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Academy M998 HMMWV WIP


RGronovius

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WIP on the Academy M998 HMMWV kit. I'm trying to attain the look my truck had as one that was originally NATO 3-color but had endured countless repaints of desert sand after field exercises, NTC deployments, a trip to Desert Storm and a return trip to Kuwait in 1992. Even after all those repaints, the sand always came off after trips to the wash rack and there were always missed paint spots where the paint booth crew never bothered to reach.

I've been rather lazy working on this truck and lost interest when I joined a couple of other GBs and started building my more usual 1/72 scale armor. I still haven't decided on whether or not to use the resin wheels. The vinyl tires look to have a seam where the injected vinyl meets opposite of the sprue attachment point. I have a feeling the tires will split at this spot in the future.

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Rob,

Looks great I would use the Resin wheels regardless as they seem to always look and work better. One point. I can't remeber if the kit comes with it or not, but you definately need to consider adding fine mesh under the intake.

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I comes with the mesh, but I haven't permanently installed the hood and will put the mesh in then. I didn't want to get the mesh to get gummed up with overspray. I hear you with the resin tires. I positioned a couple of the wheels so I could point out the limitations of the vinyl; in the first shot, if you look at the front tire, you can see the visible seam where the vinyl does not mold together completely. The seam is at about the 1 o'clock position.

 

And in the 5th (bottom) photo, I put the sprue attachment point facing rearward so you can see the spot where it messes up the tread pattern. The wheels are still just stuck on and not affixed permanently. I have a set of TWS HMMWV tires, but I am not entirely thrilled with them. Obviously, if I were to stick with the vinyl, I would rotate the sprue point to the very bottom so it would not be visible on the displayed kit.

 

The vinyl tires were dipped in Future to give a barrier in case the vinyl reacts negatively with the surrounding styrene. The tires were given a wash and then lightly sanded to take most of the sheen out of the Future. I still expect the tires to split along the vinyl mold seam sometime in the future and will have to replace the tires regardless.

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The only issue I have EVER encountered with Rubber tires were the ones on AFV Clubs Centurion. They reacted badly with enamel paints. However, using acrylics was no problem. I have never had any of my rubber tires vehicles get damaged. I did the Academy Maxi-Ambulance for a friend over 10 years ago. He says they still look great.

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To be fair, the only vinyl tires I have had issues with are the original DML Soviet wheeled vehicles 1989, BRDM-2 and BTR-70. The tire split along the similar mold line. The other vinyl tires I had melt the surrounding styrene were the tires on the Trumpeter Chinese Jeep BJ-212A. I have two versions of this kit, with recoilless rifle and one with soft top. I started on the RCL kit and stuck the tires on the unpainted hubs and like most of my kits (including this HMMWV) it got set to the side for a while. When I opened it, I found the vinyl tires melted the styrene wheels and had started to melt some of the sprues in the box. I found resin wheels for that kit and tossed the melted ones.

 

I've got an old Tamiya LRDG Chevy with pristine tires on it and that kit was built over 30 years ago. This Academy kit was bought and started 16 years ago during the summer of 1996. I figure that the vinyl hasn't melted the plastic in that time, it probably won't, but that mold seam probably will because of the pressure of the wheel.

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