Lee takes a look at making the Ram/Sexton kit swappable to maximise the bang for the Canadian buck of the kit.
When the Sexton kit came out, I was lucky enough to get a box to review. During my video review, I noted that there seemed potential to make the kit build all three varieties of ram chassis; gun tank, Kangaroo and Sexton as swappable blocks, allowing maximum use of the box.
As it was, I didn’t have any need for the Ram Kangaroo (and certainly not the gun tank) as the only variant used by the 11th Armoured was the Sexton, in the 13th Royal Horse Artillery (the Honourable Artillery Company), so I built the four in the box as Sexton’s so I could give Eddie his PSC Sexton’s back.
I later bought a second box as I’m a bit of a completist and I wanted the option of fielding a full 8-gun battery for the larger games we sometimes play at the barn. However, I also have a very poor hobby attention span so the box sat on the “shelf of shame opportunity” until it got to time to start planning for Warfare 2023.
My current plan for Warfare is to run Comets because, generally, I never have a non-fun game with the Comets. I don’t always win, but I do generally have fun with them. At the barn, that entails sticking fairly hard to the real world OOB but, for Warfare, I do allow myself some wiggle room to achieve a result and that manifests as fielding the Kangaroo Rifles with their Kangaroos!
So, I needed some Kangaroos. Occasionally. Well, once a year. But I also needed an 8-gun battery of sextons, occasionally, maybe a few times a year. Neither seemed to justify a third box on their own but maybe I could make the second box do both? Yes… that could work.
Execution
Common Ground
As always, it’s always worth looking for the lowest common denominator and the assembly guide made it quickly became apparent that there was, effectively a common lower section.
We assemble this by glueing the tracks to the lower hull and then glueing on our choice of transmission cover. I’d suggest the three-part bolted cover as all Ram tanks and the early (pre-mid 1944) Sextons all had this whilst the one-piece cast transmission was introduced mid-way through Sexton production.
This gives us our common “chassis “Lower Hull Assembly” going forward. I’d suggest getting all four hulls in the box built to this stage so they have sufficient time to cure before the next stage.
Ramming Speed Mr Hart!
To make the swappable Kangaroo, first, we glue the auxiliary gun turret to the upper hull.
Next, we flip the assembly over and apply polystyrene cement to the area shown in red below and then dry fit the upper hull to the Lower Hull Assembly.
We then push the Ram’s back plate into place and, leaving the upper hull resting on the lower hull, we leave the Upper Hull Assembly to dry.
Once dry we should be able to lift the front of the upper hull and remove the Upper Hull Assembly up and back to remove it, leaving us with this.
That gives us a Ram Kangaroo. But what about a Ram? Thankfully that is fairly simple from here. Firstly we build the turret as normal. We can then do one of two things.
Option one is to just fix a peg or magnet to the turret as normal and then fix the turret plate in the turret ring with a bit of blu-tac when we need it. Option two is to remove the retaining tab from the turret ring, here:
and then glue the turret adapter plate to the turret so that the turret can spin round in the turret ring like the real thing!
The only thing we can’t do with this method, easily, is have the passengers in the Ram Kangaroo. I have a plan to sacrifice the ability to field the model as a gun tank Ram and glue the passengers in so that they touch the side of the turret ring, with some hidden green stuff holding them in place so they come in and out with the upper hull.
Sex(ton) Change
The Sexton is a similar process to the Ram. First I worked out where the contact points were for the gun deck and the upper hull. I put a blob of glue just below the aperture for the 25pdr and a thin layer around the bottom of the back wall. I then dry fit the gun deck to the lower hull and then dry fit the upper hull, the gun deck and the upper hull bonding at the glued contact points.
Next, we apply glue to the back of the upper hull, between the two “boxes”, and fit the back plate on.
From there, we can add the jerry cans, railings, gun barrel and oversized cable reel to the Upper Hull Assembly. As the gun deck is part of the Upper Hull Assembly, we can attach the gunners to the gun deck with none of the issues that the Kangaroo presents.
Conclusion
With that all done, we have two upper hulls we can swap out to make either a Ram/Ram Kangaroo or a Sexton. We can still customise the Upper Hull Assemblies to add stowage to the upper glacis plates and engine decals and, when we get to painting, the Arms of Service and Division markers will all be on the Upper Hull Assemblies too.
The modelling work required here is no more complex than assembling the model so should be achievable by most readers. I would say that if either AFV is going to be a permanent part of the lineup (such as my first four Sextons) you will likely be better served having the kit built up properly than this swappable method, but it is handy when you don’t need either option all that often.
Hopefully, this provides food for thought and I look forward to seeing what you all in the community do with it. As always, leave suggestions and comments below.
This came about after some conversation on the Shoot and Scoot patron discord and associated DMs. I hadn’t intended to do a tutorial but “the chief archivist” of the podcast, Darren, pointed out to me that I did have 90% of the photos to do a tutorial article so… If you would like to join our community and have the opportunity to see what I’m working on and browbeat gently suggest articles I should write then sign up here.
I would also be remiss in not advertising our “Ramming Speed Mr Hart” t-shirt on the teespring page to show your love for Canada’s greatest almost-tank.
