With the difficult to access undersides of the vehicle now weathered, it was time to attach the running gear. The wheels have been weathered and the task of lining them all up went without incident. It is always a delicate mission getting all these overlapping and interleaved components to fit as they did before paint. The wheel fit to the axles was a tad loose upon building, so a little paint from airbrushing on both has now made the fit nice and snug. As a result, I deliberately left the middle row pairs un-glued, so I had some wiggle room, and relied on attaching the inner and outer pairs to their axles instead.
As the sprockets were already attached to the chassis and designed not to rotate, the track runs must be threaded carefully over them. Due to the addition of paint they had to be gently pressed against the sprocket pads ensuring all the guide horns located snugly between the rollers.
The last task was to attach both track runs. I made sure the connection points were on the top of the runs to make handling easier. Scraping away the paint on the locating surface of the connecting link on each run and inserting an unpainted track pad was a simple task. A spot of rubber CA and a light squeeze with a pair of tweezers was all that was required to get a secure connection. The pad was then primed and painted. To blend them in completely the same acrylic 'rain wash' will be applied to both the pads in the next session.
The remaining front tyred wheel will stay off for now to aid handling as I have a fair bit of weathering still to do with oils and the front axle connection point is very shallow. Masking the connection between chassis and cargo frame was a worthwhile exercise and has meant the cargo bed has been repeatedly dry fitted.
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