This resin kit intends to convert the
Tamiya T72 into a Polish army early PT91. It comprises 42
yellow resin parts. The most numerous being the ERA tiles
and the smoke grenade launchers. The instruction sheet has Polish texts
only (many thanks to Vodnik for his kind translation) and shows two
drawings to guide the modeler. Nowhere in the
instructions the Tamiya kit is mentioned and you guess it
through the parts references. However this is stated in
the Jadar website from which I got the kit.
Modelkrak would have been wise to mention the useless
parts of the kit and to explain more thoroughly how to
prepare the Tamiya kit parts e.g. no instruction about
the armor plate on the front glacis, should it be sanded
or not.
Let's go back to the kit itself.
The detail is crisp and the molding of high standard.
Very few air bubbles are present. On my kit, some are
present on the grenade launchers cap.
The turret
This is the central subject of the conversion. The
turret comes as a resin block on which must be glued the
following parts : the smoke grenades supports (Modelkrak
has omitted the grab handle on the side), the smoke
grenade launcher tubes, the OBRA sensors (laser warning
system), the original sight cover and the modernized
sight door.
The remaining parts come from the Tamiya kit, that is the
commander station, the loader hatch, the stowage bins,
the schnorckel and so on. As this stage, the instruction
sheet mentions the Tamiya parts not in use.
As the gun mantlet is casted with the turret and the
Tamiya gun comes with the mantlet attached, it'll need
some surgery or to be replaced by an aftermarket barrel.
The side skirts
Each one comes as a single piece with the same
location pins as the Tamiya part it replaces. From the
latter, you just keep the first section, the one being
part of the front fender. The left side skirt does not
present the metallic protection below the exhaust. As I
have no close shot of this area, I can't tell if it's a
mistake from Modelkrak or not.
The front glacis
It is represented by a large part with square
portions to drill out (these are being marked with an X).
As mentioned in the introduction, the question is :
should we sand the add-on welded armor plate Tamiya
molded here ?
After having glued the main part, some tiles remain to
glue to each side of the driver station according to the
instruction drawing.
The lower hull front rubber skirt installation needs to
remove the triangular reinforcing plates of the front
fenders. As mentioned in the instruction sheet, a styrene
strip must be added to the upper hull to represent the
upper fitting.
Unfortunately, no decoration
scheme is proposed by the manufacturer whereas very
little is available about this topic on the web. Keep in
mind that this kit doesn't intend to represent the PT91M
version which needs major alteration to the turret to be
built from this conversion. However, this is an original
kit for the T72 family fanatics.
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