M60A-3 MEDIUM BATTLE TANK

Has a few advantages over the Tamiya kit. No holes and in the hull and better detail.

Italeri’s M60A3 is nicely detailed in many ways but deficient in others. This seems to be true of many of the company’s kits. I recently read a review in which Italeri kits were described as “a good place to start.” I wish I could credit the author of that statement because it is exactly true. The model comes in a large box with four parts sprues, one of which is just for the link and length tracks, and one piece lower hull and one piece upper hull. Also included is a length of twine for the tow cable and a patch of plastic net for the bustle grid. The kit has good decals for five variants. The plastic is too soft and easily pits when the parts are removed. All parts also have molding seams that must be removed. Flash and ejection marks are everywhere so a lot of cleanup time is required. The tires are molded onto the wheels but are well delineated and easy to paint. The parts for the tracks all have ejection marks on the inside where I did not attempt to remove them. Steps 5 and 6 decribe the assembly of the tracks and use the same callout box for the side view. In other words, the detail description of the link assembly is the same for each side rather than a mirror image, and so is of limited use. I used one more link getting around the return pulleys than the instructions call for. For this reason, I ended up two links short as Italeri provides no spares. I made two more links using part 6F, of which six are provided. I found in step 10 that the lower hull was badly warped but I was able to straighten it with a blow dryer and clamps. The hoisting triangles molded onto the aft of the upper hull were hopelessly inadequate so I filed them off and replaced them with wire. Likewise for the access handles on both muffler enclosures. In step 6, part 62B needs to be hollowed and part 64B needs to be filed on the upper end to resemble the real thing. In step 11, Italeri provides a template for cutting the mesh netting for the bustle. However the template makes no allowance for part 20A so you have to figure out how to get around that on your own. In step 13, part 15D is misidentified as 15E. I was completely baffled by the placement of part 10A in step 14 but reference photos made clear that the instructions are wrong. In step 15, parts 14D and 16D are shown placed at the right rear of the turret but I could find this apparatus on no reference photo so I omitted it. The instructions show the large spotlight box on all five variants but it appeared in none of the reference photos I found for the variant I chose. Also, the lens of this light, part 7D, is hopeless and would require extensive reworking. I enjoyed building this kit but the parts cleanup was tedious and detracted from the pleasure. I have built other Italeri kits that did not have this fault so I will not hesitate to buy more products from this company.

The kit was better than I expected. The parts had little or no excess plastic around them which was great very little sanding. I have these back in the 80's when I was in the military. A lot of armor officers wanted them for their desk so they would pay me for the model and my time for building them. This is a great model.