Ural 4320 ATZ-5 Truck - ICM
Two trucks and a conversion kit
Really tiny parts, but extremely well designed - all sprue gates and cement points are on hidden places. The black parts are the common chassis parts, and the gray parts are for the utility build-ons. Really clever! The pickup truck, to the right, will however lose its cargo floor and will instead be converted to a power startup unit.
The instructions for the trucks look complex, but by thinking ahead, everything soon gets clear. At some places you need to measure where to add stuff, but hey, that's fine.
Here are the parts in the conversion kit from Armory - a few resin parts, a sheet of delicate photo-etched metal parts and a decal sheet. The extremely prominent electric and air cables are not included, so they are to be sourced elsewhere. I will be using Tamiya 0.5mm black cable for these.
The instructions for the conversion kit are detailed, but it is quite clear that this conversion is not for the beginner - several steps of the instruction consists of nothing but measurements for parts to be scratch built.
But let's start with something easier: the main pieces for the fuel tank. Beautifully and delicately molded parts. The surface has a bit of a grainy and pockmarked texture, but it does not really matter as I intend to build this as a pretty worn and weathered unit.
I superglued a heavy screw on the inside to give the tank some weight that will hopefully make it easier for the four main wheels to sit evenly on the ground.
I also scratch built the fuel hose winding assembly by using pieces of scrap styrene. The fuel hose will be added from black Tamiya cable after painting and weathering.
Primed with UMP Ultimate Primer. A very nice little assembly, but it's smaller than you'd think!
Let's now get on with the chassis! I just start on the rear and work my way to the front, adding the parts as required.
Everything is super precisely designed, and since the frame has tiny indentations and ridges to mark where the various bits and bobs should go, it all quickly falls in place. Although I must say, the black plastic used is a strange decision: the color makes it quite hard to see what I am doing, and also the material is kind of elastic and stretchy, making cleanup and sanding difficult.
Next I tackled the wheels - pretty straightforward, but I need to make sure to get the left and right side tread patterns correct. The tires are not weighted down, which they should be for a heavy truck like this. But that will be fixed soon!
I sanded down the wheels for a weighted look. It's a small modification, but which I think adds greatly to the realism of the model.
There, both chassis are nearly done! Looking more like Lunar Rovers at this stage, but it will change soon! The wheels are just temporarily added to the axles to get a feel for the trucks - they will be painted separately of course. BTW, I noticed that the exhaust pipe I used (there are two versions on the frets) is incorrect for the fuel bowser; I replaced it after this photo.
Here is the correct exhaust pipe for the fuel bowser! The chassis are painted black and weathered with oils, pigments and lashings of Brown Tamiya Panel Liner.
Oops, I here realized that the APA unit should have a smaller fuel tank, provided in the resin set. It is not described in the instructions whatsoever, so I was lucky to notice it at all. Standard fuel tank cut off and replaced with the resin one. Now it all needs some repainting of course... dang.
Starting with the cab, I encountered the first challenge so far - the side windows are quite tricky to fit into the openings and require some reshaping with various tools. I needed to be careful, because the side window frames are so delicate, that they snap very easily! Ask me how I know.
Cab primed and painted green inside and out and windows cemented in place with Tamiya Extra Thin cement (taking great care not to get any cement to seep onto the glass panes).
Interiors assembled, painted and weathered. Looks cute but virtually nothing will be visible through the tiny windows, so there is absolutely no point superdetailing the office with levers, pedals and stuff. The resin dashboard for the APA startup truck comes from the conversion kit. It may look oversized but it is actually quite a big box in reality!
Cab interior added and some weathering applied with black and brown Tamiya Panel Liners and Tamiya pigments. I want it to look a bit worn and rusty, but not like a wreck.
Just as I suspected, none of the interior detail is visible at all. I pondered if I should try to cut the driver door open, but I figured it might be too tricky to pull it off - with my skills at least.
The fuel tank for the ATZ-5 truck is also heavily weathered with 502 Abteilung oils and various Vallejo pigments. I might have overdone it a bit, but I don't mind, it was great fun!
Refueling hose made of Tamiya 0.65 mm wire and coiled up inside the back compartment. It is actually superglued in place to give it the right amount of sag and avoid it to move out of place. Refueling head crafted from a leftover PE strip.
Since I want to use these with my Hungarian aircraft, I made a few decals with Photoshop and printed them out on white decal paper with my Canon inkjet printer. Since I cannot print white, I had to print out the surrounding green areas instead and just leave the white letters blank. It took quite some effort to get the green exactly matching the Tamiya paint, I can tell you!
I also made a few license plates for different eras. I can then just add them with a tiny blob of blu-tak so I can represent trucks from the late 70's and up to today. The font for the plates is "HUN_DIN 1451", freely downloadable online.
The decal sheet is sprayed with Microscale liquid decal film so they become water-proof and can then be applied just like any regular water-slide decals.
One decal added as a test - sprayed with flat varnish and weathered with pigments to match the fuel tank. Maybe not perfect, but certainly good enough for me. BTW the word means "flammable" in Hungarian. Now try to pronounce it.
Wheels primed and painted (Tamiya Rubber Black)
When dry, the wheels are drybrushed with using Tamiya pigments - the one on the left is untreated, wheel, the one on the right is weathered with the pigments.
Wheels cemented to the axles, taking care that the flattened areas all touch the ground evenly.
Everything going through another session of weathering with a mix of Tamiya and Vallejo pigments and Abteilung 502 oil paints. I find it easier to do the weathering in multiple stages so I can get avoid "home-blindness" when you can no longer see what you are doing.
Cab cemented to the chassis - starting to look like a truck!
Tank finally cemented onto the chassis behind the cab. Still a bunch of details missing, such as wheel caps, rear-view mirrors, the open lid for the fuel compartment, ladders and stuff, but I am inching forward! And yes, the truck is rusty as hell, but hey, why not, it's more fun this way.
Some minor details added and then I guess the first truck is finished! It is tiny and super fragile, I have knocked down the mirrors and tiny stuff a few times already.
And here is he finished fuel bowser!
I tried to scratch build a pair of windshield wipers as none are included in the kit, but it didn't turn out very good. I might buy a third party set later.
A closeup of the cab. It's a pity that the doors are not possible to display open, it would be fun to be able to see the interior.
The right side
That's a fat bottom lady! Not sure about the correct location of the various plates though; they seem to have varied all over the place.
It seems that the weathering was not overdone at all, judging by reference photos, it is actually pretty close to the reality.
The finished model of the ATZ-5 truck.
Ready to feed that hungry MiG-23 in the background.
Komentarzy
24 29 October 2020, 19:24
Thomas KolbBernd, well, kind of. These Ural trucks (particularly the starter unit) always seem to be hovering around Warsaw Pact aircraft on the ground, and I thought they would give some feeling of size.
1 November 2020, 15:32
Thomas KolbStarted with the fuel container on the fuel truck, just to test if my home made decals would work. It looks like they did, so that was one hurdle out of the way!
8 November 2020, 20:33
Thomas KolbŁukasz, yes, it means "flammable", but more difficult to pronounce.
21 November 2020, 14:51
Thomas KolbKind of like this: teewz-veseiyesh. That's a very useful phrase to know whenever in Hungary.... Just as useful as "a légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal" (my hovercraft is full of eels).
21 November 2020, 20:11
Łukasz GlińskiTaking into account the probability of meeting an eel in Hungary in particular 😄
21 November 2020, 21:15
Erik De SmetThe only Hungarian word I remember from a visit to Budapest 45 years ago is dohanybolt. I believe it means tobacco shop and it was there you could buy tickets for trams and buses. Luckily I could speak German with my Hungarian friend. And I saw Migs on August 20.
23 November 2020, 08:35
Łukasz GlińskiBut have you seen any hovercrafts?😉
That must have been a remarkable trip for you, to the other side of the curtain. Been there couple of times, before the bat plague, learned some words, but haven't seen either MiGs or hovercrafts 🙁
23 November 2020, 08:52
Daniel MysakNice work on the two trucks and a great result with the green decals. Have you ever thought about a plotter to make masks and spray paint these markings instead of printing the camouflage color around?
25 November 2020, 19:17
Thomas KolbDaniel, thank you! Yes, I looked at the Silhouette Cameo cutter, but it is just too expensive.
25 November 2020, 21:08
Daniel MysakOkay, I purchased the Silhouette Portrait about a year ago, it´s perfect for this kind of stencils. Anyway, your solution with the decals works also perfect.
26 November 2020, 13:43
Thomas KolbDaniel, what is the smallest size of cut that the Portrait can do? Would it work for this, like 2-3 mm stencils?
26 November 2020, 13:45
Daniel MysakI did 4mm for my Oshkosh Tanker, that works fine. I think it will depend on the chosen font and the masking foil but 3mm should work anyway.
26 November 2020, 13:50
Thomas KolbYesterday I started with the APA startup truck, but almost directly came to a complete dead-end. There are some long, thin and spidery PE parts that need to be bent very precisely in shape and to which a dozen other spidery parts need to be added. It is even worse: the parts are attached to the fret by more than a dozen attachment points, and they proved more or less impossible to remove without messing up the parts. I am by no means a stranger to PE, but this is clearly waaaay beyond my skill level. I would dare to say this is only for the top 1% model builder clientele. I might try to use something else later, but for now I just call it a day.
18 December 2020, 18:30
