Introduction

Canadian armor fans are living a dream right now with a slew of Canadian related kits out, including the variants of the Leopard tank. Prior to the release of the Leopard C2 MEXAS kit, Legend Productions provided great conversion kit, and made this update set available separately for those who wanted to go the extra mile, but it can be used on some of the subsequent releases.

Contents

Inside the box:

Assorted Resin bits
2 frets of Photo-etched
2 pieces of wire
Instruction Sheet

Review

Right off the bat I can tell you this is a great detail set, as I have used it when I did my Leopard C2 MEXAS build log here. The set comes with very good and detailed resin castings. The castings include vision ports for the turret, barrel end, ECM unit, antenna mounts, and jerry cans. To complement the cast resin, the set includes two frets of photo-etched details to include the detail for the ECM unit, jerry can mounts, enclosure for ECM unit, front fender extensions, pad locks for stowage bins, chains for smoke dischargers, and AC unit.

The ECM unit builds up well with the resin and photo-etched parts, and looks great once completed. To mount the ECM unit, you will need to cut the rear section of the turret MEXAS off, and fit the photo-etched part for the enclosure. I found the images in the instruction for this installation to be a little weak, and suggest you check reference images as to hold it is mounted.

I did not use the front fender extensions on my build, but they do look to be very well done, including the corrugated effect on the lower rubber parts.

As for the AC unit, this unit would only be mounted on the tank with the thermal cover installed. Thus if you are building a Leopard C2 from the conversion, these parts would not be useful. But the set does include the wire bits to simulate the plumbing for the unit.

The photo-etched jerry can racks assemble well and with the resin jerry cans and photo-etched strapping definitely beat the plastic molded ones. The rest of the bits, definitely add the extra detail to the build. A real nice addition to the set is cast rivet heads to take some of the detail that extra step.

The instructions, if you are familiar with Legend Productions, show images of the completed build, so the builder will have to sometimes try to images how a fold goes or a piece actually fits. This is not bad for this set, as most is rather straight forward.

Conclusion

Overall this is a great extra detail set for the Leopard C2 MEXAS, it can be used in conjunction with the Legend Conversion set, or with the other kits no available. Having built the Legend conversion, and used this kit, I was a little surprised that this detail was not included in the conversion set. There is a lot of useful detail in this set, with the exception of the AC unit, unless you want to try to scratch detail a thermal cover for the Leopard, or purchase a C2 MEXAS with thermal cover conversion from another company. If you are looking to take your Leopard C2 MEXAS to the next level, I definitely recommend this kit.

Note: This detail set should not be confused with the latest Leopard C2 MEXAS Update and Detail set (LF1285) that Legend Production has released recently. The newer set is designed for the Takom release, and does include some of the parts that were available in the original C2 MEXAS conversion set, for example the turret mounted MG, smoke dischargers, rear mud flaps, turret stowage shelves, etc.