discussion Tamiya, what have you done this time?

[Andy T]

So, I prefer wheeled vehicles to tracked as I find assembling multiple parts tedious. Today I opened the box on my newly acquired schwimmwagen and was presented with this. Five individual tyre sections per wheel



Easily dealt with I'm sure, but why oh why?

 

[yak face]

Very strange andy , the only reason I can imagine is to avoid having a seam line round the circumference of the tyre tread? But then again they have replaced this with five seams across the tread ?

 

[Steven000]

Like Tony said indeed, looks like they wanted to show that "XXX" patern in the middle of the tread, which can't be done with the usual mold.

People that buy the kit for that level of detail then add a ton of mud onto the wheels... xD

 

[John Race]

Ha, that's what you get when trying to build only wheeled Andy

 

[Andy T]

I'm guessing it's a moulding thing, it just seemed unnecessarily complex for little benefit. A bit like their kettenrad where the track pads are moulded separately from the links themselves.

Anyway, being Tamiya they went together schwimmingly

There were some very tiny gaps between the segments but with a bit of manipulation I've made that into one gap at the bottom of the wheel, which would probably fill with paint (or mud!)



As you see from the instructions, each wheel is different so I went to mark them, only to find that Tamiya had already done it for me