As I am building a Hummel, I am in need of a reco tank for it ! This was the role of Panzer IV beob, which was fitted with a StuG III commander cupola, lots of radios and antenaes !
I thought I would have had a hard time trying to mate the Trumpeter upper hull on the HL chassis but it was actually a pretty straight forward job. I had to grind the inside of the hull though to make more room for the gearboax that I moved up by 3mm to get the sprocket top in line with the first return roller top.
I havent lowered the 4th return roller yet. I will build a custom track tensioner like I did for the Hummel too.
I used a Mato set of metal wheels and late all steel return rollers. I must say I am very disappointed by quality and poor design of them. The Taigen wheels I used on the Hummel are much better but unfortunatly they come with early rubber/metal return roller. If you put the mato wheels on the metal HL or Taigen suspensions, they are not aligned with the sprocket/idler/return roller. I fixed the issue but I may consider buying another set of Taigen wheel at some point.
I have the Mato metal sprockets and idler, and the metal tracks as well. Here's again the sprockets teeth need a lot of fine tuning so the tracks can work well.
I'm going to chopped of the details of the HL rear chassis blukhead and replace them with the HL details.
Room is limited in the turret, since the rear basket is a separate parts like on the original, it cant be used for the recoil and elevation system. I'll see what I can do here.
I've remade the chassis Schürzen with 0.5mm styrene (not pictured here). I'm not sure I'll put them on or not, they are removable anyway.
I love the menacing look of it with the support brackets though.
Next job will be to grind all the details of the chassis (dampers, suspension supports) and replace them with Trumpeter details and move down the last return roller.
