| Here is a short guide
to building and improving the ESCI M60A3. Although the
basic kit is sound and well detailed, (considering its
age) it is however let down by two major faults. 1. the single road wheels. 2. the lack of track guides on the otherwise well detailed tracks. The aim of this part is to correct these two points. 1. The single road wheels are easy to correct, with a small amount of patience and very basic tools. The correction is basically to cut a groove around the centre of the road wheel with a file. The best one to use (in my opinion) is a triangular needle file, but whatever you feel the most comfortable with.
A picture of the wheel, still to be cleaned up,but it gives the general idea, the groove needs to be fairly deep for the next part of the process. 2. Next comes the tracks. This is a somewhat repetitive process but well worth the end result. tools needed are a sharp scarpel, glue, a pair if fine tweezers, and a length of Plastruct 1.5mm channel. Start off by cutting the ends off the Plastruct channel * at about 1mm intervals, until you end up with a pile of U shapes, how many?? depends on how many go flying through the air when trying to attach them !
You then glue these to the individual track links, placing them as far forward as they will go. The end result for all of your patience will look like this:
The tracks can then be cleaned up by running a file/or sanding block along the teeth to straighten out any mis-alignment. * Plastruct channel was used in preference to Evergreen, for the simple reason, Evergreen channel is to precisely moulded. Special thanks to Bob Grimster, who suggested the use of Plastruct channel as a way of improving the Esci tracks. This method will also work on the M-48 series. |
