Trumpeter

1/35 U.S.M.C. LAV 25

Armored Fighting Vehicle

Kit Number 0349

Reviewed By Andrew Birkbeck, #27087

There have been two previous injection molded plastic kits of the LAV 25 produced in 1/35th scale, both from Italian producers as it happens.  The first was from ESCI, a firm that went bankrupt I believe in the late 1980’s, and which is to be avoided like the plague, as it was an awful kit littered with inaccuracies.  The second kit is from Italeri (which was also re-boxed under the Revell Germany label) and is “okay”, but lacking in detail.  This new kit from Trumpeter is superior to both.

So on to the Trumpeter kit and let us begin with what to me is rather misleading box art.  The vehicle depicted on the front of the box is painted in tan, and there are palm trees in the back ground as well as a knocked out tan colored Soviet tank.  Therefore one would presume the kit would come with appropriate decals and painting instructions to depict this vehicle?  But such a presumption would be incorrect, as no such markings or painting instructions come with the kit.  Moving on, the box sides show two additional schemes, one in UN overall white, the other in the three tone NATO scheme of Green, Brown and Black.  Decals are included for these two schemes.  The problem here is that as far as I am aware, no U.S. LAV 25’s have ever sported the overall white UN scheme.  So one is left with the 3 tone NATO scheme!

The kit parts come on three main sprues, A through C, as well three separate parts for the hull top and bottom, and the turret top.  A separate small clear  “sheet” of pre marked periscope parts also appears in the kit, along with 8 black vinyl tires and a portion of plastic woven “mesh” for helping when fabricating the turret basket.  All the parts sport very nicely engraved and molded detail and there are no seams that need removing on the tires, which is a relief.  This said, as with other Trumpeter kits I have had the pleasure of building, there are minute amounts of “flash” on many of the parts.  This somewhat detracts from the overall quality of the parts simply because of the time involved removing it.

Total parts count is approximately 200 for the vehicle, with a further 80 parts covering four soldier figures.  The quality of the figures do not compare well with the latest injection molded figures from DML, Tamiya or Tristar, having very “soft” features on the parts, with the facial features  being particularly bad.  These figures are from a previously released Trumpeter set, covering “US Marine Corps Iraq 2003”, but as mentioned above, markings for an Iraq deployed LAV 25 do not come with the kit.  Very strange.

There are 12 main construction steps in the instructions, with seven of them covering construction of the vehicle’s suspension/drive train components.  The torsion bar suspension units, drive shafts and shock absorbers are all a mass of parts, and these are nicely detailed.  The trick is to get them off the sprues without damaging them.  Compared to Tamiya or DML kits, Trumpeter’s sprue attachment points are rather large, and extreme care should be taken when separating the suspension parts from the sprues, especially the likes of parts A22.  To avoid stressing the parts, I ended up using a Xacto blade heated with a candle flame, and “slicing” the parts off the trees. This worked very well, and I highly recommend this method of part removal whenever you are worried about stressing a part.  It works particularly well when removing clear parts from their sprues, which have a tendency to “crack” if removed improperly.

Despite the mass of parts for the suspension/drive train, everything went together very well and I experienced no difficulties getting things to line up correctly.  As mentioned earlier, the kit comes with black vinyl tires, and these exhibit good tread and sidewall detail, with no annoying mold lines requiring removal.  The wheel hubs are in regular injection plastic and come in two parts,   front and rear, with the outer facing hub parts sporting nice bolt detail that looks quite convincing.

Following construction of the suspension, the instructions have you start assembly of the upper hull components.  All the hatches are separate parts, which then have separate handles for added detail.  The two doors that make up the back end of the vehicle are also separate parts, with handles on the inside and the outside.  However, some of the hatches/doors have ejection pin marks on the surface that faces inside, so if you want to have a hatch open, these will need careful filling and sanding.

All the periscopes on the main hull and the turret are molded in a hollowed out fashion, and the modeler is instructed to “fill” the open aperture with the kit-supplied clear periscope “glass”.  I had a devil of a time trying to get these little parts into their apertures, and to me this method of depicting the periscopes was a failure.  The results to my eye are one of the least satisfactory aspects of the review model.

The final sections of the kit instructions deal with the turret of the vehicle.  A main top part, together with an underside piece “traps” the main gun mount so that it can swivel up and down.  As with the hull, the turret has separate hatches and hatch latches.  The main gun on the LAV 25 is the M242, the same 25 mm cannon as used on the M2/3 Bradley AFV.  The kit’s barrel is the “fluted” variety, and has the barrel end molded in a “drilled out” fashion, which is very nice.  For a kit supplied barrel of such thinness it is pretty good but I ended up replacing mine with a turned brass aftermarket part I had lying around that depicts the non-fluted barrel option.  My kit-supplied barrel had a slight bend to it which I was unable to satisfactorily eliminate.

The turret basket was for me the other unsatisfactory area of this otherwise nicely detailed kit.  The plastic woven “mesh” for the turret basket I felt was over-scale, and did not cut neatly.  It also had a tendency to fray at the edges.  Given that other model firms such as DML and AFV Club are now routinely including photo etched frets in their kits (massively so in DML’s case), I felt Trumpeter should have put in a small one for this kit.  All it would need would be four parts:  two for the turret basket mesh, and “screen” parts for the upper hull engine intake grills.  This would dramatically improve the kit, for very little investment.

So there you have it: Trumpeter’s LAV 25 is clearly the best model of this vehicle on the market today, and with the exception of the periscope and turret basket issues, is a very pleasurable build.  The kit assembled easily, with the only “surprise” being that the kit instructions and decals do not allow for you to build the model depicted on the box top!  As a final note, you should definitely wash all the parts of this model with grease cutting cleaner, as with all previous Trumpeter kits I have built, this one was heavily coated with mold release residue.

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