2cm Flakvierling 38 on early Sd.Kfz 7/1

[totalize]

Hi all,

Well, I have been absent for some time as I stepped away from modeling over the summer months after building Hasegawa's P-47D T-bolt to focus on spending time with the family enjoying our short summer and working on my new modeling website which is almost done.

Now, with the fall upon us I am starting to get back into the swing of things. Thus I decided to build Trumpeter's Sd.Kfz. 7/1 with flakvierling. Been meaning to do this one for a few years but now is as good as any to take a kick at the can with this one.

The Trumpeter kit is a pretty good one. It's nicely detailed but has some issues. The kit has some flash on some parts(easily removed but a pain the A$$ to deal with), detail is not as crisp as the Dragon equivalent but in my view the difference is negligible. The Flakvierling is a piece of crap and the ammo trailer it comes with is for the regular single 2cm flak gun. Don't know what Trumpeter was thinking here really. The drive sprocket doesn't belong on any early Sd.Kfz 7/1 either. Hmm... so despite these cock ups (as the English would say) I picked up some add-ons to help this kit out. 

Got the griffon model alum 4 barrel 2cm set along with the front resin grill set and the griffon Flakvierling sight which if I recall is for use on ground targets.These guns had different sights for ground and air targets. The Dragon kit has this sight in styrene so its probably redundant but we'll see. I picked up a set of Fruils (never used these before) which also came with the correct white metal drive sprockets. I also added the excellent Dragon 2cm flakvierling which I will use in place of the Trumpy kit.  I also  recently ordered a small PE fret for the front engine louvers as the Trumpeter ones are not accurate. Finally I picked up the excellent Bronco Sd.Ah 52 ammo trailer which was seen with these early vehicles. All these add-ons were purchased over the last few years with the Griffon engine louver PE fret only purchased a few weeks ago.

Here's what I am talking about.




 

[totalize]

nd my first update. the kit has you initially build the frame then build the engine then back to the frame. Kind of weird but manageable. 

Frame start initial glue and priming. The kit comes with a ton of PE already. I added the PE brackets for the tow winch with my hold and fold tool.

[Leon]

Nice start on the frame and some nice looking goodies.

[dupes]

Lot of stuff going into this build!

[wbill76]

Off and running! Pulling up a chair to follow along.

[dierk]

Nice choice of goodies! Sorry to hear about the lack of accuracy on both the flak and the halftrack - maybe the Dragon instructions guy moonlights as kit-designer for Trumpy?
Enjoy the Friuls. Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs, but whether you paint them or use blackening fluid the most important thing is to clean them thoroughly - I soak them over-night in vinegar cleaner and scrub them with an old tooth brush. The instructions tell you to drill out the holes - I don't bother, I just feed the wire in with a pair of pliers a millimetre at a time. That way I can push the wire through any flash that might be in the holes and I (mostly) don't need to glue the wire in place.
Looking forward to more, so I'll pop round now and again.

[deafpanzer]

Its great having you back! I figured many of us like to take summer breaks too. Count me in too...

[totalize]

Thanks a bunch guys. Glad to be back.

Dierk, thanks for the advise on the Fruils. Duly noted. I will consult your post when I get around to this part of the build.

My griffon Pe order arrived. Part No. L35A053. It consists of 3 frets for the engine/front end of the vehicle along with some brass and plastic rod. Now I can build up the engine. Can't promise I am going to use all the parts. There are some Photo Etch parts which are are sometimes too thin to look the part and I suspect this will be the case here as well.  Will post a few pics soon.

David.

[totalize]

Back with another update.

Here's some progress on the engine with the PE add-ons from the Griffon set. I used .6mm lead wire for the rubber hoses from the carburetor to the exhaust manifold instead of the .5mm brass rod that came with the Griffon set. Much easier to bend into shape and the thickness looked more to scale. The engine is definitely more detailed than the dragon one. In fact the griffon PE detail up parts reference the dragon kit and some of the parts that you are instructed to use are already on the Trumpy engine. In such a case I did not add the PE part. I used lead foil for the fan an alternator belts just cut to different widths. The lead foil came from a bottle of wine. Jlohr I believe.

Here are some pics of the built up engine.

[Leon]

Nice detail work on the engine David! Looks really great.

[wbill76]

Detail work on the engine is paying off. It always surprises me how much or how little different manufacturers actually include on things like this in the different kits.

[totalize]

Thanks Guys,

Bill, I agree. The dragon engine equivalent is not as detailed as the Trumpy one but from the reviews I read they make up for it in other areas in fit and finish, i.e. some of the equivalent parts they do make have finer sharper detail over the trumpeter kit.

At any rate. Here's another update.

The engine is now painted in its based colour. No weathering has been done or washes applied except for the unintended ones where I got paint on a part I didn't want then wiped it off with some dabs of water which created a bit of a wash as the diluted paint+water ran over some areas such as the intake manifold. Not a big deal since its going to get a heavier wash anyways.

[dierk]

Nice work on the engine David! I have to admit I googled pictures of the real thing to try and understand why there would be hoses connecting the carb to the manifold - must up the dosage of my anti-rivet-counting medication...

[wbill76]

Some nice progress on the power plant, should look good under the usual weathering treatment.

[totalize]

Thanks guys much appreciated. Here's a pic of the actual engine. It's a rebuild obviously but I think it's fairly representative of the engine itself.

[Leon]

Nice work on the engine David! Looks like the real thing.

[TRM]

Very nice!! Going to be some decent eye candy under the hood!

[wing_nut]

Very nice work on this. Engine look great.

[totalize]

Thanks guys.

This kit I must say is peculiar is some respects. Perhaps its because this is my first Trumpeter kit but I get the sense that in insofar as the parts count is concerned there is a certain lack of engineering finesse here not to mention the flash on quite a few parts that need to be removed. The styrene in this kit is softer than what I am used to and kind of reminds me of those little green toy soldiers we all use to play with as kids. Offsetting this is the amount of detail you get on the various assemblies which is nice.

Here's a shot of the winch. Very nice detail and definitely better than the dragon equivalent i.e it has the tow cable guards that are done with PE plates and copper rod which you can see have been added per the kit instructions.



And here's what I am talking about with regards to my comments on engineering finesse. Here's the rear plate that is attached to the vehicle frame. There are 10 parts that make up this assembly including the copper rod and PE part it is attached to. Now part of this is detail but the housing where the tow cable comes out of (top left of plate) is two parts. If this part was better engineered it would be one part.

[TRM]

Assemblage is looking pretty good there...despite the over-engineered parts! I'm still thinking when folks call for action from the manufactures for more detail it translates into higher part counts. Keep plugging away!

[Leon]

Looking good David! I have a Trumpeter build on the bench now that could have used less parts.Like Todd said,people want more detail.

[dierk]

Nice work!
Trumpeter/HobbyBoss seem to have adopted the idea that the more dust-like parts you add to a kit the better the resulting model - I remember with horror the chassis of the GAZ-67b which is made up of nearly 100 parts. Or the HobbyBoss T-26 drive-sprockets made up of about 10 parts each. Some MiniArt kits fall into the same category: no argument, their GAZ trucks look nice - but do you really need to have axles that are made up of 15odd parts where even the oil-filler plug is a separate part? I'm pretty much convinced they do it to justify a premium price. Wasn't always like this: Trumpy's KV1s are (still) great kits, with a reasonable parts-count and a low price.

[totalize]

Thanks a bunch for checking in guys and posting your comments. Certainly don't be shy about throwing some constructive criticism my way. I'm in technical sales and have a pretty thick skin. Of course if you say my build is absolute Shyte I may beg to differ but that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

At any rate Todd and Dierk Trumpeter in my view fell a bit short on the engineering of this kit. I say that because in my view a masterful engineering assembly has a logical number of parts, has excellent detail and little or no flash. Trumpeter missed the mark on a few of these points but in all fairness I have not seen a kit (even Tamiya's latest and greatest 1/32 Mosquito which I have) that gets a check mark on all these points. If they did I think the kit or assembly would be perfect and we all know no kit is perfect. So, when I see things Like I mentioned above and dierk's comments about 15 parts just to do an axle I say the assembly is under engineered. Good Cadd design (i.e. accurate part dimensions and fit) with excellent molds(sharp detail, good fit, no flash) I think are the hallmarks of an excellent kit which is to say the kit has high detail, good fitting parts and logical part count. There's always a trade off between level of detail and part count and that's the challenge. Tamiya and the Japanese kit manufacturers seem to have struck the right balance here, especially Tamiya which is understandable as they have been doing it longer than just about any kit manufacturer out there.

Cheers,
Dave.

[wbill76]

Any progress is good progress Dave! One of the reasons you see that kind of approach for details with this kit is that it's an older one in Trumpeter's lineup and their tendency has always been to go for more smaller parts to create detail vs. integrated detail. They still can't compete with Bronco though when it comes to lots of parts to achieve detail though!

[BJ---Rest In Peace]

Looking good, Bookmarked this one as I have all 4 versions of the Trumpy Kit. I think on mine I will steal the sprocket from the dragon kit and just cast some copies.

I am pretty sure the hoses on the Manifold to the carb base is a coolant crossover.

[deafpanzer]

Looking real good!!!

[vindicareassassin]

Coming along nicely, especially like the details done to the engine.

[totalize]

Nov 16, 2015 20:24:29 GMT -5 wbill76 said:

Any progress is good progress Dave! One of the reasons you see that kind of approach for details with this kit is that it's an older one in Trumpeter's lineup and their tendency has always been to go for more smaller parts to create detail vs. integrated detail. They still can't compete with Bronco though when it comes to lots of parts to achieve detail though!

Bill, 

Yep, I can see their approach in this regard.  I like the detail in this kit but its a bit soft in some areas.

[totalize]

Nov 17, 2015 12:23:03 GMT -5 BJ---Rest In Peace said:

Looking good, Bookmarked this one as I have all 4 versions of the Trumpy Kit. I think on mine I will steal the sprocket from the dragon kit and just cast some copies.

I am pretty sure the hoses on the Manifold to the carb base is a coolant crossover.

Thanks for checking in Billie. Yes,  I believe the hoses allow hot air from exhaust to go to the carb to keep it heated. 

[totalize]

Thanks for checking in on the build.

Engine completed and ready for mounting. I gave it a light dry brush and a wash of oils then put some oil staining on the engine cover. Missing is the crank but I will add that once I mount it to the frame.