Zvezda 1:35 German Command Tank, pt. 2, wheels

Now, I must confess, I did all the work before I thought of starting a blog, so I didn’t photo document as much I would like to have. I apologize for this.

We begin, as with most armor kits, with the road wheels. Since there aren’t many wheel, clean up is actually fairly easy. When you put the wheels and suspension together, make sure the grease nipples are on the outside of the tank. The little details are what make great models.

fig. 2-1

While the suspension and road wheels are all designed to be workable it would probably be easier to glue them into place (I didn’t). Having them moving around all of the time is a bit of a pain, and that first wheel’s suspension is different, and can throw off the levelness of the wheels. I didn’t take care of this, which means this model can’t ever win at a show. But this build for a bit of relaxation.

One of the annoying things is that the hubs for the return rollers didn’t all have closed exteriors. The two rollers in the middle of the picture above are actually open, with the axel showing through (in a later accident while painting, I lost one of the other hubs).

Here’s what the drive wheels look like. Yikes! I kept adding ca glue, but it kept leaving a dimple. Finally I broke down and used putty.

fig. 2-2

Another problem was the solid idlers. The actual idlers were two open pressed wheels. You can see an image of a similar problem with the Dragon version of the same vehicle here on the Perth Military Modeling Site, which is a great resource. So, that necessitated cutting a groove in the idlers with a file all the way through the wheel. The spokes of the wheel go all the way to the edge, and additional braces were added halfway between each.

fig. 2-3

fig. 2-4

fig. 2-5

My file was a little too wide, and damaged the edge of the wheels, but I was able to hide the damaged parts in the tracks. Also, if you glue the idlers in place, only half of the strengthening braces are going to be seen, so no need to add them all.

Part 1, review
Part 2, road wheels
Part 3, superstructure
Part 4, hull
Part 5, finishing up