Land Rover WMIK

[Scargsy]

My second build will be something more 'armoury' but without much armour!

Based on the UK Army's military version of the Land Rover, the WMIK (Weapons Mount Installation Kit) is designed for use in recon and fire support.

 

The kit seems pretty detailed, 3 large sprues (including some nice padding included in the packaging).

Two smaller sprues, a set of tyres and the clear parts.

A small PE fret and some decals complete the kit.

Instructions are a black and white booklet with a colour paint chart - which is fairly redundant (it's either an all yellow/brown desert or all green scheme).

I'll be building it OOB, I'm not sure which colour yet - I may add some figures (I think I have a set somewhere).

 

 

[Robert Stuart]

Oh, good to see another wheelie thing, that kit looks complex.
GL

[CliffB]

It's nice to see a Land Rover in the mix, particularly one with so many add-ons 

[Col.]

A stripped down and tooled up Landy - excellent

[John Masters]

I'll be following along as I have this kit too.  I was going to use it for the Desert GB...but if you do the Desert scheme, I might do the Green scheme.  Or not.  I have to choose somewhere to begin.

 

 

[Scargsy]

I still haven't decided on a colour, the green one looks to have black erm... fender extenders (not entirely sure what to call them, side bumpers, extended arches?) so might need some masking but then I seem to have done a lot of armour in desert colours of late.

 

I did make a small start on the kit, I'm planning to get as many sub-assemblies together first before applying paint as I like to get the airbrush out for a good session rather than all the hassle of cleaning after painting individual pieces.

 

 

 

The fit is generally good, above that's the seats dry fitted onto the interior tub which is fitted onto the chassis rails.

Only issues / notes so far:

There are a few ejector pin marks on the underside of the tub floor that I wish I'd noticed before adding the sides as now a bit hard to get to (and seem full of mould release agent/muck) , though they shouldn't be too visible when finished and a bit of weathering/mud and the wheels should hide them.

I was a bit worried about getting the alignment right on the chassis but there are 6 mounting pins / holes on the tub underside (3 per main rail) which I should have used as a bit of a jig - though thankfully it all fits.

The seat 'reinforcement' bars come in two halves, joined down the vertical centre with no locator pins - a bit fraught trying to get 3 bars per side lined up but they seem servicable. 

 

 

[Scargsy]

Work continues on the Landy - rather a lot of steering arms, suspension linkages, etc. I did manage to break what I think is the anti-roll bar at the front (dry fitting then attempting to remove with the tight fit) but glued it back together in place. Also one of the tow rings got snapped though again I managed to fix it.

I really couldn't figure out how/where to fit the transfer box with the driveshafts - the shafts are slightly angled but that didn't seem to help much. It's difficult to see if the transfer box should attach to the small mounting point or how from the instructions (see in below image).

In the end after much puzzling I noticed that there are two mounting points for the gearbox on the underside of the body and that the transfer box fits neatly into the gearbox, though fitting the engine and gearbox now (or even in the instruction order) seems prone to fit issues - the engine front attaches it appears by a spline on the fan and two radiator hoses and the only thing holding it in place would be those points and this wobbly attachment to the driveshafts. What would make matters worse is that the radiator part is also the front grill and there are no mounting points to align that to avoid misalignment with the front wings, etc. later.

 

My solution is that I'll build the bodywork first, fit the engine and gearbox into that, then somehow lower it onto the chassis fitting the drive shafts, worst case I'll have to cut the connecting pins from the shafts and just use a little super glue to hold them in.

 

I also decided to fit the other chassis rails - that means I won't get the exhaust threaded back through in one piece but hopefully I can cut and reglue it in place later.

I fitted the front bulkhead using the chassis rails as a jig, this also helped get the side chassis extensions lined up as I fitted them.

 

Some of the other sub assemblies got built up - the rear roll-cage / weapon mount, the bonnet including 4 very tiny/fiddly mounting points (rubber stops?) for the spare wheel. I wasn't sure how low the centre ring should fit for the spare - it seemed to want to sit somewhat offset but I decided to mount it as low as possible (opened out the mounting holes more) since the tyre would even then be slightly floating off the 4 external mount points.

 

In the end I decided to mount the front wings / bodywork using the chassis as a jig again - that should make painting it easier. As I mentioned before, there's quite a few ejector pin marks on the underside but luckily they won't be obviously visible once finished. You can see the engine/gearbox mounting points here...

I test fitted the bonnet - there's no OOB option to model it open, which is a shame as there is quite a lot of engine detail (also there are small cut-outs / indents where four pins in the bonnet fit into the top of the wings, so it would make life difficult if you did want to.

So next onto some primer I guess - I'm going to go with some dark brown which should hopefully help hide any of the deep spots I can't get actual paint into later, I'm going to go with the slightly easier desert scheme paint I think - so building up the colour in layers from the dark browns to the lighter tones.

 

[Col.]

Nice progress and some lovely detail in there. Going with a dark brown primer will work well as any areas where the top coat misses will look like it hasn't been hosed down properly between ops.

[Scargsy]

So I finally got around to doing a bit of priming, using Mr Surfacer 1000 mahogany...

 

I built up the engine block parts - it's going to be fiddly to fit it in! I built up the ammo boxes, a simple enough process if a little long and tedious. The rear tailgate and basket were finally added - they have come out quite nicely with the PE, even though I really hate using super-glue (tends to stick to flesh more than anything else) - the plastic parts did get slightly warped when taking them off the sprue but once attached to the tailgate and with the PE they seem to have straightened up.

 

I then applied a 50:50 mix of the brown primer with Mr Color 39 Dark Yellow, then that mix thinned 50:50 with self-levelling thinner. It actually looks a lot lighter in the photo than in real-life. I'll need to add another coat (lightened further) to the bits that will be difficult to get to later. The seat supports I've now glued in (I did so with the seats in place to help alignment) - the bonnet, chassis and rear cage are still loose - though I couldn't help dry fitting them for the photo.

 

[Col.]

Nice work again  

[Scargsy]

So with the finish line fast approaching I'm hoping I can get this one done...

 

Firstly I gave the main parts another coat of paint with a lighter mix of the brown primer and dark yellow.

 

I managed to get the engine and gearbox attached into the body with a bit of wiggling.

I left of some of the detailing parts for the engine (fluid boxes, etc.) and didn't bother doing any detail painting as this will be sealed up and not visible.

 

Getting the chassis attached to the body with the drive shafts in place was a far more difficult, with a lot of wiggling and swearing, in the end I had to cut down one of the shafts but it's hidden behind a chassis cross beam. I also had to cut the exhaust and tape the silencer back onto the chassis during this, before rejoining the front part once the chassis was attached.

 

Next it's onto getting everything put together before the final paint coat, I added some masking of the pre-painted seat with clingfilm and tape - hopefully I'll be able to easily remove this post the paint coat.

 

I continued adding the detail parts (grill, etc.) the PE headlight grills are going to be a pain to bend and I'll need to attach them as a final point post adding the headlights.