Hi All,
Looking at buying the above but its alot of cash for me right now. Anyone have any opinions on the quality of this or other HF kits?
I’ve got their M936-based wrecker, but its down the list a bit so any quality, fit info on their stuff would be appreciated.
This might be of some help to you. Terry Ashley is a very well respected and honest reviewer. You can trust what he says to be what you get.
https://www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/reviews/vehicles/hobbyfan/hf055.htm
Thanks for that link Peter. It was very informative and a good read. I have limited experience with resin, having only worked (working) with one RM kit so far…….
The question now, is C $160 on an AFV M54 and the RM kit for the dump box, or about the same amount on this HF kit.
It’s a conundrum and if you or anyone else have any opinions, I’d love to hear them.
Thanks again for your help.
Denimo
The Real Model conversion kit is for the Italeri base Kit, not AFV Club’s. This may come with issues in parts not lining up, not fitting properly, out of proportion, etc - or it may not. I suggest you see if you can find a build where someone did it and see if they had issues.
The easier path may be the HF kit, given it is all in one.
Otherwise, Real Model made a full M51 kit as well as the conversion. It maybe OOP but have you tried finding one of those second hand or in a store that has old stock?
Not doubting your knowledge there, but how long have RM been peddling a kit marked “for AFV” as a fit for the narrower Italeri M939 etak kit?
If the cost for the two options is almost equal then I would go for the HobbyFan option.
Since the AFV Club kit came out. They just rebranded their sets designed for the Italeri kits without changing them at all to fit the proper-sized AFV Club M54A2 kit. All their M54-type kits are this way.
The Hobby Fan full kits are actually really nice. Far superior to the RM “conversion” kits.
They did remove the cabin parts though …
Yup, the wheel parts too.
All said, they still don’t fit the AFV Club kit.
Thanks all for that. Saved me some frustration I can tell you. I was about to order the M51, M52 and M54 wrecker kits from RM as Christmas presents from my dear old Mom.
Instead, the HF M51 is on order from Oz.
Bit of a relief TBH, Im having “a fun time” trying to build the RM 800 cab……….
I’ll probably use one of the AFV M54’s as a base for the M52 I need, but raid the parts bin and web for bits - 5th wheel as one example.
Yup, fingers crossed that AFV Club will come out with an M800 series 5ton kit as well. Their sprues are laid out to make it easy with all the cab parts on one sprue. They would just need to swap the M54 cab sprue for an M800 cab sprue.
Wouldnt I love that to happen. TBH I might be “swapping a few cab parts” myself……back to an M939 of some kind.
It was interesting to compare the shape, configuration of the RM M800 cab with cab on the AFV M35. Apart from overall size they seem similar in design.
for what its worth,i had the hobby fan wrecker body mounted on a italeri bigfoot kit,i recently updated the wrecker body to the AFV M-54 kit to make a M-543 vietnam style wrecker,very little mods to fit,i think i just spaced up the wrecker body with some plastruct strips on the frame if i recall,the HF wrecker body is a great resin kit,not sure how it compares to the real model kit?
Thats really interesting, especially your point about having to space out the hf wrecker base to sit on the AFV M54 frame. I was under the impression the Italeri kit would be a little narrow to match the hf wrecker conversion kit- but would be dead right for the AFV M54 frame and cab width.
Also, I hope someone on here has built RM’s M54-based wrecker and gives their views on the RM conversion.
If you look in the constructive feedback section on this site under my Vietnam builds your can see a pic of the wrecker , can’t really see any mods I did but at least there is a pic in there .FWIW.
Still struggling with the M813, although no hobby time lately as we’ve taken my aged mother in after a fall.
The grille was a disaster in several ways. The radiator and surround slipped backward and is now too far back c/w headlights…….
The cab is too frail to let me remove it from the floor, mudguard assembly and im pondering a decision;
Keep the cab but fit the brushguard from Italeri’s M923 Hillbilly guntruck or,
Throw the cab and modified load bed in the f………bucket and kitbash an M923 from whats left plus a donor.
Any advice, thoughts, opinions are (understandably) welcome.