Team Yankee M1 Abrams WIP - Mass Assembly

With two M1s down, I figured I would build all of three of the remaining at the same time just like I did with the M106s. Like the M106 the M1 is a pretty easy kit to build, with a couple of frustrating areas to watch for. I boldly cut out all of the parts so I could just start gluing things together! I did go back to my trusty x-acto knife to do this. In the end I had a lot less clean up to do than with my old clippers. 

Here are the parts to assembly the hull.

Tracks on. These go on quite nicely

The rear engine plate is a key component holding the upper and lower hulls together

The side skirts have nice pin locators but the rear portion of the skirt requires a rubber band to hold it in place while the glue sets.

The finished hulls.

The turret parts, or most of them anyway.

The big issue on the turrets is the storage racks. The locator "pin" is really a strip on the upper side of the turret. Not bad but not great. If you are using the short versions that don't wrap around the back this is fine and your done. With the wrap around version its easier to put on the side racks and attached the back rack to them. If you flip the side rack upside down you will see that the bottom set of bars has indentations that allegedly will fit the bottom plate of the back rack. It sort of works. Using the full wrap around storage is accurate. Team Yankee is set in 1987 and pictures of M1s from the '87 REFORGER exercise have the full wrap around.

Basic turret assembled.

Models Finished!