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Hi People,

After some really busy weeks i wanted to take a break, not happening because i was forgotten i had to build something for a clubmeeting.
The theme this time was army and people expected something special, being a former military modeller.
After some thought i opted for a XR311, it's a re-release and poorly made, painted without primer, i picked it up at a internet auction and didn't pay much for it, so there's the donor.
I decided to do a SAS version kind of thing, i have a deep respect for the beginning of the SAS, fighting in the desert War.

I was looking for a long range desert group look, like the heroes way back then who rebuild Bantams for the desert armed to the teeth.
Like this:



Being a clubbuild i can only use Tamiya parts in general, which means using the Tamiya figgies. to say they are bad would be the understatement of the century, i still can not understand why Tamiya keep on making these figures with moulds from the 70's and 80's which are long worn out.
But i gave ot a go, left the Original, right the reworked one:



They will never turn out really good but you can come to some result with some effort:



The XR body got the bottom removed, modern electronics needs lesser space then in the 80's when this body was made, it also gave me the option to make a more bombproof floor:



I also put a winch in the nose and reshaped it al little, the real car was ment as a successer for the M151 which was ment to replace the Jeep, the other options were the Cheetah and the Humvee, we all know who won.
When the 311 was tested for the first time it was put aside, one of the reasons was the headlights, they looked old and to weak, they tried to change that with a different nose but it was allready to late.
I agree, the headlights don't do him any justice so i left them off, thought about scratching the other more modern nose but it would not work for the look of wandering desert warrior.



Reshaping and dryfitting the figures:



Ready for paint:



In the next post the painting! Cheers Rick

Putting the paint on was really straight forward, picked a yellowish sandcolor and lighten it up going higher on the body:





To make it a 'mecaninal camel'i made a trampoline or cargonet at the back:



I has some left over jerrycans and made sandplates from styreen, the .30 cal and ammoboxes come from the RC Sherman, the bottles i made and casted myself in resin, and then some serious painting weathering and dusting up:





















Yhanks for watching/ reading, hope you like it!! Cheers Rick

Nice work

really nice work on the paint and pilots.
for the the desert you could use a FAV too. but it was too easy for you. It's amazing.

you missed maybe some weapons for the SAS. They were very equiped in ww2. british and us mixed materials.

Thanks guys, and it's maybe SAS inspired but i did not wanted to make a exact copy, the Vickers they used in the desert was surplus armour from bombers, they only really worked at night when it was cooler, they lacked watercooling.
And even then it could only be used in small bursts, changing the barrows on those things was a nightmare so it looked impressive but wasn't that great, look at the later european actions, the Vickers were replaced bij .30 and '50's as soon as they could get them.

But again, this was a kind of 'what if' build, just for the fun of it.

just for fun or not, you made a awesome xr311

That looks great!

stingray-63 wrote:

just for fun or not, you made a awesome xr311

It looks way better than the box art option & that sign on the back is pretty cool.

It was up for sale on the Dutch Tamiya forum recently - and might still be.
Rick's often more into the creative process itself than ownership of the result...