Komintern Artillery Tractor

Manufacturer: AER (Kit No. 7205)

This is a very rough kit. I think that the plastic parts come from one of AER's truck kits, and they are fairly well detailed, and well cast. There is no detail inside the cab, except the seat, and there are no headlights or other small exterior details included. The resin parts in this kit are extremely poor.

There were three types of resin used, including some wierd silvery stuff, which may actually be some sort of plastic. But none of the resin held the detail very well. All the parts are plagued with an abundance of bubbles and air pockets. Of the 53 wheels included in my example, only 14 of them are useable (you need 32, although half of them may be hidden on the inside of the wheel assemblies. One of the sprocket wheels, and three of the idler wheels are also ruined. The tracks are very bad. They have a good shape to them, but there is absolutely no detail on them, and removing them from their backing would be very difficult. The instructions are mediocre. If someone has good reference material for this tractor, perhaps this kit could be salvaged as a scratch-build project, but the tracks will be very difficult to overcome.

As far as design in concerned, all this kit needs is some interior detail and new tracks. The main problem is the molding and casting technique. If better materials and procedures had been used, this would have been a fairly decent kit.