Hi all,
in the academy m113a2 kit, there are two options for the rear fenders/mud guard on the left side of the vehicle, one is identical to the right side, the other has a groove in the middle. I tried to research this but couldn’t find any definitive answer. If building a late 80’s-early 90’s A2, what is the correct one to use?
Welcome to the forum. This may help:
The difference has to do with the drain plug. Grooved fender is for older reconverted A2s. Smooth is for factory built A2s.
Thank you!
Welcome aboard George. 
To expand on 18 Bravo’s post…
The original (gasoline) M113 had a fixed fuel cell inside the vehicle and this could be drained through a small plug located within a channel in the rear fender.
Starting during the M113A1 (Diesel), production period, a new removable fuel cell replaced the fixed fuel cell so the drain channel was no longer required and was deleted on new-build vehicles. However, a significant number of the older M113s in service were upgraded to M113A1 standards and they retained the fender with the drain channel (but with the drain plug welded up).
In due course (1979-ish) the M113A1 was upgraded to the A2 standard. Many Older M113s already upgraded to A1 standards were therefore upgraded a second time to the A2 standard, but still retained the legacy fender with drain channel.
Therefore, either fender is suitable - it really depends on whether you are portraying a specific vehicle or just want to build a generic example.
Thank you for the insight.
The channel is often portrayed wrong in kits. If it’s there it is a half circle with a lip sticking out. This is a M106A2 which still has the internal welded tank.
Another question regarding the M113 rear fenders: Is there any 1/35 scale kit that has these fenders closed on the underside, or are they all bottomless?
Tamiya, AFC Club, and Academy do not. Not even Dragon’s most recent ACAV version. However, a little piece of .010 card and about a minute’s worth of time, and Bob’s your uncle.
Thank you, that’s what I did about twenty years ago - I just wondered if any of the kits that came out in the meantime had corrected that omission.
Nope. Like I said, not even the most recent Dragon kit. I wonder if the 1/16th kit addressed it?
AFV Club (which to me are the best M113s at the moment) do have the closed underside.
AFV-Club 35377, 35313, 35023 and 35291
have a small extension to the E-sprue
AFV-Club 35113 and 35311 do not have these extra parts
D’oh! The kit I was looking at wasn’t an AFV club kit after all! I stand corrected!
I didn’t know either …
had to look it up when dmiles mentioned it …
Well, two of the AFV-Club kits do NOT have these parts so you could have checked one of those two and found nothing …
That’s it. Still, I should not have made a blanket statement about ALL of their kits, just because one of mine didn’t have it. It only made sense though.
For some reason or other AFV-Club decided that those two parts had to be added to their kits.
We can only say ‘Thank You’ …
I haven’t really seen any photo of the actual vehicle that had these Jerry can holders (L2), all the photos I’ve seen had them strapped in using the hold downs:
Maybe it is an Australian thing?
At least two of the M113 kits by AFV that I checked were Australian vehicles so the instructions I copied could very well be from one of them.
This is the Australian M113-AS3:
M113-MRV
Just checked out a few pictures and I only found one that did not have the underside closed and these were vehicles from round the world. I think AFV Club may have cocked up in the IDF and ACAV versions which to me is interesting as the IDF vehicle came after the LRV.
