Troubles with the STC's on Forgeworld McCrary'cus

Based off Jesters recommendations, I ordered me a pair of Hydra's from Forgeworld and decided I wanted to make them a bit different so ordered some Wheeled Chimera conversion kits from Chapterhouse to make them look more like the real life Scorpion KW2 SPAAG.

I got eveyrthing in and neither the Hydra kit nor the wheeled conversion kit included instructions. I've tried test fitting stuff together and it's just not happening. Does anyone have experience with either of these kits? In particular, the top plate for the Hydra seems to be half an inch too narow to fit into the back ofthe Chiemra hull and hideously flimsy given the chasm it spans and the weight of the Hydra turret. I'm thinking of buying a block of the cheap floral foam to insert under the plate to support it. Any thoughts on that?


-MaxGrav.

I know that Jester has a pair of the Forgeworld Hydra kits. It has been a while since he put em together but he would be your best bet.

http://www.thehogsofwar.com/2009/06/hydra-assembly-guide-forgeworld.html

Here is a guide I did on the blog. Maybe it might help?

OK, progress.

The trick with the hydra appears to be first gluing the top piece to the rear piece. Once that's in, the you can glue the front edge to the chimera hull and be good to go, and yes there's going to be at least an 1/8th of an inch on both the left/right sides of the top plate. You're going to need some serious greenstuff or plasticard to fix that.

The problem with the Chapterhouse wheeled conversion kit seems to be two fold. 1. It was designed for the old chimera chassis and doesn't quite line up with the new one but is easily fixed by using a sanding block to round a couple of corners on guide blocks. and 2. The owner of Chapterhouse is either a huckster or clueless.

I dug around on the web and found a tutorial for the wheeled conversion kit. The author of the tutorial noticed that even after sanding the guide blocks that his kit just didn't assemble correctly on the left side. Chapterhouse's website shows the kit assembled with the left body panel even with the right body panel which is odd because the left side is where the hull weapon is and is recessed. So, the guy emailed Chapterhouse and the owner told him that he did it wrong and said that the kit was designed to be assembled with the left and right body panels even. But when the blogger contacted the sculptor, they mentioned that the left body piece was supposed to mount even with the edge of the hull. Wanting to verify this myslef, I dry fit the kit using Chapterhouse's instructions. I then look at the wheels and saw that the left and right wheels did not line up and there's a large void betwene the left side of the hull and the side piece.
It appears that Chapterhouses didn't pay attention when modding the master for moldmaking and rather than building a specific set of guide blocks for the left side, they simply mirrored the right side which throws the whole left side out of whack.

So I grabbed a filter mask and a surgeon's saw and literaly had to chop down the guide blocks by 1/4 inch and then put a 45 degree bevel on their corners. much resin dust later, I had a very mangled by assembled wheeled Hydra hull.

One final bit of advice when going this route. On the Hydra rear piece, you'll need to sand off the rivets and blocks on the side in order for the hull to rest against the piece. On the rear of the Chimera hull, you'll need to snip off the two corner uprights flush with the hull. You'll also need to make sure that the bottom edge of the Hydra's rear piece rest to the inside of the ridge on the back of the chimera's deckplate. If you place the hydra piece to the rear of the ridge, it subtley tilts the entire assembly to the front which causes a serious downward bow to the hydra top plate.

-MaxGrav