Pat's R/C M5 Stuart Tank

Skirt Removal

Removing the skirts (fenders) is a good way to make your Stuart look like it belongs on the battlefield. The skirts were just too much in the way for track maintenance, so they never stayed on for long.

	You want a nice clean line along the sponson. I've seen 1:1 tanks with the upper halves of the skirt hinges still attached, other with nothing there. Mine were shaved off for simplicity.
	Start with the deck attached to the hull, but with tracks and wheels off. Scribe or mark a line inside the skirts just below the sponson floor. A little overlap is fine, you don't want the floor peeking out! I used a coping saw for the rough cuts, and filed & sanded to the finished line. Others have used knife scores, or Dremel tools.
	Here you can see the lines for the front fender. The real fender has a bit of a lip or flanged edge hanging down, all along the curve. I just went with a flush cut, since the plastic is pretty thick. I also beveled the front edge of the vertical part, as this is just supposed to be thin sheet metal.
	The part outlined in red should come off, but I left it to overlap the sponson floor. It looks believable. The weld seam should be extended down to the edge; sorry, my bad.
	The rear fender has a radius.
	There's stuff on the back of the hull that needs to come off too. The angled part doesn't belong, but it's where the rear idler spring is mounted, so it stays.
	While you've got everything open, make up some sheet styrene to fill the gap behind the drive sprocket, this will keep junk out of the hull. If I recall right, the hull is ABS, so you'll need special cement from the hobby shop for this... same stuff that Plastruct ABS is cemented with.

back to Pat's M5 main page