Trying to get my modeling moj0 back and doing so with short spells at the work bench. One of my pet projects that I shared some WIP images of a while back is the M5 Stuart light tank project that was converted to use the VVSS suspension components from the M3 Lee/Grant or M4 Sherman medium tank. While the conversion to the larger VVSS components was challenging it did work out and I had a nice prototype of a modified Stuart hull with the larger Grant(Lee)/Sherman VVSS components mounted to the hull and it looked very promising. Life got in the way along with my attention getting focused on other projects so this project was set aside to rest for a while. I returned to the project ever so often and quickly set it aside again as I was just not in the mood to deal with the monotonous assembly the MiniArt individual track links for the Sherman/Lee (Grant) VVSS. That changed last night when I sat down with good intentions of taking up where I had left off from the last real attempt at doing something with the MiniArt individual tracks. I had not really paid much attention to how the MiniArt tracks fit with the Tamiya Lee/Grant drive sprockets until last night. I was quite horrified to diiscover that the damned drive sprockets were not accommodating the length of MiniArt track that I had previously assembled. While the Tamiya track fits within the drive sprockets, the MiniArt track does not. The pitch of the sprockets is "off" by a few degrees and to add insult to injury, the MiniArt track is too wide for the Tamiya drive sprocket that is attached to the Stuart hull. So much disappointment that I had to accept as a reality as I checked again and again to confirm what I was seeing with the fit issues.
Yeah, this really took the fun out of the project. Thankfully, I have two more Stuart kits and two more of the M8 75mm HMC kits to sacrifice before moving on to the more expensive AFV Club kits. I also have the AFV Club VVSS and HVSS suspension unit conversion/modification kits to draw upon now. The plan now is to scrap immediately the current Stuart VVSS project and start over using the AFV Club suspension kit and AFV Club VVSS track set on the Tamiya kit. Once that is confirmed to work out we shall see how it goes with the AFV Club M3 or M5 Stuart kits that I have in the stash. Above all else, while this is a failure, it is also a learning experience.