World War II Project - Return to Normandy - P107/U304(f) Halftrack - Axles

I started the axle surgery on the Warlord Games P107s. Really nothing more complicated than cutting brass rod. The front, pewter, axle measured out fine, so I cut three pieces to match that length. Front "suspension" ready to go! The tracked portion requires a bit more finesse. The axle for the drive wheel is also not long enough. I decided to cut it long enough to be flush with the front of the casting on both sides. I drilled out the drive wheel hole and the return roller and inserted brass rod and cut it to the right length. The two small axle pieces are also not long enough. With the drive wheel axle in place I inserted the small axle on one side and cut it to length. Kind of a guess and by golly estimation to be sure. Also note that you need to drill out the return axle holes in the body of the vehicle as well. From there is was just a matter of making sure that all the axles would slide into the appropriate places and then glued things together.

After building these models I'm contemplating mounting all of my vehicles on to bases. Not my favorite thing to do but if I can find a way to do it and make it look good it would go a long way in protecting the models themselves.

Here are the steps:

A quick front axle dry fitting

This small axle is just not long enough, it wouldn't even reach the track casting.

  

Holding it all together after cutting the drive axle to length

The supplied axle was just not going to be long enough.

Testing fitting the drive and return roller axles

All the axles ready to go.

Broke the tip of my cutters. Brass is hard pay attention to where on the blade you are trying to cut on!

Drilled out the drive and return roller holes on the casting

That return roller axle is even close to being long enough

A quick test fit of the front wheel assembly. Here is the issue to be aware of the slots are not actually parallel to each other, they are crooked! I didn't bother to correct this but a few swipes with a file should take care of the issue.

Managed to get it all together. Basically I glued the axles to one side, set that assembly into place on the model and then press fit the other side into place. The hard part was getting the return roller axle into place on the second side.

This one ended up being a little long and needed to be trimmed. I suspect what really happened is that I didn't quite hit the hole in the body.

All the new axles in place

I know you can't really tell that I did anything but at least everything is together and (hopefully) will stay together.