Wade’s World Review: Takom Pz III ausf N #8005
[The Modelling News: Construction review: Takom's Panzer III Ausf.M mit Schürzen in 35th scale]
missinglynx: takom-s-new-pz-kpfw-iiiausf-n-with-winterketten
3 Price MSRP $41, Typical Online Vendor $33, paid ~$23 special
Pricing proved too good to be true for a Quality 2020 new tool & molded kit.
3 Instructions Small, difficult to read, inexact, disappointed 
2 Molding Quality Lots of flash, warped parts, some sink marks but with crisp detail!
If the molded detail had been less impressive, this kit would have been pitched into the trash bin due to it’s sloppy imprecise fit with parts in the first three steps.
1 Plastic Quality Very soft, Tamiya Extra Thin proved too aggressive even used sparingly.
Tested plastic making Sprue-Goo with shavings and it was the worst soft low quality Sprue-Goo, I’ve ever made or used.
3 Parts Clean Up Parts could have been better optimized for easier clean up
3 Ease of build Kit built like it was rushed through development by skipping test shots. Flash back (pun intended) to building 1980’s MiniCraft.
Takom molded the upper hull with two attachment points/ injection marks on the TOP of the hull. Seems both could have been moved slightly, say 4mm closer to the turret ring. Then the turret would hide them. Instead Takom gaves the modeler more issues to clean up.
The cupola builds up very nicely and is outstanding.
1 Accuracy - It looks wrong because it is wrong. See missinglynx thread at top of this post for detailed discussion of the dimensional issues of this kit.
1 Fit 
Takom’s road wheels don’t actually fit together. The inner wheel A16 needs the pegs sanded down to allow the wheel to fit together! Once fixed the wheels have the same sloppy imprecise fit as the suspension.
There is definitely a trend with the problem parts, almost all of them are from the two A sprue trees.
A parts with minor fit issues:
A11 & A16 the road wheels
A19,A20,A21 & A22 the torsion bar suspension arms
A41 & A42 fender supports
It’s like the last round of test shot adjustments for A wasn’t made.
The skirts went on with German Mercedes Benz precision. Takom really got this critical part of the model right.
Smoke grenade racks had a lot of slop and the part can be canted like 15 degrees and still fit in the location. Take care to align as desired.
the turret skirt came up about 1/8 inch to 3mm too short and the front edges hit the smoke grenade discharger!
It was instantly obvious what the problem was: those two long attachment supports in middle of the inside face of part J hit the stowage box.
Snipped 2mm off of both tabs on part J. Best trimmed in small adjustments. Resolved the fit issue.
5 Doesn’t Require Aftermarket It’s serviceable as is. Aftermarket tracks would be a nice but aren’t necessary.
MG’s are slide molded…sweet!
Plus an extra housing if one prefers an Aber brass MG.
4 Details built Out of the Box the kit has potential as an OOTB build.
28 of 50 points
28/50 => 56%
Bottom line - I didn’t like building this kit but it paints up nicely once assembled.
Not Recommended.
When there’s a need or desire for a newer, imperfect, fault, flaw filled, inaccurate 1/35 AFV model to build the Takom Pz III ausf N is a good choice.
YMMV
BTW - the Takom upper hull fits pretty well on the Tamiya lower hull…
Looks nice once assembled…
…painted and weathered…
