Assembly of the road wheels was done next.  There are eighteen road wheels each consisting of eight parts.  The idler wheels and front drive sprockets were also constructed at this time.  These were all airbrushed with a base coat of Africa Grunbraun ’41.  Dunkelgrun RLM 82 and P. Schokoladenbraun 1943 were then airbrushed in a camouflaged pattern.  This was done because painting would be impossible after assembly.    After being allowed to dry overnight, the wheels were then attached to the chassis by 3mm grub screws.  The backing plate was also attached at this time.  This is made of plastic and screwed to the metal chassis tub.  The mufflers and mudflaps were attached to the back plate using pro welled liquid cement.  

                Now that the suspension was completed, I jumped ahead in the instructions and decided to assemble the track links.  I wanted to get this portion of construction out of the way since I was not looking forward to it. The links assemble in the same manor that the real ones do in the fact that they are a link and pin assembly. This is a slow going assembly process but since it doesn’t require any real concentration I was able to watch a few movies and build them at the same time! Each side consists of 88 links and is quite impressive when finished. I painted them with Krylon ultra flat black, which dries almost instantly. Unfortunately the paint does not adhere very well to the abs plastic so great care has to be taken not to bump them against anything ( I should have used acrylic black). After several coats of Krylon I applied several washes of Grumbacher burnt umber oil paint.   A generous dusting of brown and rust colored pastels followed this and ultimately they were sealed with Testor's clear lacquer flat.

                Now came the part I was waiting for the turret and body. The turret goes together just like the 1/35 scale version with the exception of a slightly more complicated elevation mechanism housed inside. The detail of the steel texture and the weld joints on these parts is second to none. The body is molded in one piece and is truly motivating. Tamiya includes a small piece of screen to use for the radiator and exhaust fan covers and this works fantastic. I compared it to a piece of screen in my window and it was exactly the same so don’t worry if you miscut it, you can get it for next to nothing at a hardware store. I carefully measured and cut each piece and super glued them to the body. I also attached all of the other small parts including the fenders to the body at this time. I chose to glue the fenders to the body instead of screwing them as the instructions suggest. I had to fill all of the mounting holes with Squadron green putty and sand them before painting. This took longer than using the screws but also helped it look less like a remote control toy.

                I also chose to replace all of the hatch handles with copper wire since the molded on kit ones surprisingly had no detail at all. I simply sanded the old ones off, drilled new holes and dry fitted and bent  the wire until I  felt I had the right shapes and then super glued them in. The same was done for the Bosch headlamp wire in the front.

                I painted the ambush scheme using the same colors as mentioned during the road wheel construction. After deciding on a basic pattern I then added alternating spots of opposite colors. Once I finished I added liberal washes of artists oils and pastel chalks to achieve the desired weathering.  This was followed by selected scrubbing with a No. 2 to achieve the worn steel look.

After assembling the main body components I moved on to the mufflers and tool racks. I gave the mufflers the same treatment as the track links, which gave them a very realistic appearance. The tool racks and tow cables that come with the kit look rather “toyish” so I decided to build my own from scratch. I began by replacing the racks themselves with square brass stock and evergreen sheet plastic. After these were all mounted on the body I painted each one accordingly. The tow cables are made out of garage door cable and aluminum tubing. This was not easy because the cable didn’t want to form to the right shape. I had to carefully feed the cable through the racks just like the real thing to get it to work right. After it was in the racks I attached the ends. I modified the kit cable ends and inserted them into the aluminum rods since there was no way to bend the garage door cable tight  enough to reproduce the ends. The kit shovel blade was cut in half and the tip was used along with more evergreen sheet to make the empty mounting bracket for the shovel itself. The construction was finished off by adding a guitar string to represent the antenna followed by a coat of Testor’s flat.