"Help building F-Toys pre-painted 1/144 tanks" Topic

I have a pile of F-Toys 1/144 tank kits from the Battle Tank Kit Collection.

Over the recent vacation, I tried building two of them (a T-34/85 and a Panther), and got totally stuck. I'm hoping somebody has some advice.

The kits are ridiculously fiddly for the scale – separate wheels/drivers/idlers (some in two pieces!) that each have to be glued on in the right order; tiny bits to glue onto the hull; multi-part turrets. It took me over an hour each just to assemble and glue all the tiny bits on two different models.

Where I get completely stuck is the treads. The tank tracks are the "rubber band" type, made in a loops too small to go over the wheels/idler/driver once assembled. The track material is only very slightly flexible, and I have no idea how to stretch it over fragile little plastic bits without breaking them. If the instructions say anything, I can't tell (I can't read Japanese), but I can say the illustrations are useless – they show the treads magically going from off-tank to on-tank as if it's no challenge at all.

I tried a few different ways to work around this:

• Save the driver, idler, or both for last, and stretch the treads from the inside. The treads don't stretch, nothing holds on, and the plastic pegs are too fragile for that kind of strain anyway.
  
• Carve the teeth out of the inside of the tracks where they are supposed to loop around the driver and idler. No help.
  
• Cut the tracks. That makes a gap more than 1/4" wide I have to fill somehow.

Has anyone successfully built one of these kits? Or a similar model? How did you assemble the tracks?

- Ix

They are a pain in the ass aren't they? Same with some of the newer Dragon offerings. What I did was run hot water over them and stretch them gently in sections until they would fit. I broke a couple of the Dragon tracks but I glued them and stretched them again avoiding the glued area.

What did you glue the tracks back together with?

I have one split already, I'm going to have to fix it.

Gorilla super glue.

Maybe immerse the tracks in a cup of just boiled hot water and then see if when hot they stretch enough to fit easily over the wheels?

I'd cut the track and sew an extra piece on to extend it, paint it, and place the gapped section in a place that won't be so noticeable.

I set out to do exactly that, but decided it's not going to work without basing the miniatures (which I'm not doing in 1/144). I also would have wound up with a few unbuildable models that way.

I dug through my stash and found one of my repair jobs.

You don't need to cut up a track for the extension, just find a thick rubber band to use as a donor. Even a piece of plastic card will work (though I'd suggest drilling holes in it to slip the thread through.) Machinehead's pic shows where to hide the modification. Once painted, only you will notice it… ;-)

Now we're talkin'.

What kind of glue holds a rubber band to… well, anything?

You'd still need to sew the rubber band into the gap for a good connection (you can use a stapler, but that's a last resort measure… ;-)
Use Aileen's Flexible Stretchable Fabric Glue. I'd suggest just sewing thread across the gap ]]]===]]] to join the track ends, then glue a small piece of paper towel into the gap (as filler), then build up several coats of the glue (it shrinks some as it dries.) As your gap is about 1/4", shouldn't take much… ;-)