British Chieftain Mk5 Tank

This is an older tamiya kit and so has the holes from when they mounted motors that have to be putties. I did notice a few places where there were small gaps between the pieces where I couldn't quite get them to bond even after several attempts but they are hard to notice with the hatches down. I did have to sculpt my own mantlet cover for the gun but that wasn't terribly hard. In the end it's a fun and easy to build kit and at around 20.00 great quality at a great value as is the case with most tamiya products. Sure it has it's shortcomings that are typical of older tamiya kits but it accomplishes what it's supposed to which is represent the chieftain.

Very good kit with sufficient details to get an excellent display model. The kit was designed to be motorized, so all the wheels will turn on their axes and the hubs are removable. In fact the upper and lower hulls are held together via pressed pins and can be pulled apart as they are not cemented. All the crew hatches work. The tank crew is well molded and expressive. My only adds to the basic kit are 1) bored muzzle hole to the commander's machine gun, 2) Added a clear glass to the gunner's viewing port, 3) fabricated a working hinge to enable opening and closing the door to the IR illuminator, 4) made 2 tow cables from twisted wires (the kit ones looked terrible) 5) build lamp lenses with UV cured clear polymer cement. My biggest grip about the kit it is the effort needed to get rid of the mold seams. Filing and sanding them away is a pain given the small and irregular sized pieces. Guess you can ignore them, but I felt they detract from the finished product. Overall a very pleasant build with a pleasing result.

All parts fit very well - no surprises with this kit. Very happy with the outcome and would recommend thid model to all skill levels. May build this one again!