M60A1 Engine & Compartment
1/35 Set No. 1834
Review by Terry Ashley
Consisting of 77 resin pieces, a length of copper wire and rubber piping the quality of the resin parts is first class with no blemishes evident. There is the usual casting blocks to be removed and in the case of most Verlinden sets there are quite a few parts cast in open moulds with a flat section of resin over the entire bottom joining all these in one sheet needing removal, this may be easier for the casting process but is a pain in the proverbial to clear up, resulting in much more resin dust flying about that “normal” casting blocks.
That said the detail on
the parts is excellent with nice details everywhere. The engine block has separate
upper and lower sections plus the rear gearbox to be all joined together to
which is added a heap of small fittings and plumbing both in the form of resin
pipes and those added from the wire and rubber tubing provided. Again the detail
is excellent on these parts with the two large rear pipes having very nice heat
resistant coating texture included.
All the upper engine bay doors and the two large rear doors have grill detail
on both sides and the upper decking has nice cast texture included.
The interior of the engine bay has a floor section, forward bulkhead and large side fuel tanks included, again the detail on these parts is very good with nice contours, weld seams and wiring included on the fuel tanks.
The instructions say the
engine is designed to be shown outside of the vehicle but can be installed
in the engine bay with a little work, take heed of this warning. To get the
engine
to fit will require a ‘lot’ of trimming on the bottom of the
engine a other sections to fit plus there would be a mass of wiring to be
fitted, I
would recommend this advice be followed and have the engine out of the compartment.
Another reason for this is the large central cast engine
bay cover is considerably smaller that the Tamiya part. The cast texture
on the cover is quite nice but it is actually 5mm shorter than the Tamiya rear
hull area, to add to this the resin part is not symmetrical with the right
side depth being 7mm while the left side depth is 8mm, all of this probably
won’t be noticeable with the panel sitting on the ground next to the
vehicle, but try and fit it to the Tamiya hull, well just forget it.
The worst part of this kit
as with other recent Verlinden update sets are the instructions, or
lack of them, you are given a small half ‘letter’ size sheet with brief
text instructions and two line drawings to go by, that’s it.
These instructions are vague and offer little in the placement of the parts
especially the many small pipes and fittings on the engine as well as fitting
the transmission to the main power pack. If you don’t have very good
references to work from much of this kit will be a complete mystery.
Why Verlinden can’t spend a little more time and give you some
decent instructions the likes of Blast Models, K59, Calibre35
(I could go on) is beyond me, or is it they expect you to buy their modelling
manual books which have step by step construction features of many of their
update sets to find out how to fit these?
Overall though the parts provided are good quality and have plenty of details and should look good in a diorama setting showing a power pack change or engine maintenance if you can get your own references to fit it all together.
Recommended.
Page created 1 January 2003