M74 ARV

In 1956 when modern German "Bundeswehr" became alive it was obviously that the new army needed an armoured recovery vehicle which was capable to deal with their new tanks M47 and M41. Introduced in 1953 the M74 was made for this role and it replaced the much older M32 which was not totally satisfying for recovering the post war tanks. Altogether 3200 M74 has been build from 1953 till 1959. The German "Bundeswehr bought 300 of these vehicles from the US Army in 1956.

Some tecnical datas:

Hight: 3,40m

Weight: 42 tons

Speed: 34km/h

Engine: gasoline 6 ylinder 450 horsepowers

The kit comes in a large cardboard box, about the size of typical plastic kit box. The resin parts are packed in zip-bags and are well protected by styrofoam chips.

The kit consists in:

127 resin parts

1 set of AFV Club´s HVSS running gear

1 set of AFV Club´s T84 single link tracks

1 sheet of decals for German vehicle and US army vehicle

1 sheet of PE parts

3 different sizes of flexible cooper rope

the assembly instruction

One of the instruction sheets contains a list of all included parts. Each part is shown on drawing and is also named.

Second sheet of instructions contains some general assembly guidelines and the assembly instruction itself gives instructiuons in the form of exploded diagrams. Painting references are given in the instructions using generic color names and numbers.

The resin parts are attached to casting blocks. Attachment points are quite small and they are very easy to remove even for anyone with minimum experience in working with resin kits. There are on some parts deliberately some additional resin pins and plates added to help in casting process and these need to be removed, too.

All parts have crisp and very well defined details on them.