GAZ-67B

Henk of Holland sent me a preproduction sprue of S-Model's GAZ-67B, which I liked so much that I immediately bought a production kit as well. (The production kit contains two vehicles.)

As far as I can tell, the pre-production sprue is the same as in the production kit, but it came without decals, instructions or PE fret. The PE fret contains a shovel, a saw, tow hooks and footsteps that go on the hull.

The PE fret. The sprues can be seen in the preview of the kit.

Construction showed a very good fit, with a lot of parts not really needing glue to stay in place.

My sprues did not have sinkholes or flash or annoying ejector marks where they could be seen. There were, however, "slits" on top of the front mudguards, just outside of the headlights that do not correspond to anything seen on the real vehicle in my opinion. Speaking of headlights, while I wanted to build the kit out of the box (allowing for the fact that the preproduction sprue actually doesn't have a box) I drilled out the headlights to make lenses. Things went horribly wrong there on my first attempt (I'll spare you the details), so I ended up scratchbuilding a pair of headlights and doing plastic surgery on the recesses where these headlights went. Normally assembling the kit would have taken an hour, now it took days.
Caveat spectator: the area around the headlights in one of the kits shown is therefore no longer representative of the S-Model kit.

The "Building out of the box theme" was subjected to some artistic licence, as I didn't install the PE footsteps on the rear of the hull in one of the production kits, only the PE tow hooks. The reason is that the attachment is a butt joint, where the "butt" is the thin edge of the PE, which barely qualifies as a surface to hold superglue. As an aside S-Model didn't pay attention to the fact that the PE parts that go around the rear corners should have suitably slanted edges. Note that these corner "steps" aren't seen on all vehicles by the way.
I replaced the PE shovels in both production kits by parts from the spares box as the PE parts are unrealistically flat, but kept the PE saw. The preproduction kit had to live without all of this, even though I could have added the tow hooks as the production kits come with spares.
Another part of the construction that requires a disproportionate amount of time is cutting clear plastic sheets to size to serve as windscreen panes. (That's why I added a windscreen cover on one of my kits.) I added the windscreen after painting and discovered that the way S-Model wants you to attach it, i.e. with two tabs, will result in a solid connection, but one that is unrealistical. I ended up filling in the recesses and cutting off the tabs at the very end of my build. Had I thought this over, I would have done this at the very start of the construction.

Some other remarks, in random order:

• S-Model does not provide a canvas top or canvas "doors".
• The texture on the seats is convincing.
• When in doubt about the orientation of the windshield, consult the locating pegs underneath (vide supra), as the windshield should recline slightly.
• On the real vehicle the windshield could fold forward. If you want to do this, you need to fill in the pegs as described above.
• S-model did not replicate the small lights on the edge of the front fenders.
• Rear view mirrors can be added if wanted. Not all vehicles had them.
• There are too many bars in the radiator. For those who care and don't want to scratchbuild them, you can hide them with a padded cover that was used during the Russian winter.
• When assembling the nose, I eliminated a circular seam just below the headlights on the vehicle I built first (that's the one that ended up with the Ersatz headlights). It seems the seam was present on the real vehicle.
• The underside and suspension are quite nice, and the wheels convincing.
• It is not quite clear where the shaft of the steering wheel goes, but I think I nailed it on the last try. (There is a small notch in the dashboard and "something" on the floor next to the pedals.)
  It is also much easier to install it after the hull is completed than before as the instructions suggest.

Markings are provided for two rather generic vehicles. Decals number "2" are not mentioned but are individual numbers that can always be of good use. You will get two spare red stars, but unfortunately these aren't perfectly printed as they are printed red over white (for opacity) but the white doesn't cover the star completely and isn't centred. The end effect will be a red star with a somewhat different red offset border.

For one of the kits (the pre-production kit), decals from the spares box were used.

The decal sheet. I didn't manage to make the white decals stand out.

In general, this is a very nice kit. Being sold as "quick build" and thus giving the impression of a wargaming kit, it is better than a lot of kits that are sold as display models.

As my references are rather limited, I am not sure if I have been able to fairly judge the kit for accuracy. For instance, I do not have any measurements of the vehicle, but it looks right to the Mk.I eyeball compared to [1].

Above: the pre-production kit.

References:

[1] Gaz 67 B, Kagero Topshots 11011, A Osinski, 2005

My thanks to S-Model and Henk of Holland for the pre-production sample of this kit. Other kits kindly bought by the author.

Article Last Updated: 21 July 2014