This accessory kit consists of 24 resin cast wheels for the Tamiya series of Japanese tanks in 1/35th scale.  The casting is good with minimal flash to clean up on the parts and virtually no seams to clean. What is supplied are 4 wheels cast up to make: one inner and one outer wheel for the foremost and rear most wheel mounts; one innner and one outer wheel for the middle section of road wheels. These 4 wheels are identicle to make up the entire set of 24 road wheels.  These are meant to be used on Tamiya's Chi-Ha, Chi-Ha Shinhoto and Ho-Ni Tytpe I SPG.

The idea of what is called ‘distressed’ road wheels is a nice detail option for armor kits with vehicles that have rubber rimmed road wheels.  Actual tanks that have such wheels that are used over extended road marches or time of use will show wear.  Rocks and other debris will force the rubber of the road wheel to chip when the weight of the tank presses down on this debris against the tracks of the tank.

On the plus side of the TRAKZ kit is that the tedious chipping of all 24 road wheels is already done and this nice little detail can be added to your model.  To me the TRAKZ wheels have a similar level of detail as the Tamiya wheels (Fine Molds road wheels are a bit better detailed than the Tamiya version but it would take modification to get the Fine Molds road wheels to fit the Tamiya kits).

I would have rated this accessory kit higher except for 4 things that really end up detracting from the kit.  The biggest drawback is that some of the rubber chipping is carried out onto the steel rim parts.  A second drawback though somewhat minor is that there are only 4 road wheels that are modified.  This will result in the same chip patterns on several road wheels.  It would have been a bit more realistic to have a bit more variety. A third drawback is the time removing the wheels from the resin carrier blocks and clean-up a modeler could probably chip their own road wheels.  Final drawback and this may be a due to personal preference and artistic license is that the rubber is a bit over done.  Most likely if the road wheels were this badly worn they would have been replaced.  Also the Japanese did not have long road marches mainly due to the island type fighting.

Overall the wheels are a good product for modelers who want a method  to show some detail they may not feel comfortable tackling on their own.

Samples were supplied by the manufacture for review.  

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