A Couple of Kuroganes - Hasegawa 1/48 Type 95 Small Sedan 4WD x 2 *Finished*

[Stew Dapple]

Hello Gents,

 

For my second set of builds I thought I'd do a couple of these:

 

 

Two of the little Kuroganes that is, the trucks might make an appearance later if my mojo holds...

 

Here's the sprue shot:

 

 

It worked pretty well for me on the last build to assemble as much as possible prior to painting then put the sub-assemblies together, so I'll try that again. Once again I'll be building one Imperial Japanese Army vehicle, and one Imperial Japanese Navy - the kits include specific parts and markings for each and building two will also allow me to use the various alternative parts - armament and folding roof configuration basically  

 

Once again these will be the colours I'll be using as they equate to the Gunze colours recommended in the instructions:

 

 

I hope to make a start on the assemblies this afternoon... 

 

Cheers, 

 

Stew

 

 

[Stew Dapple]

I started on the sub-assemblies - the engine and transmission first, The components are on the left, finished part on the right:

 

 

You get a fairly complex engine as supplied, but the upper body shell has no option to display it...

 

Then the chassis, fuel tank and rear shock-absorbers, plus four tiny tiny hooks, two for each end of the frame:

 

 

... the front axle and suspension and its mounting plate:

 

 

The upper body-shell, windsreen and instrument panel, mudguards and radiator front, plus two tiny tiny bumps for each mudguard and two tiny tiny door handles for inside each door:

 

 

,,, and finally the wheels, for some reason you have to trim off the bolts shown on the wheels on the left in order to put hubcaps on the wheels, I presume an earlier or later version that does not have hubcaps fitted is available or in development:

 

 

The wheels are individually numbered and are specific for each axle, so I'll leave them on the sprues for painting and only cut them off to fit them to the axles, otherwise I will never remember which is which  

 

Next will be to get some paint on these sub-assemblies... 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

 

[JeroenS]

Nice little vehicles! The trucks look pretty cool too, I hope your mojo holds and we get to see them here!

[helios16v]

After seeing your handiwork on the bikes, looking forward to your magic on these.  

[PeterB]

Hi Stew,

 

This GB is certainly throwing up some interesting builds.

 

Nice - I have heard of the trucks but the cars are new to me - I guess a Japanese Kubelwagen comes to mind. The hooks and door handles will be maybe a problem, but I bet they are easier in 1/48 than the 1/76 door knob on my Ratio boiler and pumphouse railway kit - but I was a lot younger then and my hands/eyes still worked pretty well - it was the size and shape of a pin head and yet I managed it somehow.

 

Good luck.

 

Pete

[Stew Dapple]

 

Thanks gents  

 

4 hours ago, PeterB said:

I have heard of the trucks but the cars are new to me - I guess a Japanese Kubelwagen comes to mind. The hooks and door handles will be maybe a problem, but I bet they are easier in 1/48 than the 1/76 door knob on my Ratio boiler and pumphouse railway kit

 

Pete, yes it wasn't something I was aware of until a little while ago, Tamiya also do one in 1/48 which I would imagine is a slightly simpler build, the Kurogane pre-dates the Kubelwagen and the Jeep by a couple of years and was apparently the first mass-produced 4WD car in the world.

 

The hooks and door handles didn't turn out to be a problem even though they are that sort of size that appears 'tweezer-able' until they suddenly ping out of the tweezers' grip never to be seen again. I guess I was lucky both times  It's odd though that the external door handles are moulded on and the internal ones provided as a separate part; also that the position of the door handles inside the car does not match the outer handles - not even vaguely, the outer ones are toward the rear of the door and the inner ones much nearer the front. I presume that this is correct and there was some kind of linkage inside the door to match them up.

 

I got the main colours sprayed on, Navy blue for the Navy and Khaki for the Army. I'm doing the Navy one with the hood up, so I masked the back window (the hood is supplied as a clear part with the rear window moulded in place) and gave that a coat of Khaki too, it will make a good primer for the Citadel acrylic that the canvas colour will be painted in. The engine blocks were sprayed black as a base for the black and metallic parts to be painted:

 

 

So next will be painting and fitting the engines, seats, gear levers etc. I hope to have some progress over the weekend  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

17 minutes ago, Stew Dapple said:

also that the position of the door handles inside the car does not match the outer handles - not even vaguely, the outer ones are toward the rear of the door and the inner ones much nearer the front. I presume that this is correct and there was some kind of linkage inside the door to match them up.

Oddly enough that describes virtually every car Ive ever owned. Yes there is usually a rod and flange connected linkage internally as Ive had to fix more than one in my time. Its almost worth it to just sell the car at that point. As its so so fun to do the fix with the linkage inside of a piece of sheet metal with 3” holes that no ones arm outside of an toddler can get into. 

[John Masters]

Cool little cars.  And excellent detail.  I like your build-up.

 

I have seen this kit before and bemoan that it is not in 1/72nd...

 

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks John,

 

28 minutes ago, John Masters said:

bemoan that it is not in 1/72nd...

 

There is an option for 1/72, I imagine it's pretty fiddly at that scale though...

 

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/ace-72296-type-95-model-3--132728

 

Cheers, 

 

Stew

[trickyrich]

Oh wow , you beat me to it, I was asking/hint if you would be doing something to those 2 wee motorbike & sidecars, and here we are with a couple of wee 4WD cars!! 

 

Ghosh these do look nicely detailed as well! I actually would mind having a real one, with be heaps of fun to putt around in...... though I'm prob to tall to fit in it!

 

I would say good luck and hope it's a nice build, but seeing you're nearly 1/2 way though already, I say it must be a nice build.

[Stew Dapple]

5 hours ago, trickyrich said:

I actually would mind having a real one, with be heaps of fun to putt around in

 

Thanks Rich  I read somewhere that there are a grand total of four left in various museums so probably not that likely to have one come onto the market, but as you say I suspect they were probably designed to fit a smaller-statured gent  

 

I painted up the engines; I misread the instructions and I think the back part of the engine and the connecting shaft for the front axle should be in the overall body colour, but... well it's going to be underneath and I won't tell if you don't  

 

 

The engines were then fitted - this would have been a bit easier if I hadn't gone off-piste and fixed the front axle mounting plate before I should have, but with only a little cursing they were in:

 

 

The front suspension units had the shock-absorbers painted, you can hardly see it on the Navy Blue set, but trust me, I did it:

 

 

... and they were fitted to the chassis:

 

 

The two-part exhausts were assembled and painted in Tamiya Dark Iron, this is a really lovely colour for burnt metal but doesn't photograph too well:

 

 

... and these were fitted to the chassis:

 

 

... along with the rear axles:

 

 

So aside from the fitting of the wheels, which I'll do later on in the build, that concludes the work on the undersides, next will be the vehicle interiors  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

Construction of the interiors didn't take long... the seats were painted; Hasegawa advise either black or reddish-brown for the seat cushions so I went with black for the Army and reddish-brown for the Navy, as black seats won't show up terribly well against the dark blue, particularly as I intend to build the Navy car with the hood up:

 

 

Incidentally you can see what I believe is probably the battery beside the rear set, it was a lot of fun painting the little silver bars and buttons on that I can tell you  ... anyway once that was done and the seats fitted, the tiny tiny levers and gear sticks were added:

 

 

Which is pretty much the end of the interiors, though there are of course the steering wheels to be fitted, but the instructions recommend that you do this when installing the driver figure and I can see the logic behind this. There's also some detail painting and a transfer for the instruments to be added to the dashboard but as this is part of the upper body that will be next...

 

Cheers, 

 

Stew

[JeroenS]

Excellent work Stew, they look real nice. 

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks Jeroen  

 

I painted the tyres with the wheels still on the sprue, it turned out to be like doing the washing-up, you don't look forward to it, but once you start it actually turns out to be sort of therapeutic  Thanks to Hasegawa for moulding such well-defined wheel rims that you can effectively water-down the tyre colour and run it around the rims:

 

 

Then I got on to the instrument panels and windscreens. The kit provides a transfer for the instrument dials and knowing the rather inflexible reputation of Japanese kit transfers I flooded the instrument 'cartouche' with Ulitmate Decal Setting Solution before applying the transfer. To my surprise it sucked the transfer right down onto the dial mouldings, revealing as it did so that I had slightly misplaced the transfer. Not so much that anyone would notice I trust  I painted the silver grab-handle and what I believe is probably an ashtray on the panel... seems strange these days but was probably considered a neccessity in the 1940's. For the rear-view mirror I punched out a couple of discs of Aluminium tape, as it's more shiny than silver paint, it left a small margin of paint around the edges like a mirror-frame, and because I have a little punch and die set that cost an absolute fortune and therefore must be used whenever the opportunity presents itself  

 

 

... and in even more unforgiving close-up:

 

 

Next I'll attach those to the upper body-shell and see what needs done from there...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

The wheels, along with Hasegawa's dire warning in the instructions to note the direction of the wheel treads when fitting the wheels, was giving me some anxiety that I didn't need, and as it turned out, I really didn't need it, because if you fit the correct numbered wheel to the correct axle the treads can only be going the right way unless you put the wheel on back-to-front of course. So I fitted them in order to not have to think about it any more:

 

 

 

... and it does look odd. there's a slight chevron-pattern on the tyres that runs in opposite directions on the front and back wheels. I definitely stuck the correct numbered wheel on the specified axle so perhaps this is indeed correct and Hasegawa's note was to advise that it may appear counter-intuitive. However their drawing in the instructions doesn't really make it clear and the actual note: "Attention: Please note it in the direction of the tyre" could have been a little more informative  

 

Unless of course I somehow managed to do it wrong, never an option that can be entirely dismissed, but to do it wrong twice would be exceptional, even for me  

 

Then I made up the headlights... I know it's a bit fiddly but I do prefer a clear lens piece rather than just a solid opaque headlight with an instruction to paint the glass silver:

 

 

I've got these attached to the upper body-shell now and the windscreens refitted, but I'll need to wait for daylight to take some pictures, hopefully I can do this tomorrow.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

I refitted the windscreens and installed the headlights:

 

 

As you may observe  also applied a couple of coats of Citadel's Nuln Oil wash on the radiator grilles and made up the three-piece folding hoods (raised for the Navy car and folded for the Army one - three parts whether raised or folded). These aren't glued in place, I just fitted them so that the glued parts set in the right positions to fit later on. I could of course used either hood for either car but as the Navy motorcycle and side car I built last had a semi-hood and the Army one had a machine-gun on the sidecars I thought I'd continue the trend, as the Army Kurogane will also have a machine-gun fitted (hence the raised windscreen pane on the passenger side). The only remaining construction is to fit the number plates and rear-right mountings and the respective Navy and Army badges on the radiators, so in between doing that I'll start on assembly of the wee men. I don't think it will be until after the weekend though as I'll be on the Sovereign Hobbies' stand at the Scottish National Model Show on Saturday and Sunday, see you there, if I see you there  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Dansk]

wow beautiful work

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks Paul  

 

I painted and attached the service branch badges to the radiators and the front number plate to the Navy car - from what photo's I have found it looks like the front number plate was rarely fitted, but Hasegawa provide one and I do want to differentiate between the two vehicles as far as possible:

 

 

... and added the tail-light 'stalk' and number plates to the rear of the cars:

 

 

I also assembled and painted the Type 96 Machine Gun and started painting the raised and folded hoods:

 

 

The wee men were assembled and sprayed with a base coat of Colourcoats Earth Brown:

 

 

I've got a couple of days off work so I hope to make some more progress today  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

I got the wee men painted - the Army crew first:

 

 

... and the Navy driver:

 

 

The figures are decent enough, but not as sharply moulded as the crews for the motorcycles I built previously. The disappointing news for me is that test-fitting indicates that I can't fit the gunner into the Army car, there's quite a complex fit between the gunner, the gun and the tiny spigot on the windshield frame on which the gun is mounted. I'll have a fiddle, as it clearly can be done - indeed Hasegawa prove it with their box-art photo's - but for some reason mine doesn't seem to want to come together.

 

I fitted the folding hood to the Army car:

 

 

... and the raised hood for the Navy car is awaiting the installation of the driver and steering-wheel before fitting:

 

 

Hopefully I'll get these completed today  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

Aaaaaand I'm done:

 

 

I'll do the 'glamour shots' this afternoon  

 

Edit: Done them:

 

 

More pics in the Gallery here.

 

Another enjoyable pair of builds, thanks once more to @trickyrich and @helios16v for letting me take part  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Roberto]

Lovely works, well done!

[helios16v]

Lovely builds once again.  Very fine work in such a small scale.  Thanks for taking part.  

[arfa1983]

Love them!

[trickyrich]

wow Stu, sorry I missed the end part of the build.

 

Gosh they both came out perfect I reckon, what lovely models, well done!    They'd be a perfect addition to a nice airfield diorama.

 

Am really glad you bought them along, I think you may have inspired some others to buy these wee cars.