Hey all! I’m building the meng leopard 1 Mexas, and I am nearing the painting of the tracks. It dawned on me that I’ve never built modern tank tracks and I understand the painting will be more challenging.
Typically I just spray a coat of tamiya dark iron. The leopard tracks need to be painted nato green (I think) and the pads rubber black. I am curious if anyone had a good method to speed this up, or if it will be the more pain staking process of spread them green and then hand paint each rubber block
You’re likely to get as many different answers as there are modelers on this site.
Here’s my two cents. I use Tamiya Dark Iron or sometimes even NATO Black as a base coat. This will help with some shadows. If the tracks have pads I will paint them with Tamiya Rubber Black. I also dry brush a little Steel on some of the high points like the guide teeth. Go easy there. It’s very easy to over-do it. The last thing to go on is some pigment for the right shade of dirt for the environment that it’s supposed to be in.
I hope this helps! 
Leopard tracks are not painted at al… And why should they? The amount of wear just by driving around would get rid of the paint very quickly.
Here is a nice video of track repairs, showing some great details…
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D’oh 
Should have checked first. I was going off the instructions but you are right they look unpainted on every tank photo. My bad!!
Just edited my post by adding a vid…
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Ahhh, the joys of fixing track! Lovely video, by the way. Lots of memories there.
Ken
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I didn’t know this operation. Thank you for the video.
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You really need to research tank track type before painting them. If you did this color pattern for modern Russian tanks it would look good but it would be incorrect. Their track is almost a bright steal color when used.
