It’s a kit from a long time ago, but I started to make a Dragon Super Shaman. At first glance, it seemed like a pretty good deal at the time, with a series of Orange Boxes and an IDF paratrooper figure.
I’m assembling the rolling wheels. The small rolling wheel of the upper track guide and the assembly position are very primitive, measuring by myself while looking at the instruction manual, and there is no mark for positioning. It reminds me of the Eastern European kits of the olden days.
The chassis and the rolling wheel are glued together, but does the part at the base of the rolling wheel shaft not match the chassis? I scraped the dowel and other parts where it interferes, and forced it to fit, but it’s hard to put together. In other words, when the rolling wheel and the chassis are bonded, the parts don’t fit at all. I wonder if it’s a collection of many variations of parts. When it comes to Dragon kits, most of the ones I have made in the past were of very high quality and appreciated by modelers after the technology was established, so sometimes I get confused when I make kits that are too old. The suspension is HVSS suspension with horizontal spiral spring. I think it was adopted in the later stages of the Sherman Tanks.
It is a kit with a lot of processing such as filling in various parts and cutting fenders. To be honest, the fit of the parts is not very good. The gate when separating parts is large, the accuracy of parts is moderate, and there is no precision like the Smart Kit or Premium Kit of the Dragon Models, so I think it is very stressful if you are used to making Tamiya level. Probably a repackaged version of the early Dragon kit, the one from the red box?
For some reason, there are three belt-type caterpillars inside, and only one of them has a dark yellow discoloration, and can be broken by bending it lightly over the vinyl. I thought that only the track belt would have to be purchased from a third party, but I don’t know. If I put the other two into the chassis, I think I could just wind it up. When I read the assembly manual, the installation of the starting wheel and the track is at the end of the process, so I don’t know the truth about that, so I’m feeling confused. However, this kit has too many strange parts such as the part organization. It means we can enjoy the real pleasure of assembly including these troubled parts.
(2025/05/03)
I’m assembling the upper body of Super Shaman. There are only a few small etched parts, and a small metal mesh is used for the rear of the tank. There was also processing work on the tank body, such as closing extra holes, scraping a little protrusion, and making holes.
I need to glue a lot of small plastic parts to the center guide of the track. It is not difficult work except that the amount is large and troublesome because the material can be bonded with plastic adhesive. The adhesive with strong fluidity might break the track belts, so I mainly used the one with polymer.
The part that floats without touching the upper rolling wheel was fixed by putting a tissue between the gaps and glued. When I got into it and used superglue, I couldn’t remove some of the tissues and it was a big trouble later. The parts such as the rolling wheel of the chassis do not fit well, so I reinforced them with superglue.
I ended up adding 8 frames left and right. The parts were separated from the hardened track, and used for the straight line of the ground contact area where the influence was thought to be small. As a precaution, the eight frames were brittle, so I applied superglue to all surfaces to reinforce them. The assembly manual said to add 7 pieces, so the assembly process is almost the same. However, only one rubber caterpillar had hardened. Is this intentional? If the other tracks had hardened, I would have been completely stuck with the work.
I was able to wrap the tracks on both sides. It was quite hard. The width of the track is very wide compared to the body, so the left and right fenders are bonded a lot. This is also difficult to assemble. The gates of all the parts are too thick to be processed, but I can see the way forward.
(2025/05/06)
These are finished products in the past below.
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