Inspired by David Coyne and David Nickels over at track-link fixing up older kits, and remembering that I once abandoned a Dragon Panzer IV ausf. D 10 years ago when I was just starting out in the hobby, I decided to kitbash Tamiya’s venerable Panzer IV ausf. D with much of the external parts from my abandoned Dragon kit, including the whole turret assembly.
The Tamiya kit really is not that bad accuracy wise - the Dragon turret fit without any modification, and the tools were generally where they were supposed to be. I thought about replacing the fenders wholesale with the spare ones from Dragon, but I misplaced the parts before starting the kit,
The one thing I did not really fix was the inaccurate jerry can holder at the rear - the side panels are fine, but the wooden panels are wrong and too narrow, they’re supposed to hold 5 jerry cans instead of 4 + change. I added a random oil cannister to fill the rack instead.
I also added the metal sheet that is supposed to deflect the exhaust from the muffler, as well as cutting off the trapezoid number markers from the decal sheet and using it as-is.
Vehicle is supposed to be Tank #812 from the 5th Panzer Regiment in Libya which was later captured outside of Tobruk.
Had some fun kitbashing the parts, even if there are much better kits out there in the market.
