Unfinished Business 2024

I recently moved into a new home. During the ceremonial unpacking, I came across my box of shelf queens. I pulled two out for finishing before I start something new and decided to post here.

First is the AFV Club M42 Duster.
Where she was:


So, first up I decided to tackle the tracks. I think the poor moulding quality of the indy set was what made me put this aside in the first place. It would not be AFV Club if it did not have sink marks, flash and ejector pin issues:

An evening spent with the Tamiya putty tube:

Notice the flash on the bottom right link and the two broken links! I was not sure if I would have spare links, so these also went into the production line for treatment. As it turned out, I had a few left overs.

One of the things I did way back then, was acquire the old AFV Club wheel sets for the M41. These are the Skybow M41 wheel sprues that were marketed for people with the Tamiya Walker Bulldog. They are much better detailed and having a ‘face’ to add to the rim, have the raised lip of the real wheel that is impossible to create with a one piece wheel. The only issue with the set is that being for the M41, it only has 10 road wheels, where the M42 used a road wheel for the idler. No biggie, I just cast up two of the Skybow ones:

Because the hull of the Duster Kit is a ‘new tool’ the idler and Drive Sprocket mounts do not accommodate the Skybow set without some work, a few mods were made:

The reason for using the Skybow drive sprockets is in the detail, it has the cut outs in the shaft and detail in the centre hub the AFV Club set does not have…


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plus the AFV track set does not fit the Duster kit sprocket as the sprocket ring is too big!

An evening with the sanding stick and scalpel, the wheel mods and then some click together fun, and the Duster now has some shoes:


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