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Painting Tamiya vinyl armor tracks


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Hi guys,

Back to the hobby after a 10 year sabbatical...

Ive started building my first armor kit, a Tamiya 1/35 Challenger. It comes with the vinyl tracks. Is it ok to airbrush acrylics over them, or would you just leave them as they are, and just weather them with a bit of rust and drybrushing?

Thanks for any advice

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I have painted vinyl 'rubber band' tracks with both oil-based enamel and acrylic. In either case the finish is not sturdy but will sufficiently survive careful handling when installing the tracks.

To save time, I keep a Testors spray can of some color of Brown. I once used Krylon (sold in DIY stores in the United States) but this melted the tracks; I have never tried Tamiya cans on soft tracks. After shooting the tracks with the Testors can, I add various acrylic dark washes and enamel light drybrushes, and either scrape paint off, or paint black the rubber track-pads (as on your Challenger). While that sounds tedious, bear in mind that only those pads at the front and back of the track-runs are visible, unless you leave the side-skirts off.

If your challenger is a I Mark 3, Echelon models made an aftermarket sheet of these tanks when deployed in the Balkans during the 1990s.

And by the way, if you are new here, welcome to ARC.

Edited by Fishwelding
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Depending on the colour, I give them a wash with Tamiya acrylics diluted with future, then drybrush with a suitable metallic colour, then weather with pigments (just be careful if you use a fixing solvent for the pigments, it can perish the rubber tracks)

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