4DModels KrAZ-260B Tractor and MAZ/ChMZAP-5247G semi-trailer Review

 Once again it's been a while.  Preparations for Christmas, visitors and then my wife managing to severely break her ankle just before New Year has meant a pretty busy couple of months for me, and not much time for anything too gamey.

I did have a couple of moments of purchase based stress relief which brings me to today's topic.  For a while now I've wanted to get some kind of Soviet tank transporter/trailer.  I've been looking at the TAKOM offering, which seems quite nice:

and also I say Trumpeter were coming out with this:

which also looked pretty nice.  The thing is, I wanted it for a very specific purpose.  To create this:

I wasn't sure that the S-300 missile tubes would fit on the back of either of the Takom or Trumpeter trailers and I wasn't really willing to pay top dollar for something that may or might not work.

To cut a long story short, one day when randomly having a look around, I stumbled across this kit by 4D Models:

I was a little wary as some of the kits made but this company are basically crap, but when I saw I could get this for less than $22NZD, I thought why not give it a go.  The pics of the completed model looked OK and reviews were generally positive, so I thought the risk of the S-300 tubes not fitting was a risk worth taking.

The box arrived remarkedly quickly from China, a little battered but nothing inside was any worse off.  Here's a look at the back of the box:

Inside were 3 sealed plastic bags of parts and the instructions

Everything was there and nothing was damaged or warped.  In the first bag you got loads of tires.

As you can see they are glossy black with green hubs.  They fit together nicely and are easy to clean up.

The other parts are as below:

and

Interestingly you can see in the second photo that it comes with a transparent piece for the cab's windows and 7 metal rods for the tires.

The tractor goes together very simply and gives a nice simple wargaming standard model.

I couldn't be bothered painting inside the cab - I was in a bit of a therapeutic rush - so I'll be spraying the whole model, only after removing the wheels.  You can see the holder for the spare wheel on the back of the cab.  You end up with 3 spare wheels I think.  You have to make up 17 in all.

The trailer was actually even easier and together, I think they look pretty damn good.

Now of course I checked to see if the S-300 missiles fit on the trailer as they should - and yes indeed they do!  Just for the hell of it I also took out a T-72 to see how it looked on the trailer.

Sorry about the generally crappy photos!

So review time.  First the positives:

• Super cheap
• Ridiculously easy to put together
• Solid wargamers kit
• Scales well
• Basically does what it says on the tin
• If you were really really lazy you could almost get away with out painting it!  Oh the horror!!

Negatives

• It's pretty chunky and there is of course a lack of fine detail, but personally I think the positive of being a solid (rather than fragile) kit outweigh that
• Sink marks.  There are quite a few sink marks on this kit.  Some I'm happy to ignore, but some are in quite prominent positions.  I guess all up I can live with them and hopefully hide most of them!
• The metal rods - while perfectly useful and much better than plastic, unless I'm doing it wrong, they are to long for the wheels on the trailer.  A relatively easy fix, but until that is done it makes the trailer look a bit toy like.

So all in all, for what I want it for I am very happy with my purchase.  Really its a bit of unnecessary frippery but I do have a very minor role in a game planned for it and I just think it's cool to have it.  I'm not sure it would have any real use as a tank transporter in a standard wargame - but will be useful scenery if some "behind Soviet lines" type games.

Now I just need to sort out my many painting issues and get on and paint it.

Thanks and belated Happy New Year

Richard