I think I heard that AFV-Club bought the Skybow molds: lock, stock & barrel
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My point exactly Tom!
Jimbo
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Yes that is my understanding as wellâŚ. Whatever, the AFV Club boxings sure are a nice build and look the part as well!
Jimbo
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Believe it or not the new Zvezda WC-51 is nicer than the AFV Club WCâs.
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I must have my head in the sand as your mention of it is the first Iâve heard of it. I donât see it available stateside - may have to try abroad? Iâd definitely like to get one.
Jimbo
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That Peerless Max/Italeri ambulance remains to this day a very respectable version of the scale model.
I cut out that flat engine pan area underneath and added a bit more âdepthâ to the engine for a better look. Then also thinned the frame rails and added thin Evergreen strip top and bottom to those rails to give them the proper âCâ channel profile and am very happy with the overall results.
If you are a real stickler for an open engine bay and maximum detail then take one of the new WC-51 offerings and slap the Italeri ambulance body onto them. I donât know for sure, as I have never tried it but as an example; with the Peerless Max/Italeri CCKW water truck their hard cab, hood and fenders will almost drop right onto the Tamiya chassis.
Photo copyright 2008 Mike Koenig ~ All Rights Reserved
Beep, Beep!
New in 2022, getting to the US could be tricky, Zvezda is in Russia and there are sanctions et.câŚ
Many European retailers show it as out-of-stock, go figure âŚ
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Looks very nicely done. Plus excellent sculpting work on the canvas.
Unfortunately the Italeri CCKW kits do NOT have their origins in the PM kit - I had a hard look at the sprues and parts some years ago to verify it. (Just look at the instructions on Scalemates to see how different they are - including one-piece vs separate-part frames, etc.) But the Italeri cabs do indeed fit the Tamiya frame!
Which is actually the only point that I was really trying to make here: that cabs are fully interchangeable.
With the Italeri offering you have to glue the fenders and radiator assembly to the Tamiya frame and only then cut out the Italeri engine moulding. That keeps everything properly lined up and square so that after the cutting you can still install the nice Tamiya engine.
The HobbyBoss CCKW offering has even better detail than the Tamiya if they had just not messed up the ratio of fender length to cab depth and mashed the whole thing up! But not to worry the Italeri water truck cab is an easy drop in onto the HB and the overall frame length of the HobbyBoss truck is still correct so it will accept the more accurate cab, fenders and hood from the Italeri.
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Hi Mike, no harm intended! I was just trying to squash the urban myth of PM/Italeri connection on the CCKW. (Scalemates should be ashamedâŚ)
But youâre right - the water truck is a great source of cabs! Itâs a pity HB did not do their homework before launching their range of mis-proportioned kits.
I havenât seen the old Max kit in the plastic for many a year - is the cab any good? Assuming I could find one, that it.
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can a Studebaker truck be far behind? Let alone the good old GMC. A very important kit that will sell well.
gary
Someone already did the Studebaker. Was that ICM??? I have the kit on my shelf and the box somewhere.
Tamiyaâs CCKW is pretty darn good (donât know why they did not go on to make a hard cab version) and the HB truck is excellent other than the botched cab and fenders. (HB has the best engine, frame and firewall in the business!)
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Yup - ICM did a Studer. The experten complain that the hood edges arenât rounded enough, but thatâs VERY small beer compared to the complaints the HB kits get!
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Ah, the joy of doing 1/48 as well.
Yeah, that stumps me - why not do the hard cab fueler in 1:35 too? And with the way they do the drivetrain an alternative banjo set-up would be another no-brainer for Mr TâŚ
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Bravo, you are right on about 1/48 scale but I am sorta like the guy who does not want his peas and corn touching when it comes to scale. I want EVERYTHING in the same scale.
If I had possession of Thanosâ jeweled glove for just a moment I would change all 1/35th models into 1/32nd or vice versa. (But I would leave all the other scales alone - those belong to you guys!)
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Yes, Papa Tamiya; why not a hard cab CCKW? Why not a crane version of the Famo? Other versions of the Steyr? The soft cab version of the Dragon Wagon? The list goes on and on . . .
You already have 80% of the tooling in hand so for a further 25% investment in new tooling, boxing and marketing you get at least a 100% return on your original investment by selling two of everything rather than just one.
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Mostly Tamiya CCKW kits with Italeri cabs:
Most are Italeri cabs on Tamiya chassis. The one water truck goes the other way with the Tamiya open cab on the Italeri chassis. Then there is the HobbyBoss chassis with Tamiya fenders and Italeri cab.
p.s. Foot Note: Early on Italeri tried to make one cab work for both the closed cab and the gun cab. Avoid this one if at all possible unless building the gun cab. The stress lines molded into the solid cab roof for the break out gun ring are impossible to smooth out when choosing to make the solid enlosed cab version.
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As I was catching up on this thread, I started thinking this. Tamiya bring out well engineered kits but then donât bring out additional variations by the addition of extra sprues, like Dragon did, although preferably without the same amount of wastage!