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Modeller Build Logs
Converting a Trumpeter Challenger 2 |
| By Leo Lee | | Started: | Oct 6, 2003 | | Updated: | May 7, 2004 |
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I have been taking a "break" from building models for some years. This March, during the SARS outbreak, I stayed at home most of the time. One day I came across some Trumpeter kits in a model shop. They are around $8-9 each. It was the first time I heard about Trumpeter. I saw that the moulding quality was not bad, much better than I would have expected from a Chinese manufacturer.
I bought 3 of them, namely the S-tank, the AS-90 and the Challenger 2. Among them, the S-tank went quite good. But the 2 others are bitches to build. Parts just couldn't get together, and some of the parts just didn't make any sense to me. Remember, I was grown up in a plastic factory literally, I don't understand why some parts of the models were to be divided like that, and some of the parts were quite good, while some others were so bad.
Later I know the reason, after talking to some dealers.
Among them, the Challenger 2 gave me most problems. It took me a few days to get the turret done.
Then I finished the whole thing, and spray it with sand colour. I thought it would be good to turn it into a Op Telic versions I saw on the news.
Then I worked on some other projects. Last month I learn that AA has launched an Op Telic upgrade for this kit. I have done a review on this set. Then I started to work on it.
At first I was thinking about getting a new Challenger 2 kit, as it only cost US$9 here.
But I remember how many days I have spent on the turret along, and I don't want to go through that again. So I decided to take the finished one apart, and do the upgrade on this finished one. |
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| Chapter 7 - Hull and Suspension Step 2 | Oct 21, 2003 |
Now I added the AA resin tracks and sproket to the hull, using the boiling water tricks. The inner side of the track, where it does not touch the ground, I hid the bad connectors. These had been removed and replaced with the "good ones" I cut from the spare tracks. It looks good? Not so fast... It is only a dry fit. The real work has not yet begun!
The AA instruction lists three major faults of the Trumpeter lower hull:
1) Idlers need to be lowered by 1mm, and moved closer to the hull by 0.5mm. Actually I did doubled these values. The photo here shows the idler lowered by 2mm, and made closer to the hull by 1mm. As you can see in the photo, the fit of the track is still very tight.
2) The road wheels need to be raised a bit, so the underside of the upper hull is 32mm from the ground. AA instruction doesn't state if this is measured with the track or without. I did some dry fitting and found out it should be without track. The instructions suggest doing it by removing the square location block on the location pin of the swing arm. Thus you can swing the arm to achieve a suitable height. These two steps can be done without much trouble, though quite time-consuming. And by the way, Trumpeter has the swing arms of one side on different positions from the other side. After finding some reference, I figure the first five swing arms on the left side are more or less in the right locations. The last one should be move forward by 1-2 mm. Then I adjusted the swing arms on the right side according to those on the left.
3) In next chapter I would deal with the third fault, which is considered "almost impossible to correct" by AA, that is, the sprockets are 5mm too far back. |
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