FUBAR BUNDY Jagdpanzer IV L/70 1:35 Tamiya 35088

Welcome again :)
This time second, more optimistic part of Jagdpanzer's story- bringing it back to it's glory :)
As there were quite a lot of people with  severe butthurt, caused by mine complaints on The Only One Proper Producer, there are "almost" no further complaints in this part :P










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AHAHA, I was joking :( Yet 2 more elements joins to the list presented earlier:

First:
Every, absolutely EVERY piece supporting side armor screens has this small wheel- mark after push rod. And it's concave. Yes, you have concave hole to fill in concave part. There is absolutely no way to put there putty and sand it down without massacre every supporter. And I was too lazy to make all of them from plasticard of appropriate thickness (which ofc I haven't).
Finally I decided to leave them as they are. This time you won, Tamiya.

Second:

I had to make new muffler, because original one had two faults. First, it looked a bit awkward (undersized, exhaust in wrong position) and second one you can guess yourself.

I made it using parts cut off from original muffler and plasticard pipe:

Yup, you guessed it! It was completely mismatched to holes in hull, and bent after gluing it's parts together.

Building part2

Let's start from the beginning from the bottom from the suspension :)
All wheels were done during one evening, and one beer. Of course, I couldn't resist temptation to put everything together to see how entire  suspension looks like. I haven't decided if the road wheels would be rotating, or glued stiff.

Aaaaaand I've found next holes for plug&putty! Really, it stopped being funny some holes ago...

Readers, which had read mine previous part can remind themselves how I was complaining about suspension design. However, after gluing all wheels it seems that the problem is caused only by driving wheels (and poorly designed rubber o-rings inside). They just stand out of the hull by too little.

So, I decided to rip this sh*t apart and build mine own system:

I drilled out holes in driving wheels, thrown away rubber gaskets from inside and sanded so they can adapt mine plasticard pipe.

Than I cut out all hull mounts for wheels and put this axle through the hull:

Last thing left to do was to add short piece of wider pipe, so axle and wheels won't move sideways. Of course, I had to glue it a bit off center, but still- it works :P

Last obstacle on the road to closing the hull was this four-fingers-wide holes, about which I'd written before. I plugged them with strips of plasticard, by the way filling all other push-rod holes with putty.

Yup, I also wander what for, as that will be almost invisible after completing the vehicle, but I like things done well :)

First trial hull fitting, I wandered if there will be enough space for wheels and tracks under hull's superstructure, and how this new road wheels will look like:

Than upper body part was done: I glued missing support beams (ofc with push rod holes), assembled gun mounting system and I snipped off mudguards. Why? You'll read at the end of this post :)

Plus I've modified Tamiya's periscopes. It was hard for me to believe that crew will put them down for the night, so I figured something which at least resembles them somehow:

I'm absolutely sure that's not how German periscopes looked like, but at least it's something :o

Than I glued permanently both hull parts (suspension and superstructure), and added other stuff that will be painted together with main hull. 

Gluing from front:

Gluing from the top:

Gluing from the rear:

At the end I just couldn't resist temptation and I put everything together :)

And now, for the finish let's get back to mudguards I was talking about earlier. Mudguards were in tanks made just from thin sheets of metal, similar like side armor, which in reality was 5mm thick on PzIV. Rear armor plates (covering engine compartment) were 20mm thick.

Soooo, in 1:35 panels of side armor should be about 0,14mm thick, and rear plates will be about 0,57mm. While on this model thinnest elements from those 3 described are sideskirts- of 1,2mm thicnkess, while rear mudguards were more than 2mm!

I've decided that side  armor and mudguards will be made from brass sheets of appropriate thickness. Finally they'll look somewhere close to original ones.