Recently I have been working on repairing and painting my T54 tanks. It is an old Roco kit and so over the decades I have picked up a lot of them on the used market. One frequent problem is that the previous owners put the tracks on backwards.
Note the tank in the photo, the front of the tank is to the left. The track here is on properly. The drive sprocket has little teeth on it and they are at the front. There is a big gap between the first and second road wheel. The other road wheels are evenly spaced and the rear idler wheel has no teeth on it. In most versions of this model the left and right side tracks with fit on either side.
The commanders hatch often falls off and disappears on older models. I have used the commanders hatch from another tank as a template and made a new hatch out of sheet styrene. Two small bits of styrene could be used to make the arms to the hatch, but given that I have to about 30 of them that is more work than I care to do!
The front of the turret where the main gun is mounted is often a bit stretched out. As a result the tank suffers from floppy gun. The cannon hangs down over the glacis as if the tank is sad. I glued a paper thin bit of sheet plastic to the inside dimple of the turret-gun mount and it usually solves the problem. In an extreme case I glue one piece of plastic on each side, but that is rarely necessary.
This is a rare beast I got it new in the 1960s and it has soldiered on for 50 years in my collection. It still has the original turret and the tracks are on the correct sides and the gun points proudly towards the play time enemy.
Thanks for reading.
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Mike Bunkermeister Creek