Mishmash SU-122
Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2021 10:59 pm
So I did mention I had a Vandra SU-122 conversion I was going to be working on. I've had some time to work on it in the past week so I thought I'd share my progress with it. I say she's a mishmash because it's a modified Vandra SU-122 kit, on a Taigen lower, with a modified Taigen upper, and road wheels from a Trumpeter SU-100 kit.
Getting the conversion to fit right was a ROYAL PITA. After I cut away the front section according to the manual every said it works better leaving most of the front intact and mounting the casemate over that. Thanks guys for letting me know AFTER the fact.
So once I decided to finally fit it to the butchered up upper hull, I used CA glue to attach the casemate to the upper hull. That was just to hold everything in place while I used an old soldering iron to melt left over plastic sprues into the gaps between the T-34 fenders and the casemate bottom edge. I then had to smooth that all out and use some Tamiya putty to make the outside presentable. On the inside I reinforced all the joints with a little more CA and then covered it all in Milliput. Also used Milliput to reinforce the Taigen quick release wings as one of them had already broken in shipping of the donor tank. I normally don't use the quick release latches, but in this build it made sense to use. Overall I am very happy with the merger of the casemate and the upper as it feels very solid.
I needed to modify the Taigen lower plate by grinding down the top edge of it (blue arrow in pic below). I ground it all the way down to where the metal eyes are as I wanted to keep them. I'm guessing that Vandra build the conversion based on the WSN or Heng Long lower because without the grinding there was no way this conversion was going to fit the Taigen lower hull. I also had to remove the metal bar that protrudes up to mate with the upper hull as it wasn't needed and interferes with the Henntec adjustable idler/brace (green arrow). Yes Henntec makes one for the Taigen hull so I wouldn't have to do this, but I like the one that spans the whole front better than the one built specifically for the Taigen hull that has no bar in between. Since that Henntec is not supposed to fit this hull I also had to modify the idler hubs by drilling the bearing deeper so that I could remove some hub width (orange arrow). That allows the bearing to move further inward to compensate for thinning the hub. I also had to thin the Henntec parts on the inside and the outside. It's a procedure I've done before and new it works, but it does take a lot of time and fitting. Then I had to build up the front lip of the casemate with styrene to get it to fit the Taigen metal lower plate right (red arrow).
And here are some of the results of my labor. I stole a forth fuel tank off a T-35/85 I have and added to the SU-122. I replace it with an empty fuel tank holder on the T-34. I ditched the Vandra triangles that are used to mate the casemate to the engine deck and fabricated my own. The Vandra ones were way out of scale and couldn't be fixed. I also reshaped the armored vent cover as it was just weird and wrong. I fabricated all the new grab rails. I was going to do them in brass, but didn't have the right diameter of bar in brass. I fabbed new mounts for them as the Vandra mounts had huge bar holes and they were also all kinds of wrong.
Need to fab the rest of the antenna mount and I saw a pic of an SU-122 that had the spare track mounted to the track fenders like this in a real photo (minus the track in the grab bar) so I did mine that way.
The front needed work also and still needs much more as the gun mount doesn't pivot straight...at all. The gap at the top is too large so I've started the process of closing it with Milliput. The kit was missing the tow hooks on the front so I pulled them from the donor upper. The inspection holes were wrong on the kit (hex nuts with a ring around them) so I shaved off the old ones and replaced them with round simulated covers with square nuts. I have removed most of the Vandra molded in weld lines on the addon parts as the weld lines didn't actually touch the surface of the casemate when they were glued on. I will be finishing the weld lines of my own creation using Milliput. Both hatches have been made to work.
I removed the smoke canisters from the rear as I have yet to see any SU-122 in reference pics with them installed unlike the SU-100 which has them in almost every pic I've seen of them. All and all it's a good start. Just some more details to finish up, rework the gun mount entirely, add some stowage, and finish the electronics.
Getting the conversion to fit right was a ROYAL PITA. After I cut away the front section according to the manual every said it works better leaving most of the front intact and mounting the casemate over that. Thanks guys for letting me know AFTER the fact.
So once I decided to finally fit it to the butchered up upper hull, I used CA glue to attach the casemate to the upper hull. That was just to hold everything in place while I used an old soldering iron to melt left over plastic sprues into the gaps between the T-34 fenders and the casemate bottom edge. I then had to smooth that all out and use some Tamiya putty to make the outside presentable. On the inside I reinforced all the joints with a little more CA and then covered it all in Milliput. Also used Milliput to reinforce the Taigen quick release wings as one of them had already broken in shipping of the donor tank. I normally don't use the quick release latches, but in this build it made sense to use. Overall I am very happy with the merger of the casemate and the upper as it feels very solid.I needed to modify the Taigen lower plate by grinding down the top edge of it (blue arrow in pic below). I ground it all the way down to where the metal eyes are as I wanted to keep them. I'm guessing that Vandra build the conversion based on the WSN or Heng Long lower because without the grinding there was no way this conversion was going to fit the Taigen lower hull. I also had to remove the metal bar that protrudes up to mate with the upper hull as it wasn't needed and interferes with the Henntec adjustable idler/brace (green arrow). Yes Henntec makes one for the Taigen hull so I wouldn't have to do this, but I like the one that spans the whole front better than the one built specifically for the Taigen hull that has no bar in between. Since that Henntec is not supposed to fit this hull I also had to modify the idler hubs by drilling the bearing deeper so that I could remove some hub width (orange arrow). That allows the bearing to move further inward to compensate for thinning the hub. I also had to thin the Henntec parts on the inside and the outside. It's a procedure I've done before and new it works, but it does take a lot of time and fitting. Then I had to build up the front lip of the casemate with styrene to get it to fit the Taigen metal lower plate right (red arrow).
And here are some of the results of my labor. I stole a forth fuel tank off a T-35/85 I have and added to the SU-122. I replace it with an empty fuel tank holder on the T-34. I ditched the Vandra triangles that are used to mate the casemate to the engine deck and fabricated my own. The Vandra ones were way out of scale and couldn't be fixed. I also reshaped the armored vent cover as it was just weird and wrong. I fabricated all the new grab rails. I was going to do them in brass, but didn't have the right diameter of bar in brass. I fabbed new mounts for them as the Vandra mounts had huge bar holes and they were also all kinds of wrong.
Need to fab the rest of the antenna mount and I saw a pic of an SU-122 that had the spare track mounted to the track fenders like this in a real photo (minus the track in the grab bar) so I did mine that way.
The front needed work also and still needs much more as the gun mount doesn't pivot straight...at all. The gap at the top is too large so I've started the process of closing it with Milliput. The kit was missing the tow hooks on the front so I pulled them from the donor upper. The inspection holes were wrong on the kit (hex nuts with a ring around them) so I shaved off the old ones and replaced them with round simulated covers with square nuts. I have removed most of the Vandra molded in weld lines on the addon parts as the weld lines didn't actually touch the surface of the casemate when they were glued on. I will be finishing the weld lines of my own creation using Milliput. Both hatches have been made to work.
I removed the smoke canisters from the rear as I have yet to see any SU-122 in reference pics with them installed unlike the SU-100 which has them in almost every pic I've seen of them. All and all it's a good start. Just some more details to finish up, rework the gun mount entirely, add some stowage, and finish the electronics.
