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Esci M4A1 Rebuild

The Esci M4A1 was long thought to be the “perfect” small scale kit. I’ll never forget the day while looking at “On The Way” I found out that this kit was far from being perfect. Be sure to check out the story about this at “On The Way”.

To make a long story short the Esci M4A1 hull is of the late, wet stowage variety with large hatches on the hull. So far so good. The turret is the 75 mm low bustle variety. Still makes sence. The only problem is that this turret was never mated with this hull! It is possible that a few were converted to this configuration for use as DD tanks. But the main thing is that the late, wet stowage variety with large hatches on the hull was almost exclusively mated with the 76 mm T-23 turret.

 So how to fix this? One of 2 ways to do it. Either put the excellent Esci 75 mm turret in the parts box and replace it with one of the T-23 turrets from Armo, Leva or Mr Modellbau or rebuild the hull. So of course I took the easy way out...and rebuilt...the...hull...

In order to make my first conversion I decided to sacrifice a HAT M4 Sherman for the basic shape of the hatches. This area was cut out of the HAT hull and a corresponding area removed from the ESCI hull.

Note original ESCI hull configuration with the large hatches

This shows the HAT hull section grafted into the ESCI hull and recontoured with putty. The original hull ventilator was puttied over and a new one fabricated from round stock with a photoetched ventilator cover on top. All lift rings were removed and new ones fabricated from brass wire. Cast texture was also added to the transmission housing at this time.

Second coat of primer and subsequent re-puttying of seams...

While I was at it I decided to add wire lift rings to the 75 mm turret. The barrel was turned from brass stock in my Dremel.

Original hull along with modified hull after first coat of primer. I also changed the ventilator after this picture.

As of now this conversion is sitting on the shelf. I picked up the new Extratech M4A3E2 and it has the correct hatches for this conversion! What I plan on doing is finishing this conversion in the near future and starting on another. In order to do this I will make a casting of the hatch area on the Extratech M4 and use this in the same manner that I used the HAT section. Only this time the hatches will be opened!!!

My early M4A1 conversion alongside ARMO’s early M4A1 conversion. Of course they would come out with this AFTER I had started...

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