Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda) Chapter 7: Painting

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With the kit fully built in sub assemblies I plan to show this as a late war supply vehicle towing a trailer which has been pushed off the road on a Northern France or Belgium road during the retreat to the Rhine in 1944.

Preparing softskins for paint is often a tricky business. For one there is rarely anywhere suitable on the vehicle to hold or suspend it safely. Then there is the issue of completing the interior before masking glass areas to complete the exterior. I often prepare at the building stage and this almost always make the whole project a far more enjoyable experience.

Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda) Chapter 6: Wheels & tyres and kit build report

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Wheels and tyres

Although the kit's narrow shoulder treaded tyres do look a little odd they do appear to be authentic and there are pictures of them on L4500's. Whether these are post war I cannot determine.

 

Schwerer Wehrmachtschlepper (sWS) armoured cargo version. Chapter 6: Decals and adding initial weathering effects with acrylics

A light coat of sand coloured lifecolor acrylics were airbrushed over a coat of hairspray and scrubbed back leaving remnants of the sand colour to simulate the first layers of dust and dirt. A further coat of VMS satin varnish sealed all the work in preparation for upcoming pin washes.

Chapter 7

Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda) Chapter 5: Cab assembly and engine bay

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Cab construction

Once the main chassis compenents have been fitted we move onto the cab construction. As is often the case with truck and car builds we are faced with the dilemma of how to approach painting the interior.  Unfortunately, Zvezda have not helped us with this task!  They have designed the cab roof to join just behind the screen where no joint on the real vehicle (so far as I could determine) was present. Filling the joint after painting the interior would not be my preferred plan of attack so I figured that issue would need to be addressed first.

I have already built the Zvezda L4500S kit with the wooden cab and found a fair amount of parts on this kit are identical.  You got both the metal and wooden cab with that kit and as I had already built up this cab previously, I employed the same method of construction with this one.

To be able to get decent access to paint the cab interior and add the instrument decals the cab ideally needs to be built in two halves. I preferred to leave the screen and all the cab windows off rather than mask them, until after the cab is painted. 

I started the cab construction by building up the rear section, cementing the floor and rear panel together. I left off both the seat and seat back until both parts had cured to avoid any potential interference. There are a couple of tabs on the inside of the rear panel to line up to the floor and it is important to make sure the lower points of the rear panel sit at the same height as the bottom of the floor moulding.  I found out in my earlier build this positioning is crucial for getting the best overall alignment of the cab, and  critical if building the cab with the doors closed.

 

Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda) Chapter 4: Aftermarket resin wheels and suspension

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Aftermarket wheels

If you are to employ an aftermarket set of wheels beware to check before adding parts C42 and C43 to the rear axle. The kit's outer hub moulding was included as part of the outer wheel in my Hussar aftermarket set so the inner rear wheels mounted directly to the backplate parts C39 and C40

Axles

The front and rear axles are nicely rendered, and all the small assemblies go together without hitch. The front wheels are designed to rotate but to make this possible, as well as the simple task of trapping the tie rod allowing the wheels to move inwards and outwards, you would still need to drill out the steering arm, drag link and knuckle arms. I did this successfully with a previous L4500S build but this time I decided to fix the wheels at a rotated angle.

Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda) Chapter 3: Cargo bed & chassis

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Cargo bed

The wooden framed cargo bed is attached to the chassis via three beams which are secured with U-shaped shackle pins. Access to insert the shackle pins is extremely difficult if you plan to keep the cargo bed, frame and beams separate, but there is an alternative build process to those in the instructions worth considering as I discovered.

This option is to just attach the cargo beam parts F17, F26 and F27 (step 8) once the chassis is built up, leaving you to attach the remaining frame parts as per step 7 to the cargo bed. This way you can add the U- shaped shackle pins but keep the cargo bed separate. 

Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda) Chapter 2: Engine

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Engine

The instructions start with the engine and gearbox and the Mercedes-Benz OM 67/4, Diesel is quite a substantial assembly once built up. Noteworthy from the outset is the engine and gearbox will not fit in the engine bay once the cab floor is fitted. A mistake I have made with other similarly designed kits on the odd occasion in my enthusiasm to complete a build. Sadly, one half of my engine block was severely warped.  Whether this was a manufacturing defect or a direct result of being packaged in a loose bag and getting trapped against another sprue in transit will remain a mystery.   

The whole assembly is nicely detailed and even includes an oil dipstick, however, looking at ref pics there does look like a chunk of cooling pipework is missing over the manifold. If displaying the bonnet/hood completely open, fuel pipes to the injectors will also need to be added as will a battery and bulkhead pipework and wiring.   

Mercedes L4500A (Zvezda 3596 1/35) Chapter 1: What's in the box

 

 

The Mercedes-Benz L 4500 was built by Daimler-Benz from 1939 –1944 in the Mercedes-Benz plant Gaggenau,^[1] and from 1944 – 1945 by Saurer. The vehicle is a long-bonnet truck and was offered as a rear-wheel-drive truck (L 4500 S) and as an all-wheel-drive truck (L 4500 A). The German Wehrmacht used the L 4500 with armoured cabins as Flaks during World War II. Due to the lack of production material, the cabin was replaced with the simplified standardised Wehrmacht cabin and the mudwings with simplified wings in 1943.^[2] Also, the L 4500 chassis was used for the Sonderkraftfahrzeug 4.