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Austin Armoured Cars - MiniArt 1/35


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Austin Armoured Cars

3rd Series, Republic of Georgia Army 1918-21

1918 Pattern, 17th Armoured Car Battalion 1918

MiniArt 1/35

 

MiniArt have recently been releasing a new series of Austin armoured cars, and I've just finished a duel build of two of them. Both kits are fundamentally the same, but with different detail parts for each respective version. They both come with full interiors, although there's no need to install them if you have all the hatches closed. They are extremely well detailed, but that does come at a price as the kits are quite fiddly to assemble, and have a lot of very fragile parts. Some sections are held together more by hope than cement. The rear wheel arches in particular are very delicate, being held in place by some very thin PE brackets. I managed to rip one off completely on the 1918 Pattern simply by accidentally catching it with a small piece of tape while removing the masking after painting. I couldn't be bothered to try and repair it, so it became, ahem... battle damage.

For all that, they are good kits though, and the fit is excellent for the most part. I would recommend not taking too much time over the interior though as, even with all the hatches open, not a lot can be seen.

 

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      Thanks for looking

 

      Andy:cat:

 

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Fantastic work on both. Those tyres on the second one are absolutely spot on. Difficult getting that colour right but you've nailed it 👌👍

 

Andrew 

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  • 1 month later...

I know this post was done sometime ago, but I have a question about how you installed the driveshaft between the transmission and the rear axle - the shaft in my kit is around 6mm too long to fit, so did you have the same issue and just cut the shaft down? I have double checked and both the rear axle and the transmission are in the right place on the chassis

 

I can see that on your build on The Modelling News the driveshaft is in place so I cannot work out where I have gone wrong - any thoughts?

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12 hours ago, Graeme said:

I know this post was done sometime ago, but I have a question about how you installed the driveshaft between the transmission and the rear axle - the shaft in my kit is around 6mm too long to fit, so did you have the same issue and just cut the shaft down? I have double checked and both the rear axle and the transmission are in the right place on the chassis

 

I can see that on your build on The Modelling News the driveshaft is in place so I cannot work out where I have gone wrong - any thoughts?

 

Hi Graeme,

To be honest, I can't remember any significant issue with fitting the shaft. I think it had to be fitted at the same time as the rear axle to allow the location pins at each end of the shaft to drop into place. It's possible that I may have trimmed a little from one end, but that would have required removing one of the pins as well, and I can't remember doing that. 6mm sounds quite a lot too, and if I did shorten the shaft I'm certain it wouldn't have been by that much.

I've just measured the shaft on mine and it's a fraction over 30mm (not including the pins), so if yours is the same length I didn't trim mine.

 

I do remember that it was quite fiddly to get all the cross member in place on the chassis, and I had to double check each time that I was placing them in the correct positions. I guess it's possible that if you've got one of the cross members misplaced, it might have thrown out the spacing between the gearbox and rear axle. There's a couple of photos here of the chassis from below and above. They're not from the best angles, but you may be able to spot if something's out of place on yours.

 

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Have you got any photos of your chassis? I might be able to see if anything looks significantly different to mine.

 

Andy:cat:

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13 hours ago, Andy Moore said:

 

Hi Graeme,

To be honest, I can't remember any significant issue with fitting the shaft. I think it had to be fitted at the same time as the rear axle to allow the location pins at each end of the shaft to drop into place. It's possible that I may have trimmed a little from one end, but that would have required removing one of the pins as well, and I can't remember doing that. 6mm sounds quite a lot too, and if I did shorten the shaft I'm certain it wouldn't have been by that much.

I've just measured the shaft on mine and it's a fraction over 30mm (not including the pins), so if yours is the same length I didn't trim mine.

 

I do remember that it was quite fiddly to get all the cross member in place on the chassis, and I had to double check each time that I was placing them in the correct positions. I guess it's possible that if you've got one of the cross members misplaced, it might have thrown out the spacing between the gearbox and rear axle. There's a couple of photos here of the chassis from below and above. They're not from the best angles, but you may be able to spot if something's out of place on yours.

 

51339227295_bcfc1b15fd_b.jpg

 

51339227180_c5f7be0204_b.jpg

 

Have you got any photos of your chassis? I might be able to see if anything looks significantly different to mine.

 

Andy:cat:

Thanks Andy

 

I don’t think I misplaced and cross-members but I will check that; I can’t post a pic as I don’t use a hosting service.

 

I think next time I will follow your way of building the chassis and do it before painting so I can see what is going on!

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