Monday 2 February 2015

Wheeled Taurox upgrade kit by Victoria Miniatures

When the first the leaked images of the Taurox Prime found their way on the common sites, I liked most of overall Taurox design, the similarities to modern MRAPs like the Cougar and the roof of a Humvee. But the tracks ... those tiny ones on the front did not look very appealing or helping the model imo. I build the model as it was but kept browsing the internet for good conversion kits, a 6-wheeled variant popped up on spikeybits which looked like an improvement, but not enough to buy it. But then I stumbled over Victoria Miniatures, who seemed to have the perfect solution:





So I ordered 7 sets from Victoria Miniatures and they arrived about 2 weeks later.


They described them that modelling experience is required to build them. Overall it was rather simple and self explaining. Just the front suspension part was a bit fiddly to get everything glued together, but not your hands too !

I had to modify the back axe a bit, because during games they tend to breack off together with the wheels, so I drilled a hole into both axes and put a metal wire through the back coaxial drive and glued everything together, it holds perfectly now. High quality resin with just small imperfections on the coaxial boxes.

When I was done assembling and painting it, I really liked the overall look, but when looking at the Taurox from the back, the "bulky" look was kind of gone, because of the bigger tracks at the back making it wider. So I browed the web for some Cougar MRAP pictures, and I noticed the they got huge mud flaps on the back, I could do the same. So I added them by using plastic card and creating the look of wider back bumper bar where mud flaps have been installed. I think that it looks a lot better now, but that there is still room for improvement imo. The plan is to add small triangle shaped plastic card parts between the the mud flaps of the inside to create a bigger wheel guard look.

Here are some pictures of the finished assembly and already painted, together with some before pics:
















To sum it up, great upgrade kit by Victoria Miniatures! It is not cheap, but it is worth it. And I'm looking forward to use their parts in my 6 wheeled Taurox version ( adding 2 Taurox kits together and with a Flak turret on the roof ) and use it as a Hydra.

 And here's a sneak peek at my Valkyrie:




1 comment:

  1. Yesssss! I love it. The one thing that always bothered me about these kits, is there is no shielding for the wheels. The mud flaps really help with that. I still think some careful plasticard to make some front and rear shielding would help buff them up and make it look more military. (Military wheeled vehicles present their front/rear facing with limited visibility to target the wheels, covering the fronts with armor plating)

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