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While painting my friend's IG for him I've decided on one thing: I hate the way the Leman Russ looks. It's too tall, it's turret's too small and the wrap around tracks bother me. Now, I don't think I could get rid of the wrap round tracks without A) it losing too much of it's iconic look and B) being very time consuming and/or expensive. Also, where would you put the side sponsons if you got rid of all that side space? but I think the other two issues could be remedied with some creative plasticard work or maybe by carefully cutting the existing hull and side portions down while replacing the turret with a baneblade turret. Here's what a normal LRBT looks like front on:

And here's my terrific mspaint chop job concept:


I'm actually wondering what would happen if you attempted to marry a LR turret and the hacked up upper portion of the LR hull to a chimera chasis. That would lower the vehicle significantly. Otherwise, this is begining to look like more of a pipe dream than a future project.. Any advice?

i don't see a change...

there have a been a few LR on Chimera Cassis before, looks pretty cool.

blessed be thy emperor wrote:i don't see a change...

Well, the second photo is cropped. ...Is that the conversion?

Sounds like an interesting idea though.

The second photo has a wider turret and a lower chassis, both thanks to the magic of Photoshop?

The turret is easily done, simply by adding several layes of plasticard to the sides and rear of the existing turret. Done carefully, and with a little surgery to the turret roof, the widened turret will look quite natural - and I agree, more realistic.

Lowering the hull isn't as easy - although something could be done to lower the chassis roof a little, the turret still needs to be able to rotate its gun 360 degrees over the tracks. As yo've noted, changing the hull sides to lower the tracks won't be easy - I've just checked and there's no obvious place to chop.

Hmm, if you have the money, you could consider putting a Russ turret on a Chimera hull? Some work would be needed to mount the sponsons, and up-armouring the hull would be good to avoid it looking too Chimera-ish. (Such a conversion would also give you the bits for an interesting Chimera turret on a Russ hull vehicle.)

i'd go for it man.

Here are a couple of shots of my Chimera based Russ. I much prefer the look to the normal Russ.

well looking at the picture at top, i'd say that you need to concentrate on getting your painting better before wondering about chopping and modding stuff, otherwise whatever conversions you do will look naff with naff paintjob

Clang wrote:The second photo has a wider turret and a lower chassis, both thanks to the magic of Photoshop?

The turret is easily done, simply by adding several layes of plasticard to the sides and rear of the existing turret. Done carefully, and with a little surgery to the turret roof, the widened turret will look quite natural - and I agree, more realistic.

Lowering the hull isn't as easy - although something could be done to lower the chassis roof a little, the turret still needs to be able to rotate its gun 360 degrees over the tracks. As yo've noted, changing the hull sides to lower the tracks won't be easy - I've just checked and there's no obvious place to chop.

Hmm, if you have the money, you could consider putting a Russ turret on a Chimera hull? Some work would be needed to mount the sponsons, and up-armouring the hull would be good to avoid it looking too Chimera-ish. (Such a conversion would also give you the bits for an interesting Chimera turret on a Russ hull vehicle.)

I had figure you'd have problems putting the russ turret onto the chimera chasis because the russ turret slides and locks into a large hole in the upper portion of the hull while the chimera turret just sits with a peg in a hole. So, some creative cutting would be necessary for it to work I'd think. Also, I don't really want to use the upper portion of a chimera hull because the top and rear hatches would make it look more like an IFV with a massive cannon than a battle tank imo. Maybe, I could just make the thing bigger and add inserts to widen the hull between the tracks.. But, then it would look even more boxy than it already is, so I'd have to find some way to lengthen the hull and tracks as well. Doing that plus the changes to the turret would start to make it look like a baneblade.

Flinty wrote:Here are a couple of shots of my Chimera based Russ. I much prefer the look to the normal Russ.

Yeah, those were actually part of what got me thinking about converting a Russ to begin with. It looks great and the only issue I have with it is I think the battle cannon barrel is too long, but that's personal tastes.

uri lee are pants wrote:well looking at the picture at top, i'd say that you need to concentrate on getting your painting better before wondering about chopping and modding stuff, otherwise whatever conversions you do will look naff with naff paintjob

Ouch, go for the nuts man, damn.. A lot of it was from the flash and the camera being to close. There's some better pics in my painting blog.

I have noticed one point where one might be able to cut a worthwhile portion of space out of the leman russ side panels. Just above the bottom rear wheel, going hoizontally across. It looks like you could remove an approximately half inch of space without buggering the way the bottom portion would fit to the upper portion after the cut. You may end up with a lot of the detailing not matching, but that's where you get creative with other modeling and/or painting stuff.

themandudeperson wrote:
I had figure you'd have problems putting the russ turret onto the chimera chasis because the russ turret slides and locks into a large hole in the upper portion of the hull while the chimera turret just sits with a peg in a hole. So, some creative cutting would be necessary for it to work I'd think. Also, I don't really want to use the upper portion of a chimera hull because the top and rear hatches would make it look more like an IFV with a massive cannon than a battle tank imo. Maybe, I could just make the thing bigger and add inserts to widen the hull between the tracks.. But, then it would look even more boxy than it already is, so I'd have to find some way to lengthen the hull and tracks as well. Doing that plus the changes to the turret would start to make it look like a baneblade.

Its actually pretty easy to get rid of the rear hatch and shorten the hull. That makes the tracks look a bit bigger by comparison. the top hatch looks like an engine access hatch anyway so there should be no problem there.

I had to cut away the Chimera turret ring to let my turrets fit, which is a bit of a bugger. The turrets are then magnetized to fit. You could do a similar thing to fit the Russ turret.

themandudeperson wrote:
Yeah, those were actually part of what got me thinking about converting a Russ to begin with. It looks great and the only issue I have with it is I think the battle cannon barrel is too long, but that's personal tastes.

indeed If you were so inclined I'm sure you could fit the Russ gun to the Predator turret to get a wider piece. the alternative is probably to add layers of plasticard to the Russ turret to bulk it out a bit. Or maybe pick up a Forgeworld alternative turret?

themandudeperson wrote:
Ouch, go for the nuts man, damn.. A lot of it was from the flash and the camera being to close. There's some better pics in my painting blog.

I thought that was a tad harsh as well... I mean its a bit brown for my liking, but I reckon its a good, clean finish (blurry pictures notwithstanding )

themandudeperson wrote:
Ouch, go for the nuts man, damn.. A lot of it was from the flash and the camera being to close. There's some better pics in my painting blog.

Sorry dude, Ijust think theres a lot of people who spend so much time on wondering how to make the model cooler than it is, then ruin it with the paint job. Wheres your painting blog?, I'll take a look, and I promise not to be harsh this time.
please accept my apology, I realise this this forum is meant to be fun and helpful, and my being overcritical isn't fun for anyone. I'll try to be helpful in a nice way next time.

uri lee are pants wrote:
Sorry dude, Ijust think theres a lot of people who spend so much time on wondering how to make the model cooler than it is, then ruin it with the paint job. Wheres your painting blog?, I'll take a look, and I promise not to be harsh this time.
please accept my apology, I realise this this forum is meant to be fun and helpful, and my being overcritical isn't fun for anyone. I'll try to be helpful in a nice way next time.

No problem, everyone who's spent any time online knows that subtleties of spoken language are often lost in text. Statements that would have been taken with a grain of salt if said in person come across as "fighting words" in text. Here's a link to my painting blog:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/235444.page

looks nice

I took a look at your painting blog, very good. If your conversion gets painted as nice as that then I'm sure it'll be worth doing.

Flinty-
You don't happen to have any photos of your chimera/russ's rear end, do you? Looking at your WIP thread I see you placed a barrel near the rear hatch. I'm trying to figure out how I would do the rear end of the vehicle. I might pester some of my IG and/or SM playing friends for sentinel and dreadnought exhaust/engine bits and use them to cover the rear hatch area if I went with a straight chimera hull + bulked up russ turret. I'm just worried that using a chimera might make it look a tad small for the awe inspiring look GW attempts to give most of it's tanks.

Rear of the tank below. I used the Basilisk section of chassis that comes with the Chimera kit to help with shortening the hull. After that you can cut down the textured internal bit of the rear hatch and GS it into place. I added the barrel as the rear was looking a bit bare, and I think all tanks should at least start going into action with drop-tanks

That might work.. I've noticed in the leman russ and chimera boxes they include WAY too many track pieces as well as track guards.. I wonder if you could extend the trackguards all the way to almost the the point where the tracks almost meet the ground on both sides to make the tracks look less like they wrap around and their design is circa WWI..

Im totally with the chimera crowd. I think the chimera is a pretty sweet looking tank. the LR just looks... I dunno out of place and kind of top heavy. Ive seen a few chimera based LR tanks and they ALL look pretty nice.