Israeli M50 WIP 3 final assembly

I made the bustle railing using some Lion Roar "Copper Beams 1.0mm" although to me the wire looked and worked like brass. First the rail was set into a hole on each end, then I traced around the rail with a pencil to mark a track to position the little braces. These were made from Evergreen plastic rod set into holes. This was actually pretty easy and only took a short time to make.

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While mostly OOTB I did use a spare Academy telephone box. I bought some K&S brass wire to make handles out of, but it was so brittle that even a single, crisp, 90 degree bend caused it to snap. I never had that problem before. I had to anneal the wire, but then it was hard to get sharp bends. Fortunately I only had to make three handles.

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I used some more Evergreen rod to make little pegs to space out the hull stowage. It's hard to get the kit stowage to fit on the tank in the same position as the real tank. I think some proportions are off.

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I had planned on using some AFV Club T80 tracks, but the two sets I purchased both were mis-packaged and are not usable. So the kit Dragonstyrene tracks (that were going on a Tamiya M51) were used. They fit pretty nicely but I think the chevron pattern is a bit flat. You have to cut and splice segments into the track so they fit the M4A4 chassis.

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Dragon does not supply a real HVSS idler wheel attachment system. You get a poor set of VVSS parts that are crude for VVSS and just wrong for HVSS. I used a spare set of mounts from the Premium M51 kit. They don't fit well on the M50 hull and the best situation would be to cut off the molded VVSS brackets on the back and totally scratch build everything. The ribbed braces on the hull side were from another kit too.

I had wanted to mount the side fenders a millimeter or so lower on the hull side but then they would not line up with the front mud flaps/fender. The position of those is set by the position of the transmission housing and the front of the hull. I think a lot of the problems in the kit stem from everything being cobbled together from different kits. The hull is from the M4A4, the transmission housing was added. The suspension comes from the old Korean War Sherman... The kit drive sprockets are too close to the hull too and the sprocket and track end connectors foul up under the front fenders.