Another kitbashing project I had in the back of my head for quite some time. Surfing around for cool
IG vehicles I found this from Vontrrag:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3963999
That is based on an old White Dwarf (?) kitbashing tutorial and seems to have even had some lore and stats back in the day.
Vontrrag (who has some other pretty cool model files for download and is a nice dude on top of it) has modelled the thing for 3D printing, but I wanted to try and cobble the general chassis together myself. So I only printed the side panels, back exhaust and mud guards, got myself a Gryphone pattern chimera turret from another source
So I got myself a Chimera lower hull and front as well as a Leman Russ upper hull and started.
step 1: preparations
Cut the chimera upper front as shown. The formost part is cut imediatly at the transition from angled to horizontal plate. Also file away the structures on top of the upper part of the Leman Russ upper hull front.
step 2: building the hull
Glue the first and third part of the Chimera upper front to the lower hull. Carefully file down the region with the red arrow in the first pic, so that the Leman Russ hull attaches nicely there. Now put the Leman Russ upper hull to the Chimera structure. You might need to file away a bit of the Leman Russ hull were the red arrow is.
step 3: rounding up
Upper pic: a bit of plasticard closes the whole for the the Chimera hatch. Lower pic: the back of the Leman Russ hull was cut short up to the triangular plates at the back corners. The Basilisk backplate was glued to close the hull, but has to be angled a little bit (dryfit first!).
Step 4: adding details
The sides were closed with plasticard. I also added the printed mudguards and side armor panel. Middle pic: Had some tires lying around and tried to fix them to the floor. I first had one axis each for the forward and backward wheels but that looked dumb and completely lacking any suspension or way to steer. This version is... a bit better. At least one could imagine each wheel "housing" to have a rudimentary suspension and maybe a way to steer either by turning the wheel or differential speeds. Last pic: a very basic and ugly, but working variant to get the 3D printed chimera turret to the turret mounting of the Leman Russ.
Step 5: before priming
The final result so far. The hull flamer is magnetized (I would prefer a heavy Bolter, but I currently don't have one spare). Some more details will be added, maybe a kind of basket with jerrycans.