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WWII Moto-tug (1:48 Tamiya)


Mike

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Hot on the heels of the Skunkmodels modern MD-3 Deck Tractor, Graham from Relish sent me this set for review, and I set about building the tug straight away.

Like the modern version, it's an easy build, but the tractor heritage leaves you with an exposed power plant, so it was necessary to build up the chassis, body and engine housing separately for painting, which could be later married up once the engine had been painted.

Here's are the assemblies tacked together in primer:

primer1.jpg

primer2.jpg

It seems that some tugs were painted a blue grey, and others grey, so I chose the grey scheme, which was hardly any different from the primer, but gave a semi-gloss surface to allow me to get the Mig dark wash to flow along the panel lines. I painted the engine with GW metallics, added a little color with Mig rust pigments on the exhaust pipe, and gave it a heavy wash with oils, and a couple of rust streaks. Once that was looking OK, I glued the parts together after painting the wheels with Vallejo dark rubber - a great color for tyres, and much more realistic than the suggested black.

chassis1.jpg

chassis2.jpg

chassis3.jpg

You can see a small dent highlighted with a red arrow, which was sanded into the port corner with the edge of a sanding stick and then smoothed with a sanding sponge for later weathering.

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Weathering is easy on this little beast. Some scratches were added with dark grey acrylics, some accentuated with a paler grey than the chassis, a few streaks of rust using Mig Abteilung oils streaked downwards with thinner, then a wash of Mig European Earth pastels in the footwell and the small load area behind the crew seat.

weathering1.jpg

weathering2.jpg

weathering3.jpg

weathering4.jpg

I'm preparing some rusty chain to busy up the load area behind the seat, and will revisit the weathering again after a little time away - it's a good idea to let things set up, and also take your mind off the weathering process, so you can look at the first round's results with fresh eyes :)

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Mike i would seriously doubt you would dent it, the body of these things tend to be built out of 1/4 inch steel plate, they need the weight on them you see to enable them to pull aircraft without them trying to rotate around the rear wheels...... Some of them have cast bodies to add even more weight to them. We drive them into hangar doors to get them to shift lol.

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Actually the bodies were made of thin sheet metal (think race cars) to improve deck speed! They sacrificed the possibility of damage in order to get another 1/2 MPH out of them. Great idea if you ask me!! :)

I googled some pics and they didn't look very sturdy... thankfully I was right! :yahoo:

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Do you know if this is the same tug as was packaged with the 1:48 F4 Corsair a while ago?

I built one of those once and it was a nice little kit in itself. Plane wasn't too bad either.

Craig.

Edited by Craig
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Not sure Craig, but I expect it might well have been. It's a different color styrene than the figures, and the instructions show it attaching to a Corsair... See what I mean? :hmmm:

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Hmmm, Does sound suspiciously similar dosen't it.

Just found a picture of my Corsair with the tug on the back. Looks like a big yellow chock on the side as well......

Corsair picture link

Craig.

Edited by Craig
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Excellent, I thought at the time that would make a great little kit on it's own. Plenty of carrier based aircraft it could be posed with on a flight deck diorama.

Yours is looking good by the way, Must get back to modelling again to hone my weathering techniques.

Craig.

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Admit it Mike, you are doing a ride on lawnmower diorama for Cath

You always beat me to it!!!!!!!!!LOL

The constant foot traffic on the plates used to fetch the underlying metal up to a nice bright finish, so don't over do the rusty bits Mike.

May have to get one of these myself and see if it could be civilianised.

Nice one Mike

Edited by stringbag
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