AFV Club has sent Armorama a pre-release sample of their World War II British Fuel Tank Set. The set was supplied without any packaging since that is probably not yet ready, but the moulding itself does look to be of production quality. The set looks as though it will consist of six identical sprues plus a photo etched fret. The components will build up into 18 x 5-gallon jerry cans, plus 18 x 2-gallon cans, with 6 pouring spouts and 6 funnels included. One part missing from our sample is the caps for the 5 gallon jerry cans, although I believe that’s most likely a packing error rather than a final kit omission.

The 5 gallon jerry cans are made up of a left a right sides with a photo etched shim trapped between them to represent the weld seam. You then have a single part that provides the three handles on. As stated previously this sample is missing the caps for the five gallon jerry cans but having checked a sprue supplied with another kit shows that the option is supplied to have one can closed, one open, and one with a filler spout on each sprue.

The 2 gallon fuel cans are made up of a base and a top, and of the five sprues we received, two had some shrinkage occurring on the bases which would need filling if the face is to be visible on the finished model. That issue occurs in 40% of the sample, so may well be a problem that AFV Club is in the process of correcting. The cap for these 2 gallon fuel cans is moulded as an integral part of the can top, while the handles are moulded as separate components, which greatly improves their appearance.

The fuel spouts and funnels look very good, with both parts appearing to be accurate. Most impressively the funnels feature a clear hole all the way through which goes to show how far plastic injection moulding has come in recent years; not long ago a part of this type would have simply been a solid piece of plastic with an indentation in the end if we were lucky.