ESCI – 8326 – M48 A3

Description:

M48 A3

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a U.S. M48 Patton introduced in the early 50s, A3 variant, with the most significant change of introduce a diesel engine and a redesign of the commander’s cupola.

This kit is a variant of kit ESCI – 8322 – M48 A2, see the parent kit ESCI – 8322 – M48 A2 with comments about all the shared parts which are the most of the kit.

The A3 variant mainly introduced a diesel engine, kept the main 90mm guns but changed the commander’s cupola. Note that all the new parts or different parts required for this kit were not included in the ESCI – 8322 – M48 A2 kit, but this kit kept the A2 turret and cupola parts in a new sprue together with A3 parts, so if you own this kit it can be build as an A2, and this is the kit later reissued by Italeri as Italeri – 7015 – M 48 A2/A3 Patton. Another change are the air filter boxes on the rear fenders.

The configuration of the wheels for this kit is 5 return rollers and no tension idler wheel between the last road wheel and the drive sprocket. The two extra return rollers has no assembly point in the chassis part and you have to figure out measuring between the existing three points. Note that many of the M48 A3 tanks were retrofitted older M48 A1 and M48 A2 models, so you can also build it with 3 return rollers as using an A2 chassis.