I have over 20 shoebox sized plastic containers filled with parts from old builds. I recently finished three builds that due to their whiffy nature, generated sprues of unused parts and I was running out of room to store the leftovers. Two of build remains had enough parts left over to make a new kit, each.
My
BTR-25 Mara left me with tracks and complete running gear, plus many other tank bits. I toyed with the idea of printing a lower hull to hold the running gear. I wanted something around the length of an M113, but was drawing a blank on what to do with the rest of the vehicle.
I saw Zenrat's
Northrop Delta. Vic Air. Martha Island 1977 over at Whatif and Fred's reimagining of the
Aoshima JGSDF Material carrier vehicle gave me the inspiration I needed.
My first decision was that this build would not require any new purchases - everything will have to come out of my spares box or 3D printer. The lower hull is printed in ABS and smoothed some of the print lines with Acetone. Since it's not going to be very visible, I didn't care too much about the print lines or the build plate pattern. It took a couple of prints to get the right spacing, but it looks OK:
Panda did a great job with the tracks for this kit. There are three parts to each link but they click together and only the pads need to be glued. It's a tedious process, but the tracks work well and are very strong. I may remove some or all of the small track guide wheels:
While this won't be a version of the JGSDF Material carrier, it's definitely a close cousin. I did a quick draft print of the cabins and engine box in ABS to see how everything fit. The main deck is also 3D printed in ABS, with a sheet of styrene glued on one side. The crane is from the Italeri M977 HEMTT:
I clearly have to move the crane up and back a bit. Once I finish the CAD changes, I'll start the resin printing.
