Comparison
of M1A1/M1A2 Abrams kits.

PART 6

VARIOUS EXTRA DETAILS  

All kits include spare road wheels. Dragon removed a bit too many bolts from their wheel leaving holes in their part instead of bolts which are not removed from real wheels, as they hold the back part of the wheel. Italeri made holes only where they should indeed be, but they molded the rim completely flat inside - strange as their regular road wheels have correctly molded profile. In Trumpeter and Tamiya parts the same error was made - holes in the center of rim are molded partially on both sides of the wheel, but they don't meet! This means that holes do not go through the wheel.
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Extra detail / stowage parts included in Tamiya M1A1 and M1A2 kits: big ammo boxes (4 pieces, used by crew to keep their personal belongings), ammo tubes (2 pieces, also used as storage containers), small ammo cans. Additionally in new M1A2 kit Tamiya added Combat Identification Panels and two spare track links to hang on turret rails. Other kits: Italeri, Trumpeter and Dragon, also include spare track links, but as those kit include link and length tracks, the spares are just a few more regular links. Tamiya kit includes vinyl tracks, so inclusion of extra spare plastic links is worth mentioning. In the kit you also get a piece of thin white styrene sheet to make tactical markings plates.
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Great advantage of new Tamiya M1A2 kit is inclusion of the one whole sprue from their modern accessories set. As you can see on the photo it includes some Alice packs, tent bags, camouflage net bags, sleeping mats, fuel and water cans, ammo boxes, CIPs (but designed to fit Humvee kits, unlike those shown on previous photo which are correct size for Abrams) and even a puppy.
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Nice touch in Tamiya M1A2 kit is inclusion of two water bottles molded from clear styrene. There are even decals for them on the decal sheet.
Extra parts in Italeri kit include:
- antenna mast as used on tanks in NTC in the Mojave Desert, CA,
- two types of tactical marking plates for the turret,
- three piece Hoffman main gun firing simulator device,
- blank firing kit for .50 machine gun,
- warning / hit indicator light with guard,
- ammo boxes.
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Set of extra parts in Trumpeter kit is similar to those in Italeri kit:
- antenna mast as used on tanks in NTC in the Mojave Desert,
- one strange short and thick mast - I don't know what it is,
- one tactical marking plate for the turret,
- three piece Hoffman main gun firing simulator device,
- blank firing kit for .50 machine gun (but without rods - you need to make them yourself from stretched sprue),
- warning / hit indicator light with guard support plate (you need to make guard from brass wire - there is a template in instructions),
- ammo boxes.
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The only identifiable "extra" parts in Dragon / Revell kit are two ammo cans. They are not even fully molded, as they are meant to be attached to the stowage boxes on turret sides. Some versions of Dragon Abrams kits come with more tank stowage parts, but not the kit I have. These three parts are included in Dragon kit and together make a device that is supposed to be installed on the back of the turret top. I have no idea what was this supposed to be.

 

USMC SPECIFIC PARTS  

US Marine Corps specific parts are included in new Tamiya M1A2 kit and they let you build USMC version of M1A1 HC tank. Those parts include Missile Countermeasure Device (MCD, also known as dazzler), USMC style smoke grenade launchers with new mounting brackets and a frame installed on the engine exhaust grille and used to attach fording kit to the exhaust on real USMC tanks. Similar set of parts is included in latest release of Dragon USMC M1A1 kit, and some similar parts are also present in their older USMC kits and also in Trumpeter USMC M1A1 kit.
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MINE CLEARING DEVICES 

Two of the kits I have came with mine clearing devices in the box: Trumpeter kit includes mine roller kit and Dragon / Revell kit includes track width mine plow (TWMP). Similar TWMP was also included in one of the older Tamiya M1A1 kits and some Trumpeter kits. Both Dragon / Revell and Trumpeter kits include the CLAMS box - clean lane marking system. It is no longer used by US military, but was indeed installed in the past on some tanks equipped with mine clearing devices to mark the clean lane in the minefield behind the clearing vehicle.

Huge sprue in Trumpeter kit contains parts for mine roller.
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In Dragon (Revell) kit you get a sprue with parts to build track width mine plow. These plow parts were also available as separate set from Dragon in the past.
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Both Trumpeter and Dragon kits include a length of brass chain. In Dragon kit you only get a short length of it - just enough for the plow parts, but this chain looks quite good. In Trumpeter kit you get much more chain than you need, but this chain has flattened links and looks more like a piece of jewelry than a scale model part. Trumpeter also included a length of brass wire in their kit.
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DECALS  

    Trumpeter, Dragon and Tamiya released a few versions of Abrams kits each, and each of those kits came with different set of decals. Also Revell added their own decals to Dragon kit they were selling in their box. This makes it difficult to compare decals included in those kits, as I only have one example of model kit from each manufacturer. So remember that decals shown on the photo below are just examples of what you can find in some of Abrams kits.

Examples of decals from Trumpeter, Tamiya, Italeri and Revell kits.
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MOLD QUALITY  

    Academy kit - details are not as sharp as in Tamiya kits, but generally mold quality is good, with no sink holes and minimum ejector pin marks.

    Dragon (Revell) kit - the biggest problem of the kit I have are warped sprues. I don't know if this was caused by errors in molding process, or was the kit stored in too high temperature before I got it. Another problem is large number of ejector pin marks. Most are hidden, but some are not and will be real pain to remove - like those on track links. There is also quite a lot of flash on parts. Another problem of this kit is the number and the size of sprue gates - they are huge and numerous, even on smallest and most fragile parts, making the cleanup process really challenging. To make it even worse the plastic used to make this model is quite hard and very brittle. This kit, even if you get one without warped parts, is not recommended for less experienced modeler.

    Italeri kit - generally cleanly molded, but with significant number of ugly sink holes and deep ejector pin marks, many in places almost impossible to fix and very visible. Those two problems are almost a trademark of all Italeri kits. I hope they will finally improve their molding process, as those issues really bring down quality of their products. Sprues in the box are not protected in plastic bags and parts can easily get damaged before you even open the box - the proof is the broken main gun barrel in my kit.

    Trumpeter kit - some flash, some sink marks and some ejector pin marks. The biggest problem of this kit is the lack of definition of details, particularly on smaller parts. Sometimes they are just barely recognizable blobs of styrene...

    Tamiya kit - almost flawless molding. Some ejector pin marks and very little flash are present only on older parts from M1A1 kits. But new M1A2 parts are of the best quality available today.

 

CONCLUSION  

    Some of you probably expected that I will show one clear winner of this comparison - the one model you should  buy to get the best Abrams kit available. But if you read through all this article, you must have realized that there is no one clear winner. Each of the kits has its advantages and disadvantages. It is easier to show you the loser of this comparison and this will be the Academy kit. There is really nothing in this kit what could convince me to recommend it. It is inaccurate in many ways, lacks many details and looks just silly with this huge way over scale gun barrel.

    Trumpeter kit requires a lot of work to make it look good. The biggest advantage of this kit is suspension with separate road wheel arms. The main hull parts are one of the best in the comparison set, but turret requires a lot of work to correct serious shape problems. Many parts in the kit are poorly molded and require a lot of cleanup and corrections to give them correct shape. But this kit is CHEAP! It is possible to build very nice model using Trumpeter kit, but be prepared for a lot of hard work if you want it to be nice, clean and reasonably accurate model.

    Dragon kit is definitely over engineered. In some areas it allowed designers to add extra details, but in most cases it just made assembly very challenging. The kit is a mixed bag - some details are very nice and most accurate of all tested kits, but at the same time other details are just ridiculously badly represented. The kit I got is probably impossible to build at all because of heavily warped parts, but as I bought this kit second hand, I cannot be sure that it wasn't just mishandled what caused warping of parts. But even without this problem, the kit is still very difficult to build and inexperienced modelers should keep clear of it at all cost. Experienced modeler however should be able to build nice model of it - just don't expect a shake and bake kit and keep a lot of good quality putty at hand. Spare parts box will also come handy to replace some details, like tow pintle. I would also strongly recommend buying some aftermarket tracks for this kit - those included in it require some 2415 hours of work to clean and assemble them...

    Italeri kit could be a winner, but it is not quite... Sink holes and ejector pin marks ruined quite a lot of otherwise nicely designed parts. There are also some accuracy errors (mostly dimensional), which become clearly visible once you compare the Italeri kit to the new Tamiya one and then to some reference photos. Italeri kit is based on Trumpeter kit, but with many improvements made. In some places however Italeri missed the opportunity to correct Trumpeter errors and replicated them. Unfortunately Italeri changed one thing which was Trumpeter's kit biggest advantage - separate suspension arms. While the suspension details are definitely the most accurate in Italeri kit, separate arms would make it almost perfect. Details in Italeri kit are rather on the soft side. It is a good kit at reasonable price, but could have been much better with minimum effort from Italeri researchers and designers.

    Tamiya kit is definitely the easiest to build, with great fitting parts, sharply molded details and some very accurate parts, particularly new ones added to M1A2 kit. But some things bring this kit down a lot, e.g. the hull was used with almost no changes from their older kit and includes some inaccuracies and simplifications. It also does not have the non slip coating molded on, what forced Tamiya to skip this detail also on new turret parts to match the old hull. If you want a kit to build quickly and look like Abrams - this is the one to get. It is not cheap, but for the money you get a model that just needs a few drops of glue and will almost fall together by itself. It also has the biggest potential to be very accurate Abrams replica, but not without some work. As a minimum you need to correct hull errors and add non-slip coating. This kit comes with a lot of goodies, like the sprue from modern accessories set and USMC parts, so it is not as bad value for money as it seems. I actually plan to get me one more Tamiya M1A2 kit and build it as USMC M1A1 - this will allow me to use all M1A2 specific parts from it to replace parts in Italeri kit   :-)  Then I will convert my other Tamiya M1A2 to SEP variant and use its M1A1 specific parts, including very nice APU, to improve one of other M1A1 kits.

    In coming months at least two new Abrams models in 1/35 scale should appear on the market. One will be M1A1 AIM (Abrams Integrated Management) version from Dragon and the other announced kit is OIF version of M1A1 from Academy. I have no idea what are Academy plans - I just hope they will not release their old kit with just some CIPs, new tracks, new doghouse and stowage added, as it will still be the worst kit on the market. Major changes to all parts in this kit are needed to make it worth attention - basically completely new tooling is recommended. I received some unofficial information that Dragon's new AIM kit will include a lot of changes and improvements over their old kits and actually the majority of parts is supposed to be all new, but I guess we need to just wait and see.

 

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