I have a Faxon direct vision hull and a composite as well. Looking at the Tamiya kits and Steve's parts to see how they would fit together I came to these preliminary conclusions:
If you want to use crew in the hull openings, some extensive resin removal will be required. to create an open area under the hatch opening. The same goes for Steve's resin turrets if you are using one.
The turret is brobably most easily attached with a screw. If using one of Steve's resin high bustle turrets that is pretty much the only way to do it. I have had success adding a piece of brass rod to a hole in the bottom of the turret to serve as a pivot, drilling and tapping it to hold a small machine screw to allow it to be easily attached in other solid turret conversions. This is way easier to do than it shounds, and can be done with hand tools. If you are using the Tamiya turret, you could modify the turret bottom to a simple flat plate made from some farily substantial flat styrene stock, and add the pivot screw through the hatch hole. Care in locating the pivot holes will be required in either case.
The way Tamiya split their upper and lower hulls on the Sherman kits, the top edge of the lower hull seems to line up exactly with the lower edge of the upper hull. When I put sponson bottoms on the upper hull during the consrution of my first Tamiya, that observation proved to be true. This allows the Faxon conversion to be carefully sanded flat on the bottom and the Tamiya hull basically screwed onto the bottom of the resin part. Screws let you make minor fit adjustments by shifting the parts before tightening the screws (here is where the Tamiya method of assembly is a huge advangage).
Adding locater strips on the bottom of the resin hull to position the inboard edges of the die cast hull sides will be helpful. You will have to relieve the area under the rear overhang to allow room for the air cleaners and to create the open area for the exausts. I would not drill the mounting holes and put the screws in until I had fitted the transmission cover though.
The Transmission cover does not need to be completely hollowed out, but will require some careful reliefs to fit it to the upper an lower hull. Once this relationship is worked out, I would attach the transmission cover to the bolting flange on the front of the upper hull with everything temporarily screwed together, seperate the parts and reinforce this joint from the inside and then permanently screw the lower hull to this entire sub-assembly. If you do not like fussing with screws you could use the locater strips as a gluing aid and flow ACC along the joints after removing the primer from the contact areas of of the die cast part.
Konrad
