Hello All,
Been working on the suspension for a Dragon M4A3E8. This is the one with a multitude of parts including brass tubing and metal springs. It is the one included in the M4A3 HVSS POA-CWS-H5.
My impression is that it is “over engineered”. Way too many parts and rather difficult to assemble.
Anyone have any experience with this (or similar) kit? Any thoughts about its construction? Tips or suggestions as to the best way to “attack” the assembly?
Thanks & God Bless You,
Joe <>< 
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Might be better to quote the kit number. Is yours the 1995 0r 98 kit ?
Hey digger303,
My apologies. It is Cyber-hobby kit # 9124. Not sure of the year.
Thanks & God Bless You,
Joe <><
I did it once. Good results, looks good but yeah, a bit on the difficult side.
I have built both the Dragon Easy 8 and the Tamiya Easy 8 Sherman tanks. I believe the Dragon kit had like 26 parts for 1 completed bogie. The Tamiya kit has 8. It was hard getting all the Dragon bogies lined up strait and level. Having that metal spring inside for me was difficult. Putting the two completed kits side by side, one can’t really tell that one has way more parts than the other. In the end, I had more fun, and fewer headaches building the Tamiya kit.
rfbaer / tybugg,
I finally got the bogies done. I’m not used to the “detail” level of the Dragon kit and still think it was way too much time and effort for the results.
tybugg,
I built the Tamiya kit as well and agree with you 100%. More fun and fewer headaches.
God Bless You both,
Joe <><
Yeah I have that kit too Joe. The most demoralising & longest part of my build were those bloody bogies. IIRC I think I ended up leaving the springs out because I just couldn’t see any benefit in having them, let alone the functioning of the bogie wasn’t even going to be prototypical with the springs in place anyway.
Hi Chauvel,
The bogies were bad and the p.e fenders didn’t win any awards either. I guess the Tamiya “East Eight” isn’t as “sophisticated” or detailed but it was more fun to assemble.
God Bless You,
Joe <><
I’m more of a fan of the Tamiya kits myself. Eight pieces to each bogie is a very good compromise between realism and an accurate look, IMHO. I have several of the Tamiya kits in the stash, M51s and both US “Easy Eight” releases, just for that reason.
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Hello rfbaer,
Couldn’t agree more. For fit and “enjoyment” of the build they are hard to beat. The accuracy and detail are good as well.
God Bless You,
Joe <><
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The first time I built that suspension was on the thunderbolt 7 release (2006?) and I hated it. I managed to get together but I swore I’d never build another, LOL. Fast forward few years later sometime in 2011-2015 and I purposefully bought several orange box flamethrower tanks dirt cheap for like $23 a pop just for the suspensions and DS tracks. I don’t remember now how I taught myself to build them so quickly but it involved doing away with the springs and fixing the suspension in poses I wanted for the tank, compressed here uncompressed somwehere else. That suspension is awesome because it allowed me to build a couple of Sherman wrecks where I modeled the rubber burned off the rims…
This one was an Italeri M4A1 VVSS that I converted into an abandoned Negev (?) Desert M51 wreck from the 1967 war.
Hi Shermaniac,
If I had to build another set of those bogies it wouldn’t be as frustrating as the first set. I know what I’m doing now. I still think Tamiya has the better of the two suspensions.
Great pictures!
God Bless You,
Joe <><