(Login Bravo21) Registered Users from IP address 155.70.23.45
I'm gearing up to tackle the old Bandai/Fuman SdKfz 232 8Rad kit. The tires are ok but I'm considering options to improve them with some better detailed tires. Does anyone here have one of these old Bandai kits AND a Tamiya Krupp Protze kit? If so, can you tell me if the overall tire height and width are close?
I'm considering mating up the Bandai 232 wheels with the Tamiya Kfz.70 tires. I'd do it by carving the tires off of the Bandai wheels and drilling the wheels out of the Tamiya tires. I've done similar swaps in 1/35th scale, so while it's a bit of work I know it can yield a vastly better looking set of tires.
I know it seems crazy but I'm curious if it would work before I go out and buy a Tamiya Protze. Or maybe I'd just be better off using the Bandai tires/wheels as-is.
The Tamiya Krupp Protze wheel is 17.5mm in overall diameter and 4mm wide at the widest part of the tire, and the wheel rim diameter is 10mm; the Bandai SdKfz 232 wheel is 18.5mm in overall diameter and 4.5mm wide at the widest part of the tire, and the wheel rim diameter is 10mm. You could make the switch, but the SdKfz 232 tires would be smaller. Scaling from the plans in PanzerTracts (I know, I know, but APG's real '232 is a bit far from Dallas), the SdKfz 232 tires appear to be 32.4" in diameter; the Protze tires scale out to 32.5", bang on; the Bandai '232 tires scale 35", over 2" big. So, your plan would actually make wheels more accurate than the ones in the Bandai kit. I'd say go for it. The Protze tires are very nicely done. I would seriously consider making up one good master and casting the rest. I will have to look into doing the same, as I have four Bandai '232s, and I'm not doing 20 wheels.... Good call.
If the tyres were copy-cast, it would be nice to add the circumferential grooves in the tread before the mould was made. Tamiya has always left this detail out, doubtless due to the limitations of injection moulding.
Cheers -
Malcolm
This message has been edited by Malcolm_48 from IP address 4.152.255.209 on Dec 5, 2008 8:07 PM
Into doing something small like that at the moment. Finally getting the junk unpacked and sorted and re-setting up shop again (sort of!). Circumferal tread isn't hard to do, let me know if ya need that done.
Thanks, Bruce. Somehow, I knew you and your warehouse of kits and references would probably come through. I made an educated guess that the Protze tires might work based on gallery pics of models found right here on Track 48. That and me old Mk.I eyeball.
I've done a little casting before, so I think I could make one master and cast the rest. However, another option just occurred to me: what about using a front tire from the forthcoming AFV Club 251? What do your plans and calipers say about that possibility, Master Bruce?
as for the SdKfz 251 wheels, I don't have the AFV Club kit yet (it is due out in January 2009), but using the PT plans, it looks as though the '251 front wheels and tires are 33" in diameter, so that would be a good alternative. Some days, ya just can't lose for winning.....
It was a regional micro tonight: Big Sky IPA from Montana Brewing Co. to be exact. Though I like Stella Artois too.
You've been so helpful in my tire sizing questions, I wonder if you wouldn't mind humoring me one last time. How does a tire/wheel from a Tamiya Styer 1500 measure up? Is the wheel too big or the tire not tall enough. Somehow, I'm afraid it might not work.
Who would have thought that a mere 1 mm could inspire grinding out SIXTEEN back-breaking wheels, and this for a lowly BANDAI 8 rad of all things...
You just added a huge amount of work to what I hoped to be a straightforward simple build...
AAARgh...
Now let me add a comparatively small amount; The front deck of the Bandai 8 rad has too much slope and is too short, making the upper front slanted glacis at the nose far too slanted, and the upper front sides too shallow.
Cutting a u pattern around the edges of the front deck, bending it UP, adding a bit of plastic card lenght and maybe width to this deck, while just building up all the other facets with thick goops of putty, I was able at a comparatively reasonable cost in effort to move this hull away from its unfortunate ressemblance with the later Puma hull in this area.
The key aspect to this modification is making the nose upper plate more steep and slightly deeper, causing the front edge of the deck to tilt upward more horizontal and lenghten. Out of laziness this upper front nose plate will be entirely putty for me, which will probably make the final surface finish more laborious. It isn't big however, and with the drying time/contraction already out of the way, I might still come out ahead over blending in a piece of plastic card against such thick, hard plastic...
The Bandai Daimler is definitely less work... And the M-30 ammo carrier is practically flawless now that we have a substitute, hopefully appropriate, drivetrain. I think you have just spurred me into doing these first while I wait to see how your 8 rad wheels turn out...
I was perfectly content to leave the forward hull alone until I read your response!
For me, it's more about overall appearance than absolutely precise measurements to within a .5mm. The kit tires just look bad. I want to get a set of tires that look better and are close in size. The hull doesn't look too bad to me but I might try slipping a wedge of plastic in to prop it up a bit anyway. Thanks for your observations, Gaston.
I think I'm going to order a sprue of wheels from the Protze kit and the Styer kit and see about making a single master, from which I can cast duplicates.
Somewhere in my stash are two WW2 vintage templates John Kennon of the AFV News crowd gave me back in the late 1960s or 70s. One is for the SdKfz 222 light armored car and the other is for the SdKfz 231/232 heavy armored car. These are intended to be copied or applied to a stiff card, cut out and folded, and cemented together - and they both work. I tested the '222 template writing an article in an ancient IPMS Journal way back when, and I used the '232 template to build a master for Airmodel to make a vac-formed 1/76 kit of the '232. With enough medicinal elderberry wine, I could recover this magic juju and build perhaps even accurate models of both of these vehicles and stop b*tchin' about the ICM kit..... I assume these templates are accurate for two reasons: A., APG had the vehicles there to measure the plates and angles to lay out the templates, and B., the templates work, which means all the angles and edges line up, giving a complete form to the model. If I ever find these things, perhaps I'll run off a hull ot two and see how close (or far) our kit manufacturers have come. Oh yeah, these templates are in 1/48 scale already (even then they knew..... ).
Sorry, my last post seems garbled, but I can't sort out the syntax of the mark-up!! Either that or the kids have switched my keyboard to insert instead of overstrike or vice-versa! Mind you, I'm still getting used to not having to pry two letter arms apart after I hit two keys simultaneously....
I'm afraid the Steyr will be a no-go: the overall tire diameter is 18.5mm and the rim diameter is 11.5mm. The Steyr light trucks normally used a 20" rim, while the SdKfz 232 used an 18" rim, so actually the Steyr wheels are scaled accurately, they just don't fit the '232. Go with the Krupp Protze. The Protze kit number is 32534 and the wheels are on sprue "B". I'd second master Tim's suggestion to do one really good master and cast the rest. It will be extremely difficult to make eight wheels EXACTLY the same, and any variations will stand out like a sore thumb. You'll also enjoy the elderberry wine a lot more. I know I do.....
I sort of figured the Styer tires wouldn't work but it's nice to know for certain. I'm going to go after the Krupp Protze tires, though I'm curious to see the AFV Club 251 tires, when the kit comes out next month.
Now that I look at the front end, I see what Gaton is getting at. It certainly seems do-able but with sheet plastic, not putty. The Fuman edition that I got off of eBay has a short-shot lower hull that's going to require a lot of repairing anyway. Tweaking the front end won't take that much more work for me.
I'd hate to knock the wind out of anyone's sails..¸
December 6 2008, 9:35 PM
Especially if they are not some major modeling corporate giant...
But I just can't find in photos the tire diameter discrepancy that has been discussed above. 1mm (2 inches) on such a modest object would be unmistakable, not so much for the overall tire size versus the whole armored car (though that provisionally seems to match too...), but it would be very obvious in the wheel rim diameter to tire thickness ratio.
What I mean by the above is that if you keep the Bandai rims as they are, and remove 1mm off the diameter of the tire, the appearance of the tire side wall will be changed radically; tire thickness on the Bandai wheel is 4mm. Removing 0.5mm from that is taking out 12.5%!!!! (0.5mm on the rim equates to 1 full mm all-around diameter. 12.5% has an enormous visual impact, even on something this small...)
Note that, as carefully as I can make out against my fully assembled hull, not only do I not see an overall discrepancy in tire diameter-to-hull, but also nothing beyond 5% in the ratio between rim edge diameter and tire thickness.
This does not mean that the Bandai rims are not too large, and therefore should not be reduced along with the tires, but you definitely cannot reduce the tire diameter ALONE.
My main quibble with those rims is that the Bandai overall surface is a bit flat while the "dimples" are actually too pronounced...
Given the hard-to-find nature of the Bandai kit, and how generally good it is compared to most other Bandai kits, without any foreseeable challenger in the future, I would strongly recommend that one waits until the dust has fallen before butchering those wheels...
Once again I cannot emphasize enough how taking measurements from drawings must be taken with caution...
Gaston.
P.S. On my kit the upper front nose plate has been cut away from the upward bent front deck, and re-set more vertical, bending the adjoining triangular side facets backward, and all this is thus not solid putty as I described previously... The solid putty is on the sloped sides and the front deck's forward edge mostly. The sharp faceted look is mostly there by teasing the putty, so the sanding of crisp facets will not be prohibitive...
is not changing the overall tire diameter, it's to improve the detail in the tires themselves. The tire diameter change is incidental, though it is likely the overall diameter would be less with 18" rims than with 20" rims. The hull problems may be more difficult than we realize anyway. Compared to drawings and photos, I suspect the Bandai '232 upper hull may be a bit shallow, which is what causes the too-sloped nose section. Fixing this is not hard, but lay in a good supply of you-know-what.....
is not changing the overall tire diameter, it's to improve the detail in the tires themselves. The tire diameter change is incidental, though it is likely the overall diameter would be less with 18" rims than with 20" rims. The hull problems may be more difficult than we realize anyway. Compared to drawings and photos, I suspect the Bandai '232 upper hull may be a bit shallow, which is what causes the too-sloped nose section. Fixing this is not hard, but lay in a good supply of you-know-what.....
the Kool Aid..... I found the error in the Bandai SdKfz 231 forward hull: the glacis plate, that is the top plate in the nose, is too short at the front edge because Bandai apparently got confused about the correct upper nose armor angle and used the more sloped upper nose from the later SdKfz 234 series. The correction is to reset the upper nose plate to a more vertical angle and add 1/16" (1.5mm) to the front end of the glacis. Then you'll have to reset the upper side nose plates, but it might be easier to use Milliput or another filler to do that after the glacis and nose pieces have been modified. Looking at the plans and photos I have available, it does not appear the glacis plate is sloped at too great an angle down to the front. This may be an illusion created by the wrong angle on the upper nose plate.
All this became immediately apparent when I reduced the Doyle plans in the PT #13 down to 1/48. The hull height is OK, the upper tail plate is sloped slightly too far forward, but it's not readily apparent looking at the parts or a finished model. The wheels and tires scale out perfectly to what's on the plans. Eons ago, I measured the wheels on the '231 as I was making that master for Airmodel. The figure I remember is an overall tire diameter of 34.5" bearing in mind the tires had long before gone flat, and there is no way to tell how much bigger they might have been if they had been fully inflated. The APG '231 is now in Germany I believe, and recent photos show the old tires have been replaced, so there is no longer any way of confirming a correct overall wheel and tire diameter. There would have been variations anyway, depending on the tires used and the wear on the treads. Easy come, easy go......
I guess as usual the importance of overall shape overtook my consideration for details...
I have to say that though the thread detail is slightly more impressive on the Protze, I do not find the overall impression to be an improvement over the Bandai parts.
The rise of the threads along the Tamiya sidewall seem a bit prominent, and the square cross-section AND thickness of the Bandai tires is dead-on. The Tamiya threads are also a bit on the broad side... If there is an improvement it must be modest...
At first glance the Bandai tires appear good enough as is for me. Perhaps what we need is a resin manufacturer dedicated to the admittedly dodgy Bandai cause...
As far as avoiding putty on the nose fix, I can only applaud, but there is a weird symmetry thing going on on my right side, and I can only advise to put the helmet on at this point... The trick appears to be to let the Tamiya putty dry to a paste-like semi-hardness, and then to cut the facets into it with a very fresh #11 blade.
My two cents worth, in any case, now that I'm back at it...
So it's not just the Puma front end then? What exactly is a 234, and can the Bandai be used from the box to represent it? That front end fix is worth avoiding, take my word...
In any case the wheels look good for their age, and I am happy to report complete success in fixing the front end with putty, but it was a several hour ordeal... It is not easy at all because of the presence of the large front deck hatch, and several peculiar tendencies to assymmetry, due in large part maybe to my assembly, but perhaps also to the requirements of this not-so easy modification...
Although I was wrong in my approach to the Jagdtiger, compared to what Tim suggested, where the base Tamiya components simply would not allow the correct overall lenght, no matter how much putty was used, here I doubt that dealing with several small pieces of plasticard would have helped, because there is a lot of weird symmetry adjustments and gradual blending-in over long surfaces going on, and I have twice as much putty on one side as I do on the other...
You lose some, you win some. This one has made it, and it looks very crisp and symmetrical.
It would be worth some pictures, but for the time being, sorry...
The best of luck to everyone with it, for I owe this discussion for motivating me to put it through this major hurdle...
Hopefully the rest should be smooth sailing...
Gaston.
P.S. If at all possible, definitely try to make a 234 out of it!
Hi Gaston, glad to hear your technique worked out. Without the kit in front of me it is difficult to imaging exactly how the modifications went, but sounds like you cracked it; great!
I'm just wondering if there are any decent drawings of this hull, or something similar, that I could try out the 'unfold' technique upon? All my own references are for US and Brit stuff, but I wouldn't mind doing a basic 'hull' of something useful if someone else wants to try cutting the parts out and gluing them together. The nearest thing I would use myself might be a Crusader turret, but Tamiya already have that one covered!
You would have better luck with Bruce on this. I made the initial modifications from photos a long time ago. What I did today was the finishing touches to crisp flat surfaces.
I do think if you did the entire front half of the hull top in a pattern it would be a big help, though it would have to reach at least to the mid-lenght "peak" of the side bevels. Some putty would probably be needed to blend it to the potentially assymmetrical Bandai lower hull... This would indeed be better than just adapting plasticard to the carved-up Bandai front top hull...
If I ever uncover that WW2 template set, I shall whisk a copy forthwith to the valiants at Fighting 48th (both vehicles). Unfortunately, there is no template for the later '234 series, but one could no doubt be developed handily from the excellent orthographic plans in PanzerTracts. Somewhere in an ancient time, I read an article that showed how to plot folding templates from good 4-view plans, but I don't remember anything about its source. Of course, you would have to LOVE plane geometry.....
have some common design similarities, they were entirely separate types and no part from one fit the other. Regrettably, this extends to the scale models of the same. For example, the top of the hull of the '234 is lower because it used a "unit body" design approach: the chassis components were attached directly to the bottom of the armor hull, as there was no separate frame as for the '231 series. The body was wider than the '231, with very different front and rear ends, eliminating the chamfered corners of the earlier type. The wheels and tires were considerably larger, being 11.00x20 rather than 210x18, and attached with 10 bolts rather than 6. Regrettably, you cannot get to the '234 from the '231. GasoLine makes the '234 series in resin, and for the moment that is the choice I'd make. Also note that the total production of the '234 series, all four produced models, was only 510 vehicles, and only 100 were the '234/2. The '231/232/233/263 series existed in far larger numbers, a total of 946 vehicles.
I thought that there were about 1200 8 rads 231/232 built or thereabouts. You learn something new every day...
Too bad about the 234 commonality. I would say in an ideal world we would need simply a new resin 232 hull top... It might not be such a bad commercial venture.
Ask Garfield if he couldn't move those Elephant tracks, the poor man... At least that is what I remember hearing, when he was toiling at 50± sets... (Not available anymore)
Re: Help Wanted: Crazy tire size comparison needed.
December 8 2008, 8:32 AM
Hi Dave and others,
If you're going after the Krupp Protze tires, you might want to check out the Modellbau aftermarket "offroad" tire set. Track48 has them at the following URL:
The tread pattern on the MR "off-road" wheels.....
December 8 2008, 10:23 AM
is not correct for the standard German continental type military tire. Most of the SdKfz 231/232/233 series appear to have had the standard tread pattern. Actually, at this point, if someone were interested in making new wheels, it would be best to start from scratch, as the wheel centers for the Bandai SdKfz 232 kit are a bit flat - the wheel center should protrude more than it does on the model. Master Tim is right; we need someone with a CAD program simply to work up a new wheel and tire pattern in 3-D print prototyping, tread notches and all, and then cast resin copies from that, as the young Jedi is already doing with Fighting 48th..... Absent that, we could live with the Bandai wheels - mud is our friend....
That was the last puzzle piece I was looking for. Comparing your measurments of the forthcoming AFV Club 251 tires to Bruce's measurements of the Tamiya and Bandai tires, I think the AFV club part might be the best option.
I think Gaston pointed out that the Bandai wheel is a bit flat in profile and I agree. I think I can improve it after I've removed the old fire from it, before I mount it in the AFV Club tire. I can then make a mold of it and cast the other 7 wheels.
I know this sounds like a lot of work to some folks but to me, good wheels and tracks make the difference on AFV models.
Thanks very much to everyone who has contributed to this thread.
Good call.
