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Ok, here is my take on the battlewagon. I don't mind the kit, in fact it's pretty cool and actually a lot simpler than I expected. But it bugs me that the wheelbase is SOOOOO damn narrow. I mean, it's orky so it should be BEEFY BEEFY BEEEEEFCAAAAAKE! Instead of "It's fun to tip over on the corners when we shoot da guns"...

So I took the kit, widened the wheelbase while keeping the basic vehicle width, removed the big "Jaw" off the front and added a proper krusha wheel. The next one will probable have a harvester style crushy sort of intake- hard to explain I'll build it (if I can work out how).

Anyways - pics of the "corrected" battlewagon...









Enjoy!

So simple and yet so much better!

Looks a bit better with the wider tracks. Love the death roller.

Looks much better with the widened wheel/track base..

The Death roller on front is particularly sweet.

Very nice. If i ever make one of these, i will also mod the tracks

Very good conversion. I really like it.

Did you cut out plasticard for all the rivets on the Deff Rolla?

:(

If you attach pics to Dakka posts, I can see them much better! (i.e. I can see them.)

Maybe I should stop browsing from work.

it really blends well with the vehicle. nice

I'm not a fan of the model, but your modification does wonders for it. Nicely done.

He did it again!

Inspirational work, as always.

Now THAT's how GW should've done it. Great job, looking forward to seeing that sucker painted

fine job you did! I am looking forward to see how you paint it.

Less Orkimus prime and more battlewagon. Me likes!

Whoop!!

I've been wanting to biggerise my battlewagons, I was thinking of properly splitting the whole body down the middle and widening it, but actually just widening the track width of the vehicle does wonders for it. Looks spot on now!

Bang up job, Lem! Awesome scratchbuilds aside, you really have an eye for simple changes that greatly improve stock models. Smartly done!

Nice simple effective mod, I will try that after I finish my 8-wheeled BW conversion and my 4-tracked BW conversion...

I too had been considering widening the entire vehicle, but your version is much less work and looks suitably orky

I too am on the "nope the GW battlewagon is not cool" band wagon. BUT I have to give you props your conversion really made a difference. nicely done!

re-looted battle wagon time

Great work lemming! Thanks for the ideas

Wow..that makes a big difference! Seeing this makes me think twice about about skipping a battlewagon. Nice one!

Very nice mod!

And it's a very simple mod too. I'll try and get a pic of the mod I did to make it work. It's quite simple. Basically you just separate the track support from the wheel support and space them differently in the same sort of areas they were to go. Hard to explain but a pic will speak a 1000 words

Dangit! I forgot to check this until I got to work again!!!

Ok, well I haven't been posting much lately - so thanks for all the comments BTW.....

Anyway - taking some other ideas I've had and stuff that other people have been doing into consideration I plunged headlong into building the second battlewagon. This one I wanted to have the Killkannon + Kannon combo of the old (I think) Lungbursta wagon.

Now in advance I will admit that I think the dozer blade on the front is a bit weedy - but for some reason I actually think it works. For me anyways... I haven't taken any pics of the undercarriage at this stage to show how I widened it - I'm kinda too tired to care about that atm...so maybe another time... hehe!

This time I widened the troop bed, closed in the roof more to represent more of an 'ard Case and built an entirely new turret and cannon to represent the killkannon. Hope you like - here's some pics:







And an aerial view of both the first and second models. You'll notice that the second is only slightly wider. I honestly think the main problem (and it seems from looking at other mods on the net that many agree) is the that tracks are too narrow. The wheelbase looks more like a train than a beefy destructive ork carrier of mayhem and destruction. Anyway - I rambly too much - here's the pic:

Looking great as usual.

The only thing bothering me in the new wagon is that the larger turret is has too high collar where the turret is attached to the wagon. It seems to be too vulnerable to small arms fire there.

The top view is great in showing how much the widening fixes the wagons design. The second wagon is as beefy as I would expect the ork mobile fortresses to be.

wow

These look great, you've done it some justice. Can we see a pic from the underneath to see just how you did it?

Lemming spawn: making you feel bad about your conversions since you first saw his work.

Three of the things I don't like about the GW wagon were the width , the snow plow and the kind of heavy brow ,frown look of the cab. You have sorted out the first two problems nicely. After that I can see I could make the cab more truck like with a few cuts ( which would make it look a bit closer to my scratchbuild). You have inspired me to go out and buy one!

Ok, here's some extra pics for those eager to try something similar to what I've done! I've taken a few pics of the undercarriage to give you an idea of what I did and how it looks, and I found a pre-release pic of the sprue layout that let me show you a mockup of where to cut the important sections.

Here's some pics for you to peruse:







As best a view as I can get of the side of the piece:



And here's a rough example of where to cut:



The red line indicates the cut lines. The yellow line indicates where the wagon tray slot runs. The idea is to cut at an angle to this slot and the go straight from there along. you can just cut it at the angle all the way if you want, but you need to trim it a bit to fit the wheels in if you do it that way. I think this way ends up a bit neater. I actually cut it straight along at the angle on the first one, and the second one I fiddled it a bit more. I prefer the end result of the second cut method. You'll also notice I put a piece of plasticard into the breach of the cut in the model, this is to lend strength to it.



In this pic I have circled the added tray areas. I cut off the old tray sides and replaced them with these which are slightly wider. Not much but enough to make a big difference. I deliberately made one squared off because - well - i wanted to. And the panel lines on these have been scratched in using a steel rule and one of my sculpting tools. They are actually engineers picks, and I have a whole set of them. The tool I used have a sharp end and being a pick is designed to scratch stuff.

A tip for all those rivet makers - here's how I do it.

I use a combination of methods and any one of which will help out. Lately, on the smaller stuff like this, I get various thicknesses and types of plastic rod. I like to mix up square and round and I wish I could get some hexagonal that would be sweet. Then I cut off thin slices of the rods and pile them all together. After that, I use something to hold a small pool of superglue and using a very sharp small stanley blade, I pick each rivet up with the sharp tip and dip it into the superglue. Then I put the rivet where I want.

Another way I get my rivets is to use a hand punch. I haven't been able to get one smaller than 1/16" but it still works fine. I also have a 1/8" and also use a standard paper hole puncher. These can be used on card (although it's not very reliable on card as it tends to split in the thicker sizes) and various plastics like old ice cream containers. I like to stack up different shapes and sizes into nut-bolt-washer type configurations on my larger scratchbuilds and use those for added detail. If I could fine a hex punch I would be in HEAVEN I do also have a 1/8" square hand punch, so I get a nice variation of shapes.

One other thing I sometimes do, and it's really annoying, is to get the square pieces and carefully cut off the corners to give a "sortof" hex shape. I do it a little bit it's pretty fiddly.

Be careful with some plastics as they resist superglue and others may be melted by it.

Anyway, hope this is useful