Comparing VVS Suspensions I've been wanting to do this article ever since completing the HVSS comparison article. As you can see, I have included the parts from a Mirage M3 Medium Tank kit because those parts would be perfectly appropriate for use on early Shermans. One thing to keep in mind is this: these scans considerably magnify the real items thereby making differences between the parts stand out. This is good if you're a real rivet counter, and tenths of a millimeter are important to you. But I think the most important thing is how these parts look on the final model. When they are shown side by side as on this page, the return roller, for example, on one kit may look huge when compared to that on another kit, yet when seen on a built model, will it really be noticable? Just something to think about. Bogies I was a little surprised when I looked at these parts in the side-by-side scans. I now have a much greater appreciation for the bogie from Extratech/Eduard. It certainly could use some help in areas lacking detail, but when I looked at the parts in the box, I thought it was going to look very large and blocky when built, but as you can see, that isn't the case. While it lacks the detail and molding finesse of the Dragon bogie, it looks decent and in no way needs replacing. The Dragon bogie looks the best of this bunch, as long as you buy a recent kit release with the revised parts (early releases had flawed bogies; see the M4A1 Normandy preview). The Trumpeter bogie would have been an excellent piece, except for the lack of support ribs molded onto the suspension arms.
One thing that stands out to me when looking at these scans is the overall lack of variety in these parts. Only one kit, the Extratech/Eduard kit, has the upraised return roller arm, and even that one is questionable, and could actually represent the horizontal arm as well, depending on how it's glued. Given the molding quality of the Dragon part, that's the company that I would hope would give us different variations of the bogies, but they seem utterly uninterested in doing so. Mirage is the only company giving us the early style bogie with the return roller on the top of the bogie. I guess this isn't surprising since this bogie was seen on only the earliest Shermans in North Africa, none of which have yet been released by any company. Modelltrans offers this early bogie as a resin conversion set, which I believe is based on the Mirage parts. Also notice the track return skids. I think the Trumpeter skid looks the best, with Dragon and even the old Italeri (ESCI) parts looking decent as well. But none of these compare well to skids made from etched metal. The only kits that include etched metal parts are the Profipack versions from Eduard, which I believe are discontinued, and UM's newest M4A1 kit. You can find these skids in several aftermarket detail sets, and I recommend to any manufacturer debating producing new detail sets to be sure and include them. Wheels Sprocket Wheels All of the sprocket wheels shown below are almost exactly the same size: approximately 9.5mm diameter. Even the Revell piece is correct for this scale (probably the only part in that kit that is). We have four choices of sprocket styles here: the solid sprocket plate, and three types with cutouts behind each spocket tooth. The example of the the one with the "dimpled" cutouts behind the sprocket teeth (from Trumpeter) is very fine. Italeri's, although it's missing a sprocket tooth, is the only one with the squared attachment points where the sprocket plate is bolted to the hub, and the others have the rounded attachment points. There is a fourth style of sprocket wheel, with additional dimples in the sprocket plate between the cutouts, but nobody makes that style at this time.
Idler Wheels There are two styles of idler wheel: open-spoked and stamped, solid spoke. As of this writing, the only decent open-spoke idlers are from Trumpeter and Mirage, whereas several companies make good stamped wheels. The Italeri wheel is a bit strange. It is a solid wheel, yet the spokes are very deep and prominent, as though it was supposed to be an open-spoke wheel. The UM idler is the opposite, with very shallow detail and the rim cast off-center of the wheel diameter. With the exception of the huge Revell wheel, they are all within a hair of being correct in size. The Dragon wheel is probably the best, but the Trumpeter and Mirage wheels are very good too. The correct diameter of these wheels should be just under 7.8mm.
Road Wheels We have three varieties of road wheel avialable to us in this scale: the early, open-spoke style, the middle, stamped style, and the later solid dish style. Nobody markets the fourth variety, which is basically an open-spoke wheel with the openings welded closed with armored plates (though the Italeri wheel could pass for this one). These wheels should have a diameter of 7.05mm in 1/72nd scale, and most of the wheels shown here measure very close to that. There are a few exceptions, and in fact, I was suprised to see how bad most of the MR Models wheels look compared to the others. The Shermans by MR are such gorgeous models, I guess I just assumed that their wheels were nice too, without ever looking very closely at them before now. They market two varieties each of the open-spoke and stamped wheels, one of each of which is really poor. I wonder if the second variety represents an attempt to improve upon the earlier wheels.
Many of these wheels are very good, but there are also many that are not. The Revell wheel and the early MR Models wheels are simply too large to use (plus the early MR stamped wheel has an incorrect number of spokes). Even the improved MR stamped wheel is a bit larger than the others seen here, though being in resin, you could spend the time sanding them smaller. As with their idler wheel, the Italeri road wheel has very deep and pronounced spokes, almost as though it was an open-spoke wheel, but there are no openings between the spokes. The best open-spoke wheel is the resin piece by Calibre72, followed by the plastic Trumpeter and Mirage wheels. The spokes of the Eduard wheel look decent, but this wheel is far too thick, by about 25%. It's probable that we could sand the rear of the wheels to make them thinner, as nobody will see the backs anyway, but the bogie trucks also may need to be modified to accept the narrower wheels. The UM spoked wheel is bad for many reasons, such as being molded off-center and with an extra spoke. UM's stamped wheel is a little better, but with very shallow detail and the center hole drilled off-center. There are several very good stamped wheels, including those by Calibre72, Dragon and Trumpeter. Even the Extratech wheel is decent. Only two companies make the solid dish wheel, as far as I'm aware: Trumpeter in plastic, and MR Models in resin or white metal with two of their conversion kits. I've not seen the MR Models wheels in hand, so I cannot comment on them. The Trumpeter wheel is really quite good. Tracks I think that tracks are one of the most neglected parts of Sherman tank models. I've seen some absolutely gorgeous builds of excellent kits (or even poor kits made into masterpieces) that have been completely let down by poor tracks. I suggest that people pay closer attention to the tracks on their models because the tracks are such a huge contributor to the model's final appearance. In particular where they wrap around the sprocket wheels. Make sure that the sprocket teeth fit perfectly into the edges of the tracks, and that the soft plastic tracks do not bend in the middle of the links. The following image from one of Trumpeter's box tops perfectly illustrates these two problems:
These problems can best be avoided by using hard plastic (or metal or resin) link and length tracks. I've made it no secret in all of my kit reviews that I normally detest soft plastic tracks. But as I've also mentioned in my reviews of the several Dragon Sherman kits, I think that the tracks made in Dragon's DS100 material don't appear to suffer from these same problems due to the nature of the Sherman tracks. The tracks for the VVS suspension are very thick, and if they are molded properly, as Dragon has done, then these single piece, "rubberband" tracks are likely the best way to reproduce Sherman tracks in this scale. An additional way to improve upon the Dragon tracks is to carefully make a thin slice in between each link with a very sharp knife. This helps to separate individual links, and further encourages the track to bend in the proper place. Make sure you do not cut into the end connectors. See here:
I think that the Italeri release of the old ESCI M4A1 Sherman includes both the soft plastic and hard plastic versions of the T48 track. Also, later versions of the ESCI kit, depending on which company boxed it, may also include both, or only the hard plastic versions. In this table, I have shown the soft plastic track under ESCI, and the hard plastic track under Italeri only for convenience. So, what do we see here? The most common tracks available to us are the T48 rubber chevron and the T54E1 steel chevron varieties, which I also think may have been the most common versions of track used on American Shermans. The British frequently used T62 and WE210 tracks, but we have only one example of each available to us so far. We have a wide range of quality between the manufacturers, with the only really good examples of all the tracks coming from Dragon. The exception to this is the T54E2 track from Extratech/Eduard, which I think is overall the best track available to us; however, it is an extremely rare track style, only occasionally seen in photos. The Revell track has an odd shape to its chevrons, and could theoretically represent either the rubber or steel chevrons, though I placed it under the T54E1 column because I think it's closest to that style. That track is also a little bit wider than the others as well, and may not fit on most accurately-sized kits. Other than this one example, the other tracks are all very close to being correctly sized, all of them being about 0.1-0.3mm too wide (Revell is about 0.8mm too wide). The Trumpeter tracks have nice detail, but they are so thin and flexible that it will be almost impossible to make them look good. My compliments to anyone who is able to do so. Mirage makes two basic tracks, the plain rubber block T51 style included in their M3 Medium Tank series kits, and the T48 rubber chevron sold as an aftermarket set. They also market several other track variants that are simply the T51 tracks with photoetched parts to be glued onto the face of each rubber block link to provide the surface detail for the specific track style. I've not seen any of these built yet, but I suspect that the detail may be too flat. The chevrons on their T-48 track have sunken a bit when the rubber was curing, leaving unsightly sinkmarks in the center of each chevron. The UM tracks tread that middle ground between most closely resembling the T-48 or T54-E1 chevron tracks. I think they are closest to the steel chevron variety, so I put them in that column. These tracks are also considerably narrower than all the others in this review. It is unfortunate that the UM tracks have these errors, because being cast in link-and-length, hard plastic is now a wasted opportunity. For aftermarket tracks, the Fine Scale Factory winter tracks are simply copies of the ESCI track with extended end connectors added to them. The resin tracks from MR Models are fairly decent, though not remarkable. Their T49 track was the only one of that style available to us prior to the release of the Dragon kits. Their T54E1 tracks have very flattened chevrons, and are overall disappointing. But their WE210 tracks, although not perfect, are the only ones available to us so far, until Dragon will finally give us a set, if ever. ModellTrans makes a set of T54E2 tracks with extended end connectors. I assume they chose this stye because of the very nice Extratech tracks to use as a base, but the same criticism applies here: this was an extremely rare style of track. And finally, there is a set of T49 tracks available in photoetched brass from OKB Grigorov, which again I've not yet seen, but suspect also may be a bit too flat. |
