1/16 M3 Halftrack from AHHQ

[Edbert]

I know damn well I will not resist breaking bags on this kit, so might as well open up the thread. The pre-order arrived today, it was a pretty large box considering that no parts are very large, as in those 5th gen 1/48 aircraft that need the floor-space of a 20+ inch box. But it was heavy and deep, with 18 sprues an whatever else.



I started reading the manual which is laminated paper in full color and about 50 pages with a fold-out at the end. After a very personal greeting letter at the beginning (from Andy duh) it lists an image of the contents and then goes straight in to assembly. I was instantly aware that there are no color call outs. First thought was to panic because I did not buy any walk-arounds or similar literature about 1944-45 M3 halftracks in Western Europe and Italy. But it dawned on me that the color to use is "green".

There were CAD drawings of the drivetrain shown in gray or black, and the green on the seats was lighter than the green on the rest. But, other than those exceptions, she's green!

 

[BarleyBop]

Nice! You'll need a bigger garage!

This book is available on Kindle:
Zaloga, Steven J.. M3 Infantry Half-Track 1940–73: 1940-73 (New Vanguard Book 11) (p. 54). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The cover shows the M3 75mm Gun Motor Carriage... but it covers many variants.
And for $10 on Amazoony for the ebook, you get some good background info and illustrations!

 

[Jakko]

A good reference book for details of the vehicle rather than a history, is Squadron/Signal's Walk Around M2/M3 Half-Track:



This is full of photos of preserved/restored vehicles that show all kinds of details. Also good is Tankograd U.S. WWII Half Track Cars M2, M2A1, M9A1 & Personnel Carriers M3, M3A1, M5, M5A1:



You can also find TMs of real half-tracks online, but all of the ones I've seen had very poor quality images, as if they were scanned for text rather than the photos as well. The most useful ones are TM 9-710 Basic Half-Track Vehicles (White, Autocar, and Diamond T) and TM 9-1710 Power Train (Axles, Transmission, and Propeller Shaft) for Half-Track Vehicles. The Tankograd book contains a lot of good scans of illustrations from these.

 

[Edbert]

I found a long thread where a guy (who I admire) is restoring one of these. His work is a treasure to me for details! I understand the hazzards of using restored/museum images, but unless they are in direct opposition with historical images, I'll use them

Here's the thread on page-6.
https://halftrackinfo.com/index.php?topic=375.75

...and here's one example of his work that fits REALLY well with this kit.

Right down to the black painted wording on the engine block!

Assembly is underway. Overall I am very pleased. One thing I'd call out is there are seams on a lot of items cause by the two molds allowing some seepage. It is not "flash", much less severe, but it is almost everywhere. So parts cleanup is taking a lot of time. In many cases it is just time consuming; side-scraping with a #11 blade, or a low-grit sanding stick are working, in most cases. But there are exceptions, like the tensioner (?) springs for the running gear.

This is what I mean...



The effect is ubiquitous, but in the case shown above, quite difficult to remove. Here's a case where I said fuggetaboutit...


See that catch-can on the front of the inline-6?

Here let me zoom in...


I would try to remove it, but not underneath that handle on the top, it is very thin and easy to break.

 

[BarleyBop]

long thread

Nice... added to my bookmarks.
It's great to find these restoration threads, and as you say there may be historical inaccuracies, but at 1:35 (in my case), they often help disambiguate model parts that are unrecognizable, or even non-existent.

 

[Jakko]

the tensioner (?) springs for the running gear.

That's exactly what they are, yes. The original design had a (semi-)fixed idler wheel: it could be adjusted to properly tension the tracks, but that meant that with the suspension compressed, the track sometimes jumped off the idler. The solution proved to be to add a spring that pushes the idler to the rear. First they used a thin one, then later a double spring (a thick one over a thinner), which is what your model has.