First I had some holes to fill. The front gets the tapered sprue treatment:
The rear holes get the same treatment, except for the ones that don’t go all the way through. They get the CA treatment:
The new suspension arms look much better - correct angle and length, and have the mounting hardware:
The final drives were almost a drop fit. They need a tiny bit of finessing. I recommend filing the hull opening rather than filing on the printed part. Thirty seconds of work, tops.
As you can see, the new final drives accomplish four things - they fill in the opening so you don’t have to; (including the sponson) they correct the angle of the final drive; the front housings are correctly sized; and finally, they have much better detail than the originals. These can dress up any Gen I or Gen II Tamiya or Academy kit.
I used to build kits as a job. Never again. Except for commissions, which pay ridiculously well.
Like Mark Twain said:
“There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.”
The brown sprues are the color of the interiors for the Academy kits. Tamiya did them in gray.
That doesn’t count the ones I’ve built for other folks, or the ones on the workbenches in several states of completion. Some I just use for spare parts, like the suspension arms.