AFter opening a ticket I received quick response from Dragon, and a phone call from Austrian HQ, to let me know this was the first report oof a warped hull, and that a replacement was on the way. I am very happy with the response to my problem, and commend Dragon and their European office for the interest taken.

The part duly arrived this morning, but unfortunately is a mirror copy of the first, to the same degree. As many others have commented on having little or no warp in theirs, I can only assume that whoever sent the replacement picked it from a bin without checking it, or that all hulls now being produced have this problem, either way it is a disappointing turn of events.

I have updated the ticket update Dragon Customer Care and phoned the contact in Austria - he is holiday for 2 weeks
Brian

I just dry fitted my kit as I wanted to check out what I also percieved as a warp. After trying to force the deck into the hull a couple of times, I consulted the directions. The deck is not supposed to go inside the hull sides but on top of them. two side pieces are glued onto hull to extend it out . If I understand your dilema though, you are trying to kitbash. Don't think there is a flaw with the dragon kit, just that the pieces you are trying to match up aren't made for each other and you are going to have to do some additional cuttng and pasting to make it work

Steve

If you have a look at the 2nd picture in my original post you will see the highlighted gap is wider at the bottom than the top.
At the top of the gap the horizontal measurement for the rear plate is 49,9mm, at the bottom its 51,2mm, a difference of 1,3mm. This is because the lower sides of the lower hull are noticeably inclined inwards.

This means that with the warp unaltered, the gap for the rear plate is almost 1mm wider than the plate itself.

As the upper hull is a perfect fit for the Tamiya lower, lets do a comparison of the internal distance across the top of the hulls
Tamiya = Front 87,95mm - Rear 88mm - difference = 0.05mm
Dragon= Front 85,7mm - Rear 87,33mm - difference = 1,63mm

All of these differences are caused by the warp on the lower sides of the hull, which worsens towards the rear.

Even without kitbashing there are some big differences here (and yes I did try it with the sides glued on). If Tamiya can get this right with 30yr old tooling how come Dragon cannot with something tooled this year? I don't think this is a design flaw, but I do think its a production one - the hull is being released from the mold before fully cooling.

>> This means that with the warp unaltered, the gap for the
>> rear plate is almost 1mm wider than the plate itself.


I don't understand this. Both of my rear plates are at least 51mm wide at the bottom. A gap of 51.2 isn't hugely larger.

David

Yeah your'e right, its not much, until you try and straighten the sides, then you have nothing on each side to stick the rear plate to

Brian

OK, I'm sure I'll get ripped for this but here goes:
Just build the frigging thing already!! Why is it I don't hear anyone else complaining about this kit??

Regards,
Mike (who is now donning flame proof suit)

lol No flaming here - I'm sure lots of you are tired this subject, but I did promise to keep interested parties updated

I happened to need the hull for a kitbash project and the defect prevented me from using it - building it OOB would be ok I think. If you check my original thread you will see that quite a few peeps have the same problem, buts as their builds are OOB they can live with it.

In conversations with Dragon Europe it seems there should be no warp in the hull, nor the differing dimensions I listed above, and they are looking at this in China.

Mike,
You had the nerve to say what I have been thinking!
I read the other thread, saw the photos, and said to myself "I've dealt with worse. Just make it work."

But, to Brian's defense, he payed good money for the kit and should be entitled to a good product.

And further more on Brian's behalf-- I am not a 'rivet counter,' so to me, little gaps and bends don't matter much. Brian may be building a 'museum quality' (whatever that means) kit and just doesn't WANT the parts to be perfect, but NEEDS the parts to be perfect.

I am now jumping behind Mike to hide behind his flame proof suit...

Correct, but for a different reason. I have spent around 100 hrs scratch building the floor, side walls, firewall, and cooling/fuel compartments based on the internal Tamiya specs. These specs are identical to the Dragon, but because of the warp, these parts distort when placed in the new lower hull.

I will probably end up sticking with the Tamiya hull and casting the torsion bar mounts myself.

Also, any company building a future am engine compartment detail will probably design it around vertical side walls, not inclined ones, and would lead to the same fit problems I have. It may be that raising this issue will cause an improvement in the kit that otherwise might not have occurred.


Brian

I still don't get it. Yes, the hull is slightly warped when you take it out of the box - all my samples are. But when I fit in the rear plate, it straightens them. Can we see a photo of yours with the rear plate in?

David

I was not going to say anything on this thread but now I read the bit quoted above!

So you ain't moaning and whining about the kit not going togeather right you are whining cause the kit part don't fit parts you have scratchbuilt! Dragon did not build the kit to fit your parts they built it to fit the parts in the rest of the kit

Have you thought that your scratchbuilt parts are at fault and not the kit?

I always build my scratchbuilt parts to suit the kit part not vise versa.

Now please do as Mike said

By the tone of your post I can only assume that you:
a) Did not read my first post
b) Did not read this one
c) Cannot read at all

Had you read carefully you would have discovered that:
1.Dragon agreed with me that the warped sides are not something they designed or planned, and consequently do not want it in the kit.
2.According to person who contacted me, these hull sides should be vertical, and the floor horizontal.
3.Were it not for this defect, all the parts I built would fit perfectly.
4.I am still quite happy to use my original Tamiya hull and build the Dragon oob using the hull as is.
5. I promised to keep interested parties appraised of what was happening and am not 'moaning or whining'
6. Several other people have found the same thing, to a lesser degree, on their kit.



Agreed. To get this kit as accurate as possible Dragon went to great lengths and also consulted with David Byrden - his name is on the instruction sheet. I have said earlier (several times) that the result is fantastic. However, as the several hundred reference images I have of the tiger hull do not show inwardly sloping sides, and the drawings on Davids site do not have them either, I thought it might be helpful to raise the issue with Dragon, and see if others had found the same thing.

If this is problem that can be solved (I believe) by leaving the part in the mold slighter longer to cool, where is the harm in raising this on a forum and a ticket, so that future kits will be perfect? Dragon have assured me they are going to find out the cause and remedy this.

Imagine if their response was 'quit moaning and whining and just build the &*%^$*(£ thing'. Good job you don't work in their customer care dept.

Brian

Dragon's official response to the issue ...


http://www.dragonmodelsltd.com/html/models-q&a.htm#6253

Thanks for pointing that out Steve!

Actually Dragon Models Ltd. obviously do not agree with that. Check the link in the post above mine.



Exactly - according to this person. Obviously this person was not fully informed about the situation and didn't officially speak for Dragon.




Yes, of course. I just checked my kit and indeed the hull is significantly warped just as yours. But then I attached rear plate (any of two provided) and other hull parts and everything straightened perfectly with neat tight fit between parts. I have no idea how you managed to have 1 mm gap between hull tub and rear plate, but for me it seems that you did something wrong, because hull warpage cannot be a cause of that. In my kit the gap (if you can even call it that) is maybe 0.1 - 0.2mm and will probably disappear once glue is added there .




Please understand that DML have not sold you a box of spare parts to use in scratchbuilding/kitbashing projects. They sold you a complete kit of Tiger I. Once you assemble the kit according to instructions it will match your references. It is your problem that you don't follow instructions, but instead try to do something else.

So the only problem I see is that someone who contacted you told some things that he was not supposed to tell. Probably tried to serve you best, without even checking with the designers team what the situation really is. That of course can be considered a problem with the Dragon Care. But the fact remains that there is no problem with the kit - parts are warped, but it doesn't prevent building a model as long as you follow instructions.

Pawel

I am now donning my fire suit as well.

Sorry, I agree with some of the others here as well. Stop whining and either build it or use the Tamiya kit. You are making this out to be much bigger of an issue than it is. No model is perfect. Sorry your scratchbuilt parts don't fit, but that is what happens sometimes when we scratchbuild. I think the hull is well within accepted limits of fit. Putty is usually needed on most hull seams anyhow.

Bottom line, stop your whining.

dsotm, I'm beginning to wonder if you have another agenda. A considerable number of your posts seem to be covering the same theme...

Is there something you would like to share with us?..Jim

I probably missed the other posts, but which three in one 251 is the "culprit"?

Kelly. we're talking about the Tiger not a 251.

Vinnie

3-in-1 Tiger I Late, not 251.

Pawel

Steve - thanks for posting the link.

After a thorough read there are some things about the Dragon statement that I find disquieting:

Firstly, that the Customer Care dept at Dragon (in China) knew nothing of the 'special attention to this detail', and after investigation sent me a new hull. No mention was made of anything detailed in todays release, which I find odd considering the amount of 'special attention' and 'abundant computer simulations'.

Lets look at some of the technical claims:



I have two perfect Tamiya Tiger 1 hulls, also one piece, also molded, and they have vertical sides with no 'inward bowing' - how exactly did Tamiya miss out on designing this desireable 'inward bowing' feature on their kits? Indeed, given the bad rep that Dragon had in the past as regards to poor fitting components, this feature is so revolutionary I would have expected to see it in pre-prelease press - and yet there was no mention of it. Dragon have waxed lyrical about the accuracy of their their new tooling and molding process - does anyone else not find it the slightest bit strange that they had deliberately design a warp into a hull to make it fit?!!

Of the many replies I have seen, about half of the kits have no 'inward bowing' at all. Are these kits now faulty? How did this new design process fail to install the 'inward bowing' feature on 50% of production? Was all that time and effort by the design team wasted?

Why design something that relies on the vagaries of special area cooling?
Why not just design the parts to fit properly in the first place?




I now have two of these hulls - when the rear plate is fitted a cursory examination shows that the bottom sides of the plate do not touch the sides of the hull, and therefore cannot apply pressure to ' correctly align and square the hull.

When the rear plate is inserted it has no effect on the sides other than at the edges where it is inserted. The 'inward bowing' cannot be fixed by sideways pressure on the insides of the hull - Those of you that have one can easily check this - apply pressure with your fingers to force the walls straight - the hull floor will bend down the middle
Or simply take before and after measurements across the hull, plate out/plate in - there is no difference on the two that I have.

My personal opinion is that Dragon have now found that this is a problem, its too expensive to rectify, and have now rushed this release as a butt covering excercise. Even a cursory examination of it shows some odd claims.

Finally I would like to point out that although it appears I am the only one to raise this issue with Dragon (according to the Customer Care dept) they found it neccessary to to put a release on their web site about it, and yet could not update my ticket with the same information.





Jim - There are only two threads on this subject in the forums - the first where I raised the subject and this one which is an update.

I have no agenda other than to get an honest response from Dragon. I have never built a Dragon kit, ironically because I saw many complaints on various forums about the poor fit on some of their kits. I bought this one on the strength of reports seen about how good it was, and Dragons assertions that their new processess had eliminated previous problems. I then found a defect which I raised both on forums and with Dragon. The reason I raised it on forums was to get any ideas on fixing it, and to see if any others had the same problem.

The fact that scratchbuilt parts won't fit is incidental - pretty soon, AM interiors are going to appear for this very popular kit, when they don't fit those companies are going to point the finger at Dragon and their new 'revolutionary' design.



Brian

Did you ever consider the fact that the Tamiya hull sides are molded Thicker then the DML kit and/or have reforcing ribs to keep the sides verticle? I dont have my Tamiya Tiger I late anymore so I can't compaire the two.

I think your making this out to be a much bigger issue then it is already. Your complaing that your scratchbuilt parts orginally made for another kit don't fit the DML hull, well hello theres going to be differences between the tooling on either one.

Whoops sorry guys, still early in the morning in my neck of the woods.... :-) I'll have to keep that in mind...any issues with the Early Tiger from DML? Just started some work on it....

No worries - AM stuff wil be designed for Dragon parts, not for your impressions of how these parts should look like. So don't worry, they will fit DML kit.

I'm quite sure that ALL hulls in DML Tiger I kits are warped (or however you want to call this shape). Maybe in some it is more noticable or maybe some modelers just don't notice such minor problems. So in fact there probably are no kits with no "inward bowing".

Pawel

You seem to imply that DML are somehow lying to the consumer by using the terms 'abundant computer simulations'. (note the use of the text in commas). The fact is that DML ARE using this technology on all of their recent kits. Using this, their technical assessors (unpaid volunteers) can look at the layout of a future kit and make all the suggestions to improve the layout and accuracy of the forthcoming kit. I myself have seen some of these simulations (as you describe them) and the system works very well. In fact they are 3D visualisations done from the CAD work that Dragon does with all its new releases.

I still find your stance rather peculiar as the overwhelming (99%?) of Independent reviewers and modellers who have built this kit seem to have not encountered the problem which you dedicate so much time to highlighting.

I have not changed my doubts as to your agenda. In the words of Shakespeare: "Methinks, he doth protest too much..." This post is little more than a whine, which may go down well with some - the rest of us are just too cynical to see it as little more than an attempt at Destructive (rather than Constructive) criticism...Jim