introduction

The set contains eight resin wheels designed for Italeri LAV-25 kit (also reboxed by Revell). In the set we get eight wheels and this means that unfortunately the spare wheel was not included. We get four wheels for the left and four for the right side of the vehicle – they are marked “left” and “right” on resin casting blocks. There are no instructions included in the set as the wheels are designed to directly replace the kit wheels.


The wheels are cast in very hard and brittle gray resin. Fortunately only relatively small casting blocks have to be removed from parts.
There were no air bubbles in my parts, but the edge of one rim was jagged where pieces of the brittle resin were damaged.
Each tire is bulged and flattened on the bottom, but is overdone in my opinion. The outer walls of the tires looks fine, but the inner walls are bulged far too much.


The tread pattern on the tires is supposed to depict Michelin XL pattern, but whilst it is recognizable and cleanly and crisply sculpted, it could have been better accuracy-wise. On the tire walls Signifer added engraved circle and radial lines, but such lines on real tires are raised and barely visible.
The detail on wheel rims is similar to those on kit parts, but the bolt heads were enlarged and a small hole was added where the valve is on the real wheel.


So far, so good. Now the bad news. Signifer wheels are grossly oversized! They are just HUGE. They are almost twice as wide as the kit wheels and a few millimeters larger in diameter. My guess is that Signifier tried to depict the wide tires used by Canadians and Australians on their LAV vehicles. The width of the resin wheels is probably closer to these wide tires, although they are most likely still too wide and the big bulge at the bottom doesn’t help either. They are definitely too big in diameter anyway – tires used by Canadians and Australians are only slightly larger diameter than those used on US LAVs, and this is only because they are more bulbous. The other problem is that Canadian and Australian wide tires are not Michelin XL type. They use Michelin XML tires with a tread pattern very different from those on XL tires. US Marines use XL tires, but of the narrow type.


Resin wheels don’t fit to the kit axles without modifications. The holes in the rims are not deep enough and either have to be drilled or the kit parts have to be cut to fit.

in conclusion

Unfortunately I can only recommend these wheels to use in “what if” projects. They are not accurate for either US or Canadian or Australian LAVs.


Many thanks to Signifer for a review sample!