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Sherman ambulance, IDF, 1/35


Silenoz

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Recently I've started with a Sherman ambulance conversion for the old Dragon M-50 kit, which I luckily could obtain at a fair for a reasonable price. Later I learned this conversion was out of production. These armored ambulances were used on the battlefield to provide a quick extraction of the wounded under fire, not only in the early Israeli wars, but also in the hotzones of minor conflicts.

 

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Added to this are some friul tracks, a metal barrel for the MG and a basic update set for the M50 (frontfenders and reinforcement brackets for the sidefenders). I've ordered only the basic set, because all I will use from the basekit is the running gear and the bottom hull

 

The hull from the old M50 is a bit too long, so after some dryfitting I had to remove almost a cm. Although the resin was beautifully cast, almost without blemishes, it was warped, but a microwave to heat the large pieces and hot water and a heater (for shrink sleeve in the electronics departement were to the rescue...)

 

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Attachment for the running gear is small, only the two small square parts:

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So I've added some sprue to the hull:

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and drilled some holes so I was able to add some copper for reinforcement

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As for now I'm busy assembling the friul tracks, the rest of the running gear and assembling some parts to detail the hull a bit

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You must have been unlucky enough to pick up an early production M50 kit.  Yes, they goofed the lower hull length between rear bogie and idler - as the made-up box art pictures show.  Odd as they had the basic M4A4 kit then.  Presumption is that they possibly took the engine door extension as the hull rear plate position by mistake.  Later production, including IIRC all the Cyber Hobby boxings, had the correct lower hull.

 

You should get away with just cutting back the kit parts as the hull rear was completely replaced in the ambutank conversion.  The gold solution is to get hold of a lower hull from another Dragon M4A4/V/VC kit.  I imagine the under-hull bulges etc were removed anyway during conversion as the engine was moved forward and changed for another model.  Idler mounts are the most critical parts to relocate.

 

There are pictures on line of the surviving example at the Yad la Shiron museum.

 

I had one of these conversions but foolishly let it go.  Perhaps Legend will re-release or update.  Mine was warped too: one of the perils of such a large one-piece casting.

 

There was an earlier ambulance conversion on a VVSS M4A1 hull which I might have a go at sometime.

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thx for the heads up, read about the lengthened hull, so I marked the height of the idler mounts, and cut up the original hull. I haven't attached these mounts yet because the friul tracks need to be assembled first. These have bent and straight links, so everything has to be in the right place before gluing...

 

The walk around of the surviving vehicle can be found here: http://svsm.org/gallery/sherman_ambulance

 

that other ambulance is also nice:

 sherman01a.jpg

 

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Nice to see this unusual vehicle being modelled. It's a good idea to reinforce the suspension units with copper wire. Dragon's attachment points are so weak.

 

John.

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