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Background Information: (according to the kit instructions):
The Mercedes Benz 2644S Tractor units entered service with the British Army in 1988, along with purpose built trailers. Originally 28 Vehicle s entered service.
The vehicles where part of a leasing agreement with Ryder Truck Rentals, which eventually led to the Army having to buy the vehicles when they where deployed to Bosnia.
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Packaging:
My sample is an older kit which I obtained second hand, the model was still in its original black card board box, which provides sufficient security of the parts to present damage to the castings. I have seen some recent kits from B.W. Models offered on E-Bay shops in simple zip lock bags. All parts are loose inside a zip lock Bag, without any bubble wrap usually used by B.W.
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In the box preview:
The kit parts for the most part where still attached to the sprue, however as this is a second hand kit I assume some parts have been removed for test fitting of the parts.
The sprue is fairly thick, but this is necessary to allow the metal to flow into all the detail area’s the parts are attached to the sprue logically and will be easily removed with a sharp knife. Any mould seems will easily be cleaned of with normal modelling tools.
When inspecting the major parts of the kit for the texture of surface casting it is apparent that there is a lot of detail on the parts and non of them suffer from Orange peel surface texture, However on my example there where some repairs carried out with Milliput to a area’s that had either been damaged or had not cast properly, this may have been done by the modeller, the front Mercedes Logo on the grill will need to be repaired, due to miss casting. There is some cleaning up that has been done at the factory, this is quite usual with BW Models, and something I encourage other companies to consider.
Wheels have nice hub details as usual however there is no tread detail on the running face of the wheels and the area has been heavily cleaned up. But in this scale is usually acceptable as there tread detail on modern trucks is fairly delicate in this scale and would not necessarily been seen.
The model appears to be broken down logically, and the quick dry test fit I ran showed no real major headaches for the model construction, however I would want more references to hand when building the kit.
I have no hesitation in recommending this kit to modellers who have experience with white metal kits.
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