1:35 OT-810 - Corrected Road Wheels (for Border Kits)

A postwar half-track carrier from Koprivnice

After 1945 the Czechoslovak army inherited the production documentation of the German medium armored personnel carrier and decided to turn it to account in its own way. The result was the OT-810: the plan of the hull and the whole running gear remained, but a fully enclosed armored roof over the troop compartment was added, and under the front hood an air-cooled diesel engine from Tatra began to work. Series production got under way at the end of the 1950s and the machine lasted with the troops considerably longer than its technical level warranted, which earned it a bitter nickname referring to its origin.

The interleaved running gear and its wheels

The load-bearing system remained the interleaved arrangement of wheels on torsion bars, which gives the vehicle high cross-country mobility but has always caused trouble for maintenance: mud packs itself between the overlapping disks and in a frost it can lock them. On a model these wheels are the most conspicuous element of the chassis, because they face the viewer with their whole surface.

The intervention in the kit

The castings replace the wheels from the box in a corrected shape, with a more faithful diameter of the rim and a distinct design of the hub and the clamping bolts. The set reckons with the kit of the Border Model brand and will seat on its torsion arms without alterations. The recommended procedure is to separate the parts by a cut close to the gate, level the remainder with a file and rinse the surfaces. When painting, it is worth considering distinguishing the rubber circumference from the metal center, because it is just this contrast that gives a half-track chassis its character; the packed mud is then applied at the very end.