Sd.Kfz. 7 half-track, post-war

[Guest]

Ah, yes, that would do it Since you started in Vlissingen, did you take the Olau ferry from Sheerness?

[CarolsHusband]

Ah, yes, that would do it Since you started in Vlissingen, did you take the Olau ferry from Sheerness?

No, we drove up from Dover. Ended up on the ferry with a big NATO exercise heading for Germany. Much to the amusement of the soldiers. The GMC & Jeep looked tiny jammed in with all the modern kit. On the upside, we avoided customs and convoyed out of Calais with the army, then dived down a side road to Belgium. Even better was that Dutch TV filmed us coming off the ferry and used it in their rdport on the NATO exercise ! Happy days..... You can have your thread back now, Jakko. Sorry x

[Guest]

OK, if you insist …

After cleaning up the chassis, I began construction with the engine block and transmission. I soon noticed a major mistake in Dragon’s instructions: they would have you fit the transmission like this:

[ATTACH]442453[/ATTACH]

But doing that would entirely prevent the fuel tank from being installed, and probably the cab as well. The problem is that the drawing shows the transmission being installed from above, when it should go in from underneath and sit like this:

[ATTACH]442454[/ATTACH]

Because the real vehicle was missing its front tyres, I need to adjust its suspension. Thinking about it, I figure the front spring would probably be at its normal extension (more or less) because little weight has been removed from the vehicle, but most of the tracked suspension would be compressed because the front end now sits lower to the ground. So, I assembled the front axle and its stays as per the instructions:

[ATTACH]442455[/ATTACH]

You can also see the rear suspension arms here, which will need to be modified to be compressed, but I’m still trying to work out how. Each of the three arms on a side will have a Y-shaped piece on it, one axle of it going into the arm and the other two having wheels on them. Because the two front arms are moulded as one piece with their mountings, I’ll need to cut them free somehow, and then try to line up everything so all wheels end up on the ground. Not sure yet how to best do that, though.

[Andy the Sheep]

Jakko, late as always, I'm joining the audience, entering softly and trying to get unnoticed (I fear someone would trip me to get my popcorns :tongue-out3: ).
Great research job and attention to details as usual; ready to learn something.
Andrea

[RonGlass]

I didn't pipe up but I snuck in here just before Andy. Honest ! looking forward to this build Jakko , it's next up in my queue at the workbench. Already grateful for the heads-up on that transmission placement ! Good to know !

[Guest]

Over on the TWENOT forum, Arjan Wiskerke posted this photo of my subject, that I had never seen before:

[ATTACH]442514[/ATTACH]

It’s earlier than the ones I posted above, because the outer roadwheels are still on and the ammunition rack inside the load bed is there too, though at a rather strange angle The front rims have been taken off, but I guess they were put back on soon after the picture was taken in order to be able to tow the vehicle, perhaps? And it shows the number plate, which is a real plus — means I won’t have to make something up

[Guest]

With thanks to a (luckily mild) bout of COVID, I haven’t done any work on pretty much anything for the past week or so. Now I’m feeling mostly well again, I decided to continue on this model. To get it to sit right, I needed to first get the front rims to the correct thickness, because the Dragon parts have a raised area that the tyre glues to, and also build two short lengths of track to go under the roadwheels while I work out the suspension angles.

[ATTACH]442843[/ATTACH]

Top left is an unmodified rim, top right is one that has been turned down, with thanks to my father and his lathe. It’s too thick, sure, but getting it even close to scale thickness will probably shatter the rim completely, and at least it now it looks believable.

The tracks are provided as separate links of Dragon’s “Magic Track”, which means you don’t need to do any cleanup. Supposedly. In fact, of you look at the photo, you can see there is an ejector pin marking on each of the two sides of the link, so lots of fun to be had scraping all those down (I tried filing first, but that fills the six little holes with plastic dust, removal of which alone seems to be more work than scraping down the link is.)

Running gear parts:

[ATTACH]442844[/ATTACH]

The different sections with track parts are (from left) links not cleaned up yet, track pads, cleaned-up links and rejected links. I managed about fifteen links before my fingers hurt enough that I decided to continue some next time and instead, went to work on the load bed:

[ATTACH]442845[/ATTACH]

I had actually built this last weekend before I got ill, and already noticed at the time that the supports are wrong for the artillery tractor version of the Sd.Kfz. 7. On looking through the Panzer Tracts and Nuts & Bolts books for this vehicle, I noticed that this is because these supports are for the Sd.Kfz. 7/1 and /2, that carried an anti-aircraft gun — the artillery tractor had more lightweight bracing, but I haven’t found a good view of how and where it fits yet.

The problem is that Dragon took a shortcut and included the load floor for an anti-aircraft vehicle that they already had, rather than making an accurate one for the tractor. This vehicle shouldn’t have the transverse ribs you can see in the picture, for example, and the hinges along the edges are of a heavier type that was used with the AA vehicles (because the sides needed to support people standing on them when folded out horizontally) but not the artillery tractor.

[Guest]

And that’s the floor modified:

[ATTACH]442854[/ATTACH]

I removed the supports again, cut the ribs away with a chisel-shaped blade and cut and filed the hinges off the sides. The edges will probably need to be thinned down still, as I think they were steel profile on the real thing, so nowhere near as thick as these.

[scottie3158]

Jakko, the wheel looks a lot better.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Very useful extra photo. Wheel looks fine. I assume the one on the other side is the same? The load bed modification looks straightforward.
Glad your bout of Covid was mild. Seems that for some it is but for some others it's much worse.
Jim

[Guest]

the wheel looks a lot better.

Definitely, it just looked wrong with that raised centre section. Not a problem if you fit the tyre, of course, but it’s rather obvious for what I have in mind.

Very useful extra photo.

I’m kind of hoping he digs up some more

Wheel looks fine. I assume the one on the other side is the same?

Of course The kit includes four, because the number needed is three (two front wheels and a spare), and they’re on a sprue that’s in the kit twice, so I could photograph one of the two corrected ones, and one original. It handily provided a margin of safety in case something went wrong with turning them down too

The load bed modification looks straightforward.

It is, but made more complicated by me having already added the longitudinal ribs and not wanting to remove them

Glad your bout of Covid was mild. Seems that for some it is but for some others it's much worse.

I only had it fairly severely for about a day and a half in the middle of the week, but still didn’t feel like doing much of anything in the days since. Today, I’m much better, though I still have symptoms. A few more days and that’ll be over too — I hope …

[Guest]

Let me sing the praises of some tools I don’t use much, but which I wouldn’t want to do without To adapt the rear suspension to the nose-dive attitude, I needed to cut free the arms from the mounting plates that they are moulded integrally with. That’s a tricky job because it needs sawing in tight spaces on a part that’s perhaps 4 or 5 cm long, at a quick guess, and basically needs to be cut in half at that. To hold something like that, a fully adjustable, modeller’s vice is a very good tool to own:

[ATTACH]442953[/ATTACH]

Because of the swivelling upper part, you can position it as you want for most convenient sawing, drilling, filing, etc. unlike with a standard, fixed vice, where you have to adapt to its position. It’s not that cheap, but if you convert or scratchbuild things, you’ll probably soon find yourself glad you bought one instead of another kit for the stash

The other is one I’ve mentioned before:

[ATTACH]442954[/ATTACH]

Saw blades for a knife handle, made from the same steel as regular modelling knife blades so they don’t twist or buckle. They’re thicker than a typical modelling saw, but their strength means they have very low height — which I needed here to get the saw into where the cut had to be made. A regular saw would not be able to get past the axle bearing, or at least, not without sawing at an angle instead of right along the mounting plate.

After a little work sawing, and filing the backs of the mounting plates flat, I ended up with:

[ATTACH]442955[/ATTACH]

(And then I did the other one too, of course ) To make up the thickness of material I had sawed away, I filed the rounded bits off the suspension arms as well and replaced them by punched plastic card discs, 0.5 mm thick and 4 mm diameter. The mounting plates, I glued to the chassis with a 5 by 7 mm rectangle of 0.75 mm card between them to make the plate I had removed between the suspension arms:

[ATTACH]442956[/ATTACH]

I then went and dry-fitted the subframe that goes below the suspension mountings, and found it wouldn’t fit correctly … Turns out I had the mountings slightly too far to the rear, due to not having any locating pins anymore, I suppose. Easiest solution: slice them off again with a knife while the glue was still wet, then stick them to the subframe instead:

[ATTACH]442957[/ATTACH]

That way they’re guaranteed to line up with it, at least

[Guest]

Or, of course, you pay proper attention:

[ATTACH]443016[/ATTACH]

I had glued the mountings to the wrong arms of the subframe, because I had been dry-fitting that frame the wrong way round :rolling:

That snag fixed, I could finally try to line up the suspension. My idea had been that I could leave the rear arm in its default position and compress the front two. Trying to get everything lined up that way, though, I found out that when the front arm is compressed all the way (up against the chassis), the rear wheels are off the ground:

[ATTACH]443017[/ATTACH]

The cardboard is about the same thickness as the track. The original plan was to set the vehicle up on two lengths of track, but they roll under the model’s weight and it slides off, so I found some cardboard of the right thickness (within a few tenths of a millimetre) and cut a bit of that.

This with everything (other than the rear arms) still loose, the front arms held in place with Blu-Tack and the wheels and axles just pressed on/in. You can just see the rear wheels are off the ground, but it’s worse on the other side — which in itself means there is something wrong with how I have it lined up. The fundamental problem is that half the parts want to fall apart while the other half have too much friction to move easily. I think I may have to drill holes to insert actual axles for the suspension arms, so they will be kept properly in place and simply fall to their correct alignment, but I’m not really looking forward to a job like that.

Alternatively, I guess I can stick the front suspension arms in place, then line up everything else separately once they’re firmly set.

[adt70hk]

Coming on nicely Jakko despite your problems. Hope you're able to sort it out ok.

ATB.

Andrew

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Who would have thought that what seemed like a relatively straightforward bit of alteration would throw up so many issues. I'm sure you'll sort it.
Those saws are good. I've not seen such a useful vice for modelling before.
Jim