I've been lurking on here since I found a link here and thought I would put my toe in the water for this group build. I'm forming an alternative history to give this some basis in an alternative history. Briefly,the Dunkirk and Normandy invasions failed. This caused the U.S. and Britain to call a truce with Germany. The U.S. decided to forus on the war against the Japanese. Stalin and Churchill have both died of natural causes. The Japanese have formed a real Asian-Co-prosperity League. They are joined by Korea and large parts of China. The Russian's have now taken notice of this when attacks were launched against targets in Western Russia by the combined forces.
The British and American's have supplied equipment to the Russians. The British had sent them lots of armour including Valantine tanks. This .kept them in the war but large amounts of local production facalities were lost to Germany. The Russians were very good at battlefield recovery and used the recovered equipment. One such vehicle was the tracked armored car made from the body of old wornout armored cars with the tracks and running gear of lost tanks. Never liking the original Valantine tanks. They used the turrets and running gear and melted the rest into metal for new vehicles.
The BA series of armored cars were an old and tested design which they incorporated with the useable parts of the destroyed tanks. This resulted in the creation of a new chassis with the supension from the Valantine tanks,as well as, the turrets and other smaller items (radios,etc.). This is the subject of my model.
I used two kits for this. One was the BA-3 from Zvezda. I had looted it for parts,already. I used the Maquette Valantine XI kit for the kit parts. I first sectioned the chassis tub by removing the flat center section. It didn't have the outer parts of the suspension which hadn't fully molded which was good for this build as I wanted something that looked "different" from where it came from. Leftovers from a Dragon panzer III gave up detail parts as well. Following the build of the chassis pan I made a new front and then built the body of the A/C ( actually,I built this first to fit the pan). I added the trimmed turret base from the Valantine . This raised it a bit and allowed me to have space to turn the turret !!! It also gives a few small details. I built the turret OOB ... Sortof. I used a muzzlebrake made from one of the smoke candel launchers instead of the crappy one from the kit,not to mention. The kit instructions show the same one on both barrels in the kit. A few parts are in different locations and a second venterlator to the turret roof rear. After mating the basic body to the chassis, I had to cover the sides where I removed a section from the length as well as the sides. I used the fenders from the a/c because it was part of the body and I didn't want to mess with it. I did cut down the fenders front the Pz.III. This is as far as my build has gotten,so far. I attached the boggie systems with pieces of rod. I changed the way they were used on the Valantine by just changing their positions and used a mix of the two types of wheels. More on this in the future ...
As far as the desert build goes,I'm planning to finish it in camo used by the Russians for desert areas. I'm placing it in the forces used to fight in Mongolia which has large desert areas. Hope you like it when it's done ...