A fair amount of discussion has been generated about the height of the kit turret.  Some have claimed that the kit turret is too squashed.  My analysis leads me to come down squarely in the camp of those that believe the kit turret is accurate in height.  Indeed the Monogram kit, produced a decade earlier, is the same height as the Tamiya kit (see the comparison here).  However, if you are so inclined, figures 36 – 37 show a simple method for increasing the turret height.

A number of short lengths of styrene strips are cemented around the bottom half the turret.  The two halves are cemented together and the gaps in the rear area of the turret are filled with a mixture of cyanoacrylate and dental resin powder.  The space in the front half of the turret is filled with a strip of styrene bent to conform to the space.

Regardless of whether you raise the turret height or not, you will want to tighten up the way the turret sits on the hull.  An easy method is to put a dab of the cyanoacrylate and dental resin powder mixture on the top of the tab that retains the turret, Fig. 39.  You could also use a small shim made for styrene.

The outside of the front half of the turret is a bit oversized, Fig. 40.  One of the key features of the M48 was the elegant way the turret was designed to eliminate shot traps.  Whether you raise the turret height or not, you need to remove some material to blend the turret into the turret ring, Fig. 41.  Pay special attention to the transition where the bustle takes off.  Filling and careful reshaping needs to be done here, Figs. 42-43.

With the heavy lifting done, I focused my attention on improving a few of the hull details.  The travel lock does not fit well into the provided detents and seems to hang too far over the rear of the tank.  I modified the assembly procedure by first filling the detents, Figs. 44 – 45.  The travel lock and supports were assembled separately on a flat surface.  After assembly, the bottoms of the supports were sanded flat, Fig. 46.  The travel lock assembly was cemented in place.  I positioned the assembly further forward to reduce the overhang, Fig 47.  With this assembly in place, you can see by the filled detents how the supports were able to be moved significantly closer to the travel lock.

Figure 48 shows a few enhancements to the rear of the tank.  Two pieces of styrene were shaped and added to the lower hinges on the grill doors.  The pieces were shaped to match the detail of the upper hinges.  Note that the kit fender stays have been replaced with new ones fabricated from sheet styrene.  I used the kit supplied inner fenders/mud guards.  These need to be thinned out and tacked to the tail light guards.  Also evident is the additional styrene added to the rear deck first shown in figure 4.

The headlight guards are grossly too thick and need to be thinned out, Fig. 49.  This process is a bit tedious, but well worth the effort.

Looking at photographs, I found several variations of out riggers (fender supports).  Some have holes and others don’t.  I would recommend checking your reference photos for your particular tank.  I found no photos that showed a hole pattern that matched the kit out riggers.  No matter which pattern you are doing, the basic structure is the same and I found this sequence to be a relatively simple method for making new out riggers.  I started by laying down a strip of .010” x .060” styrene to cover the locating slots, Figs. 50, 51.  The next piece to be applied is the long vertical element, Fig. 52.  This piece was shaped from .015” thick styrene.  Clamp several pieces together when you shape these pieces so that they are all identical.

The outside cross portion was done by first laying down a .010” x .060” piece of styrene strip on either side followed by a vertical piece of .020” x .060” strip.  A piece of .010” x .060” strip was added to the end of the out rigger, Fig. 52.  I left this long because it made it easier to handle and trimming it after it was cemented made it more precise.  The excess strip material was removed, Fig. 54.  The final piece was cemented in place, Fig. 55.  This piece was made from .010” x .060” strip.  For ease of handling, I created this shape on the end of the stock strip and then cut it to length.

With a little work, the kit barrel can go together very well.  I removed the locating pins and sanded the mating surfaces flat.  Before cementing the two halves together, I checked the diameter of the barrel by rolling it in the jaws of a caliper, Fig. 56.  This measurement showed that the barrel was oval in diameter with the smaller dimension over the joints.  I sanded a little more of the mating surfaces in order to make the barrel more round.  I used dental matrix bands to clamp the barrel halves together prior to applying the cement, Fig. 57.  The dental matrix band technique is explained here.  Finally the barrel was sanded down, the muzzle brake was thinned out, and the barrel given a coat of primer, Fig. 58. 

The mantlet cover is poorly represented in the kit, Fig. 59.  I removed all the cast on detail for the mantlet cover leaving a very slight raised lip, Fig. 60.  The lip was curved in at the bottom and .015” solder was formed and cemented against the lip, Fig. 61.  The gun was cemented in place, Fig. 62.

I prefer to minimize cleaning up errant bits of epoxy putty, so I first masked the turret, Fig. 63.  My favorite epoxy putty for sculpting is Apoxie Clay, Fig. 64.  Also shown in figure 64 is a roll of 6 mil adhesive backed lead tape that I used for the mantlet cover retaining clips.

Figure 65 shows the finished cloth portion of the mantlet cover.  I cut thin pieces of the lead tape to act as retaining clips for the mantlet cover.  To get the lead to conform, I made a little forming tool from 1/16” acrylic, Fig. 66.

After the clips were positioned and formed, I cut the clips to their final length, Fig. 67.  The bolts holding the retaining clips should have hex heads, but I could not come up with a good method for such a small size.  Instead, I opted for Archer Fine Transfer rivets.  The printed rivets are not very round so I cut them out with a syringe needle modified to use as a punch, Fig. 68.  The lift rings were cemented in place and blended into the cover with Apoxie Clay, Fig. 69.  Chris Mrosko of New World Miniatures sent me this superbly sculpted mantlet cover as an example of an aftermarket method for solving the lack of a kit mantlet cover, Fig. 70.

How to represent the turret cupola was a particular problem for me.  In its’ original form the actual cupola did not work out very well.  There was an extreme lack of room inside the cupola so the visibility was poor, loading was difficult with only a limited amount of ammunition, and jamming was frequent due to the poor feed design.  The visibility issue was addressed with a vision ring and a small amount of headroom was gained by adding a raised portion in the cupola lid.  Neither of these fixes addressed the poor performance of the gun mount and, in this author’s opinion, resulted in a pagoda-like look that was inconsistent with the low profile design of the tank.  To increase the functionality of the gun, many M48 combat crews remounted the weapon on the top of the cupola mantlett so that it could be accessed in a more conventional manner.  The Tamiya kit supplies the updated cupola with the redesigned lid and vision ring.  For the sake of aesthetics, I prefer the original cupola and mount (without the vision ring) that was used on the early M48A3’s.  However, I have also included a few brief tips on improving the stock kit cupola.

The fit of the kit lid and cupola are less than optimum when in the closed position, Fig. 71.  It seems they were designed to be assembled in the open position.  Since I am building a gate guard, I want the lid closed.  The first step was to do a little selective sanding and fitting.  When the fit was satisfactory, I turned my attention to improving the hinge.  I taped off the sides of each lid hinge and filled the voids that were designed to engage the pins on the cupola hinge, Figs. 72, 73.  After some clean-up and shaping, the results are an improvement in appearance, Fig. 74.

After the lid was cemented in place, the joint was cleaned up using a sandpaper strip, Figs. 75, 76.

Tamiya also supplies the pintle and gun for the field modified mount, Fig. 77.

As mentioned before, I wanted my M48A3 to have the early cupola without the vision ring.  This cupola used a different hatch that incorporated two vision ports and no raised center.  The raised center portion is easy to fix, but I initially thought the vision ports were going to be a problem.  Several readers suggested using the cupola from Tank Workshop.  Not wanting to reinvent the wheel I ordered the Tank Workshop cupola, Fig. 78, 79.  I was disappointed.  The early hatch was poorly represented.  The vision ports are angled back in a rather odd way that is not consistant with the other ports.  Also, the fit of the hatch was poor.  As the pattern is just a modified Tamiya part, the hinges are the same.  The cupola itself has had a square plate substituted for the round site mount on the top and I feel that the texture has been overdone.  In its’ defense, the mantlet cover sculpting is beautiful along with the screws around the vision ports.  The casting is well done and the resin handles like styrene.  This cupola would work well for someone who wanted to display the hatch open because the details of the hatch interior have been included and you would not see the vision ports or the poor fit.

In the end I felt that, in order to make the necessary corrections, I had to do the cupola myself.  I started by cementing the hatch in place and filling the underside of the hatch with my dental resin powder - cyanoacrylate mixture.  I then filed off the raised center and reshaped the hatch portion of the hinge.  I cut the vision ports off a spare cupola.  Note that I cut out a section maintaining a small area around the port and complete to the base.  I cut out a similar opening in the hatch.  The way that I sectioned up the components allowed me to accurately align the new vision ports so that I corrected the main flaw in the Tank Workshop cupola, Fig. 80, 81.  The joint between the new vision port and the hatch was filled and smoothed over, Fig. 82.  I built up several coats of Mr. Surfacer around the base of the vision blocks to eliminate the hard line.  The Mr. Surfacer was smoothed out with a Q-Tip and 90% alcohol, Fig. 83.

The improved alignment is evident in the side-by-side comparison, Fig. 84.  In all fairness, neither cupola represents the vision ports properly, as they should all be located so that the top lip of the port is ever so slightly over the outside of the cupola base.  Tamiya has got the angle pretty good so that, to my eye at least, if all the ports are in alignment, it looks better than the Tank Workshop pattern.  In order to scribe the outline of the hatch, I found it necessary to resort to a trick that I use occasionally when the shapes are either to complex or there is no room for tape.  The cupola hatch has both issues.  I quickly duplicated the cupola in hydrocal over which I vacuformed styrene.  The shape of the hatch was cut out, Fig. 85.  The vacuformed guide was used to scribe the hatch outline in the cupola.  Scribing into the lacquer primer yields a nice crisp line, Fig. 86.  More to follow.

The heavy moldings for the turret grab rail and basket are good indications of the vintage nature of this kit.  I made new ones using styrene shapes.  The grab rail was done by first drilling holes in the turret side and inserting short lengths of .025” styrene rod, Fig. 87.  The rail is .025” styrene rod that was curved and then cemented in place.  Strips of masking tape were used to help position the rail while cementing, Fig. 88.  Finally the ends of the rail were trimmed away, Fig. 89.

The turret basket was done by using a few modified kit parts, .020” styrene rod, and .010” x .030” styrene strip.  The kit basket ends were thinned out.  Since I was working with two kits, I had an extra set of ends that were thinned out and modified for use as the intermediate supports.  Holes were drilled through each support to accept the .020” styrene rod.  The intermediate supports were cemented in place using a make shift jig made from styrene card and a square.  The end supports were cemented in place first.  The jig was aligned to the end supports and the used to position the intermediate supports.  The intermediate supports are held to the jig using masking tape, Fig. 90.  The finished turret basket looks much more to scale than the stock basket, Fig. 91.

The tank is now ready for primer, Fig. 92.