there buddy, with a lot of scary tanks nipping at your ankles. Us dedicated Truck Lovers have you by the cuff of your shirt and we can hold on for a little while,but, eventually you will have to want to come back and have to climb and grab our hands.


:-) Oh, lordie, I kill myself! :-)

We got ya ,Cliff !!!
Cuhail

In all honesty, I don't think Cliff here has gone to the dark side - more like stepped into. By studying many people's works over since I came here, every person (myself included) has there own niche that they prefer to model. Some niches are more specific then others, but all the same, they still exist. Most explore into other areas for variety, but fall back.

Anyway, very good so far. Are you planning to cover up the engine?

That last picture is very interesting. Being able to see how much the engine compartment takes up really shows how cramped those things can get.

Keep the updates coming.

Jeff

Cliff,

Have you got access to the old "On-the-Mark" Chaffee PE set? It's really worth the search. Nowhere near as many pieces as the Aper or Eduard approach to PE, but you'll pretty much use everything in the package and it doesn't include anything that doesn't benefit from being PE.

Depending upon how anal you want to get with this, but the raised frying pan shaped bumps at the rear outside corners of the engine deck are really air intakes and the rounded castings should really stand clear of the rest of the deck by about 1-2" to let the air in all around. On mine, I cut out the covers, filled & cleaned up the holes and then mounted the covers on a bit of card to raise them off the deck.

Another one of those really good value Italeri kits from the early 80s.

Paul

Am i seeing things, Cliff the truckoholic building a tank, have you run out of trucks . Must admit that i can't wait to see this finished to your usual high standard.
Oh i see the plan now, build a tank, then build a tank transporter for it to go on, clever plan :-)