Tank Maintenance

Note the road wheels.  The front of the vehicle is to your left.  The gap between the first and second road wheel is supposed to be to the front, as it is in this picture.  It's hard to see but the small front wheel has sprockets on it.  The sprockets are supposed to be on the back wheel.  So you can assemble the vehicle wrong with the road wheel gap at the rear or wrong with the drive sprocket to the front.  Maddening.

The upper and lower hulls often don't fit well together, so they have to be glued and held in place with clamps.

Sometimes the upper hulls can be so warped I have had to use some very big clamps.  I selected having the road wheel gap at the front because it is more visible than the sprocket teeth.  I could cut the teeth off the drive wheel at the front to make it look more like an idler wheel, but that's more work that it's worth to me.  I could also use plastic rod to make new sprocket teeth and glue them on the rear idler wheel but unless I was only making one or two of these the amount of work is just too much.

The missing hatch has been replaced with sheet plastic and a bit of paint splashed over it for now.  It will cover up nicely when spray painted.  Note the little white tab inside the gun mount.  It helps to keep the gun from drooping by making the space where the gun fits into the turret narrower.

I put a little Model Master liquid cement, wait a moment and then place the very thin bit of sheet plastic on the inside of the turret opening.  I push it into the dimple with tweezers.

I had to do this on probably 80% of my T54 models.  Most are very old and have been campaigning for decades.

I got these tanks used decades ago, and yet, I could match the color from my paint collection.  It's exact.

Many of these old tanks were painted with the turrets on!  So the space under the turret was not painted.  Not a problem until the asymmetrical turret turns and shows the original Roco plastic color!

This buff old soldier has been touched up, tuned up, and revved up and is ready for war.  Games that is.