Question 2: From what I have read, the hierarchy for LAV and Stryker models is AFV Club, then Trumpeter, then Italeri. Would those old Italeri LAVs from the 1980s and 1990s serve as decent out of the box projects, perhaps with some scratch built improvements?
There are so very many models available now, I am having trouble deciding where best to invest my money (and time). Complex projects are really interesting but I repeatedly crash and burn on them. Over the last 9 months, my favorite projects were easy to build and paint. Perhaps an 8 wheeled armored car with plastic tires would be a good choice?
As always, thank you for your advice and observations.
The Italeri LAV’s on my shelf of doom (I promise I’ll get to them sometime) all suffer from a wiggly line of the top of the frames for the rear doors
It is not extremely visible if the doors are open,
a more than casual look will reveal the problem
The old Italeri LAVs are OK, but not great. Aside from the wavy door opening, they lack a lot of finer details. They will look like a LAV when done, but the Trumpeter LAVs are light-years ahead of them.
I fully believe the old adage that you get what you pay for. To me, building older, cheaper, less detailed kits is just not worth it. The extra time and effort it takes me to bring them up to current standards doesn’t equal any perceived savings.
The old Italeri LAV kits are very simple, to put it politely. They are the old Esci molds. They are quick builds, but the lack of detail is apparent in the finished kit. The Trumpeter kits are much better but have some simplified details. The AFV Club kits are far better but more involved builds.
Having build 9 LAV’s in different versions and from different manufacturers, I can only agree with the increase in quality and details going from ESCI to Italeri to Trumpeteer…
Thank you for all the advice and information. It appears I have a Goldilocks problem when it comes to LAVs, Styrkers, and modern stuff in general.
Got it. Fixing that is probably within my abilities.
That’s great! That did not come up during my own search, exactly matches the model, and is readily available on eBay.
I agree with you. The problem is, if I purchase the best, plus all the update parts, plus all the stowage, the project balloons into a year long effort beyond my capabilities and patience. Maybe a LAV or Stryker is not the best project for me.
My research on LAVs and Strykers exactly matches your observation.
That is an awesome and fun project. The thread contains lots of really useful information. The LAV in the brown, cream, and black camouflage is my favorite. A picture exists of about 40 parked M60s in that same scheme.
That set looks fantastic. It reminds me of some very old Voyager sets in my closet. Unfortunately, such things are now beyond my capabilities and patience.
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For now, I will order the tire set linked by Frenchy and build the Trumpeter Canadian LAV-III. It can hide at the back of a display case. Getting kinda cramped back there. HAHA!
I build one of the Italer LAV when I was a kid and enjoyed it. It was a quick fun build and now I am bit older and I get bogged down with the nitty gritty and at times the fun goes away
I remembered it to be a good and fun build. Of course, at the time I did not have the knowledge of modeling as I have today. Yes, the days were simple…cut, glue, paint, bam a masterpiece
