Fitting the outer hull halves looked as if it could have been a challenge with 35 wheels and about a dozen plates to line up and locate on each side. I was surprised to find that things clicked into place quite easily with only a few minor adjustments being necessary. With everything miraculously aligned I clamped the outer hull halves in place, backed slowly and silently away and let the model set overnight before proceeding any further.
While gluing pre-painted parts together can be difficult, I would recommend spraying the insides of both halves of the hull in the region around the lightening holes before trying to glue them together. The bare plastic on the insides of the hull halves would be visible on the finished model and colouring these areas earlier on would have been easier than trying to spray through the holes as I had to.
There are four possible positions in which the idler wheels can be placed to allow for tensioning of the tracks. I found that using 118 track links (rather than the 117 as recommended in the instructions) with the idlers in the rearmost location holes worked. This left the tracks wrapped around the hull without being unduly slack. The tracks themselves just snap together, but there is a small residual moulding pip on each one which will need to be removed. Whilst perhaps not the most exciting modelling job I’ve ever done it was a great deal less tedious than it would have been to remove them all from sprues and clean up the resulting attachment points!
The small brass disks intended to be fixed to the box around the exhaust were replaced with disks punched from thin plastic. I just found this easier than cleaning up the spurs left after removal of the brass parts. The exhaust was given a coat of Mr. Surfacer stippled on with an old brush in preparation for a rough rusted finish later on.
A few leftover items from the assembly stage were used to fill the stowage box on the top of the hull.
