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Home / Albums / Military / Oshkosh 23
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The winch mounting platform & drive motor housing take up another 27 parts but looks a real treat with its very fine etched tread plates & mesh work. The platform comes with a 6 part access ladder, a pogo stick & a small capstan winch used for pulling out the main winch ropes. Having pulled out winch ropes on similar sized vehicles by hand, a capstan winch is a god send! The platform also carries the two stubby 2nd axle wings, each of which uses an array of tiny folded etch mounting bars. After those, a further 25 parts go to completing the final details such as the catwalk, operators guard & two 50mm long poles (1.75 metre in scale) with hinges pad devices on the end. These are mounted on the vertical stack & appear to be detachable on the real thing, but I confess I am stumped as to what they are for. The assembly instructions for these are also very vague & it took some head scratching to figure out what exactly was required. Nevertheless the winch tower is without doubt a stunning model in its own right & takes a good 8 hours to complete. The rear mud flaps, plus some hose & electrical connections are now the final details to assemble for the tractor, before declaring it ready to paint. Each rear mud flap is made up of no less than 7 parts. Six in etched brass, plus a metal rod mounting bar with ready wound coil spring support. Nice touch! The running total so far then accounts for some 707 parts & 30 hours work with only another 23 stages plus paint, decals & final assembly! - 7863
Construction (Winch Tower & final tractor pre paint details) Sections 23 to 28 now all cover the winch tower assembly. This starts with the vertical exhaust stack & its etched heat shield. Mounted on the back of the stack bracket is the davit winch for raising & lowering the spare wheel (9 parts). Twin left & right handed main winch assemblies are next with 19 parts each including some fairly fine etch-work. Here I found the first real glitch in the kit instructions as it refers to the winch cables just as “1mm x 140mm”. Given that there are several lengths of different cord supplied with the kit, all of different diameters, colours & lengths, & despite using the process of elimination, nothing really seemed to match the required cord. In the end I used some suitable cord from stock & found that the stated length of 140mm was way too short anyway…it takes more like 340mm per winch to make the drums look anywhere near loaded. - 7862
All road wheels are identical & made up of an internal disc (allowing the wheel to rotate if desired), two outer rims & a ‘wheel trim’ disc. The wheels themselves are nicely detailed & it’s almost a shame to add the trim discs….the purpose of which eludes me, although no doubt they fulfil a valid purpose which someone will kindly point out. This gives a running total so far of 552 parts & 20.5 hours work, as we move on to the vertical exhaust stack, the winch tower assembly & completion of the final details on the tractor prior to painting. - 7861
With the walls assembled, attention turns to the cab roof, this is made up of one large etched brass panel that sits astride a plastic framework set into a recess in the cab upper wall. This framework also carries the internal parts of the air-con unit & I confess despite doing a test fit first, I still managed to assemble the damn thing backwards & did not realise until it was too late…..fortunately the error is well out of sight inside the roof & is further disguised by the fitment of the air con intake unit itself to the roof later on. The large brass roof panel requires 4 full length folds to be made, of which the first are the edge drip rails @ approx 0.5mm wide! These were a bit of a nightmare to fold but I got there with time & patience. Shaping the side slope of the roof to the angle of the cab is another critical area & well worth spending some extra time on to get it right. I recommend the roof be dry fitted once the correct shape & position is obtained & then thin superglue applied from the inside & allowed to flow around the joins. A few further odds & ends are now installed to the underside of cab floor including cab mounting points, the exhaust silencer & manifold down pipe, an etched brass heat shield, some piping & a filter assembly. Finally in section 22 the hood & the road wheels and tyres are prepared. The hood is a one piece moulding with a lovely etched brass grill & an additional stiffener bar bearing the tilt hinges & convoy blackout lamp. - 7860
The floor-pan is built up from a vast array of detailed parts, with 5 parts to each front seat for example, not counting the mountings they sit on, & a 5 part rear bench seat. Apart from the sheer number of parts involved, the assembly method will be familiar to any truck modeller. The dash is exquisitely detailed & comes with a series of decals as well as moulded in detail. The main upper cab shell comes as four separate sides, plus separate doors. A nice touch as these can easily be posed open for better viewing of all that internal work. No seat belts are supplied but a dedicated modeller could easily include these cut from lead foil or similar material. Most, but not all, of the glazing is done from the inside. With careful counter masking of the apertures, the shell can be painted the recommended green on the inside, & sand (in my case) on the outside without the need to mask off any glass as all glazing can be added later. The inside walls of the cab shell are also dripping with separate detail added by the modeller. One such really nice touch is the inclusion of etched interior sun visors, which are movable & can be posed at any desired angle! - 7859
The black vinyl air bags supplied are truly stunning in their moulded detail & are ‘shaped’ to take up the angle difference between the trailing arm & the chassis. Due to the rest of the detail that follows on from installing the airbags, it is not possible to leave them out & fit them later after painting the chassis. Consequently they are fitted now & will need brush painting later. One nice touch is the inclusion of 6 separately moulded air bag air supply pipes. In a civilian truck kit we might consider that to be ‘super detailing’, but here it is all included for you! A tip to anyone else building the rig is the alignment of the prop shaft U/Js. Each prop comes in 3 parts. Two end ‘half U/J’ sections & the prop tube itself moulded with the other half of the U/J. Alignment is critical & each end section where they are added to the axles & transmission should be set dead horizontal. Failure to do so means, that the prop tubes cannot be installed later. Stages 10 to 15 take in the twin fuel tank assemblies with fine etched brass step treads. The tanks are in two parts in the common practice, but the top & bottom join lines are cleverly placed to be out of site on assembly. Leaving only the end joins to deal with. A lesson there that Italeri could learn I think. Also covered in these 5 stages are the radiator assembly (11 parts just for the radiator!), the monster run up ramps, battery box, stowage locker, air tanks, movable double oscillating fifth wheel & the front wings. The front wings both have separate mounting stalks, etched brass stays, & etched mud flaps. - 7858
Stages 3 to 9 cover the assembly of the 4 driven axles & their suspension sets. All 4 axles are beautifully detailed with excellent parts fit. The front & rear axles both have ‘pose-able’ although not fully ‘working’ steering with a good amount of lock. Here, I decided early in the build to set the steering on a lock. For anyone building the kit & doing the same thing, remember the rear axle in a driven rear tag set up will always turn in the opposite direction to the front axle. I confess though my rear axle displays a bit too much lock with hindsight. A good number of the finely etched brass parts start to creep in by this stage too. All of the brass wear comes sandwiched between sheets of lightly self adhesive clear film for their protection. Several etched frets are duplicated to make up the quantities required & all frets are packed with stiff card between them. Very impressive! The etched brass is also very high tech, it being both half etched on both sides & then re-etched very lightly in places where extra fold lines occur. - 7857
What is a minor niggle though, is that the five parts that make up that cross member may be spread over 5 different sprues which can take some time to find when you’re flicking back & forth from one sprue to another, to another. With that in mind I decided to keep a loose record of the build time per section and a running total of the parts count.The first 2 sections complete just the ladder frame with the engine bottom end detail & gearbox, a few external brackets & the airbag mounts. This amounted to the first 2 hours work & 94 parts. - 7855
Whilst building up the ladder frame it occurred to me early on that, while they are beautifully crisp mouldings, some of the components are overly complex in their assembly….5 parts to complete just 1 cross member for example, where an Italeri equivalent in 1/24th would be in 1 piece. It’s not a complaint, just an observation. - 7854
The construction begins, as you might expect with the HET ladder frame chassis. This includes the main transmission & the kerbside engine detail. The kit does not contain a full engine sadly, but I understand that aftermarket suppliers are already on the case with a resin engine & replacement wheels & tyres - 7856
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The Hobby Boss kit, which retails in the UK at around £110.00 arrives in a fairly monster box of some 23” x 13”. It is packed, & I do mean ‘packed’ with a total of no less than 32 sand coloured, letter coded sprues, a further 3 clear sprues, vinyl suspension air bags, 31 vinyl tyres, various pipes, springs & cordage for hydraulic piping, air hoses & winch ropes & finally no fewer than 12 superb photo-etch brass frets. The instructions stretch over 47 pages with a total of 53 sections. With thirty exploded diagrams for the HET & a further twenty three for the trailer, the instructions are very good & clearly drawn , but there is a lot to concentrate on to avoid mistakes. An additional full colour painting & decal placement instruction is also provided. The parts themselves are very crisp & cleanly moulded, as you might expect from a new release kit & all are individually numbered obviously. What IS impressive is that when two sprues are placed in a bag together there is a layer of sponge foam padding between them & wrapped around all the more delicate items. 11 out of 10 for packaging then! Interestingly, I note the word OSHKOSH is perfectly moulded into the hood of the kit & yet on the box art picture hood it is written as C8KHQ8H ?