Israeli M247 DIVAD what-if

Started with step 1, the underside of the hull. This is a good number of parts already. 

The kit has working suspension using plastic torsion bars. Pay close attention to the instructions to make sure you fit them in the right orientation, which is different on both sides! 

Upper and lower hull halves glued together, plus the engine compartment sides. Takom wants you to stick all kinds of detail parts on the upper hull before doing this, but that’s asking for them to break when you’re cleaning up the seams between the parts. 

Final drives from the Takom M247 (left), Meng Magach 6B Gal (middle), and Meng inner part with Takom outer part (right). I need to use the Meng parts because I will fit the Magach kit’s tracks to the M247. Using the Takom inner with Meng outer won’t work because, as you can see from the Takom outer with Meng inner, they are too different in size and shape to fit together well. 

Inner halves of the final drive housings: Takom on the left, Meng on the right. Beware that you can put the Takom parts on the wrong side of the hull, where they will be upside-down and too high up. This is why I scratched the part numbers and L and R into them. 

Holes drilled in the Meng parts so they will fit like the Takom parts. The small hole at the front is 2.5 mm, the large hole is 4.5 mm. 

However, I made a mistake: the Meng parts have a small raised area on the side that faces the hull, and I thought the hole was in the same place as that, so I drilled through its centre. However, it should go about 1 mm further forward. I’ll have to file them out a bit so the parts fit. 

After scraping down the seams between the hull parts, filling gaps between them with putty, and attempting to recreate the texture that got lost, I added the engine deck and hull rear. 

All of the suspension arms added. They are still fully functional here: the arms are not glued to the torsion bars, because they’re tight enough to not fall off, and the shock absorbers move too. 

I stuck the hull to a pane of glass with some Blu-Tack, then carefully levelled it. I then pressed the roadwheel arms down against the pane of glass and flow liquid cement into the joins. However, to prevent them coming back up, I still had to employ a ruler. The tweezers just serve to weigh the ruler down so the arms stay lined up.

I didn’t glue the front roadwheel arm and the idler mount yet. The front arm is longer than the other five, so just pushing it against the glass would result in it sitting too high. 

Hull mostly complete, except for the wheels, track, and air cleaners. 

Be warned that the mudguard supports don’t want to fit all that well, and both H13s don’t want to go in at all. You may want to slightly file down the locating tabs on all of them, and H13 especially. 

Side-loading air cleaners from an old Tamiya M60 kit, detailed by replacing the whole front face and hinges, as well as adding bolt heads on the side, based on a photo of a real one. 

Air cleaners in place on the hull. 

Basic turret parts together. Don’t follow Takom’s instructions, as usual they want you to fit small bits to large ones before putting the large ones together, and that’s just asking for breakages and things not fitting right. If you ever happen to read this, Takom, please get someone to build the kit before drawing the instructions … I ask because I get the impression you only build it on your computer and not IRL before getting to that point 🙁 

As the turret’s rear door would get in the way of stowage, I figure the Israelis might have welded it up and put a hatch in the roof instead for the gunner to use. I cut some 0.5 mm plastic card to the shape of the door to close the hole in the turret, while the hatch is a leftover from a Hobby Boss M706 Commando kit. I also had to put in a lot of effort to get the left rear periscope out and stick it back in upside-down so it looks over the new hatch instead of at it. 

All of the 225 Meng Magach track links and pins. They’re just removed from the sprue here, not actually cleaned up yet … 

More work done on the turret. 

The radars are still loose, so they won’t get in the way. I’ll add the covers over them after painting. 

Track links all cleaned up now, ready for assembly. 

All the holes for the stowage racks on the right side of the turret were filled, because I intend to fit a Stinger missile launcher here, and I doubt those racks would be there with it in place. Also, I removed the clasps on the air filters because somebody asked why I fitted the unarmoured ones. It turns out the Meng Magach has those too, but without clasps. 

I discovered that I had glued the infantry telephone box on back to front, but because the glued had long dried, I ended up cutting off its shelf and rebuilding it from plastic card. I took the opportunity to add details to the shelf (like the support underneath and the cable guide) as well as to the box itself. 

Stinger launcher from the Italeri LAV-AD kit, with some detail added from plastic strip. I cut and filed down the ridges moulded along the sides of the side plates because on the real thing, you can see through the slots in the launcher. 

Launcher complete, with a pivot made from the end of a jig from RFM’s set of T80 Sherman tracks and a bit of 2 × 2 mm square rod. 

Box on the side of the turret for mounting the launcher on. It’s a part of the roof I cut out of Takom’s VT 1-2 kit when I turned it into a JPK 120 tank destroyer, plus some plastic card. 

And then I made a hole in the box for the launcher’s pivot. The launcher is still loose here. 

Stowage rack on the back of the turret, made from some thin plastic sheet and 0.5 mm brass rod. 

Smoke launchers on the front, and a MAG and ammo boxes at the commander’s hatch, all from a sprue of accessories that comes with AFV Club’s Israeli M113 kit. 

The MAG. I had to look up the instructions here on Scalemates to find out how to build its mounting, as it’s very hard to work out just from looking at the part 

Length of track from Meng’s Magach 6B kit. It needs 101 links per side, this is 44. 

Section of six links, showing the track pins. The track is hard to build because you need to cut those pins from the sprue after inserting them, but there’s hardly any room to do it without cutting into the links. Instead, I wiggle the bit of sprue holding the pins up and down until they break off, but you still need to be careful that they’re all actually in place, and also that none come out later on. 

Some links are moulded slightly short, as indicated by the arrow. If a link looks like that, the pin won’t stay in place at all.

My advice: don’t buy a Meng Magach kit for its tracks. 

Shovel on the right air cleaner, like on Magach 6 and 7. The shovel is probably from Tamiya British infantry, the brackets are scratchbuilt based on the ones in Meng’s Magach. 

Stretcher from AFV Club and spare track links from the Meng Magach on the left rear. 

Tow cables from EurekaXXL, which were impossible to assemble until I looked at their web site — the packet has no instructions whatsoever, so unless you’re familiar with these things you’re not going to put them together in any way resembling reality 🙁 

Just about ready for painting, I think. 

All of the bits for this model (except for the radar covers, which I forgot to put into the picture). The commander is from MiniArt, the jerrycans from Academy. 

Witness the excellence of Stynylrez primer!

I won’t be using it again, I know that much. I used it as it says on the bottle, and can’t get it to cover properly — it would probably have needed a bunch more layers, but after spending ages trying to get a decent finish, it clogged up my airbrush nozzle (the light blue one for my Aztek) so badly by this point that I didn’t want to continue. 

For comparison, in the foreground here is a Sherman turret that I spent about ten seconds spraying with Vallejo primer from an aerosol can. I had probably spent about half an hour spraying the M247 to get the abysmal finish you can see on it, when it would have taken maybe five minutes to do the whole model with the Vallejo can (except that it’s nearly empty, and had barely enough for the Sherman turret). 

The whole model has now been sprayed with AK 3rd Gen IDF Modern Grey, followed by highlights of Vallejo Model Air US Sand. Luckily the base coat covered over all of the crappy finish left by the primer. 

Spot the bit I missed when highlighting the panels … 

Next, the model got a wash of Italeri Dark Brown wash (slightly thinned with water) and was then drybrushed with first Humbrol 119 Light Earth, followed more lightly by 187 Sand — both tins from before the Super Enamel range, but never opened until tonight. (I bought them a few months ago at a model show, where a vendor was selling a lot of old Humbrol stock, even including some 1970s tins. The ones I used here were 1990s, I think.)