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 Rank: Vice-Master       Groups: Registered
Joined: 07/01/2015 Posts: 856 Points: 2,479 Location: Sevenoaks, UK
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While working on my Meng Models D9R bulldozer, I decided I really enjoy this subject matter and I'll try to find some more military heavy machinery that not necessarily has a gun attached. That's why my recent eBay bargain made me so happy - I managed to get this kit for less than £25 posted.
This U.S. Army Bulldozer is based on Caterpillar D4 and was used in the World War II and post-war by US military forces around the world. As you will see, this is a surprisingly detailed model, made by Ukrainian company I have known by name, but have newer seen any of their products or even their reviews. So what came in the post was a big surprise.
The box has a nice cover art and is quite small. Below you can see it sitting next to a standard Model Space delivery box - it's just a tad larger while being of a bit lower height.
OK, so it's a small box. But small doesn't mean insubstantial - it's quite heavy, comparable in weight to Tamiya's 1/32 Mossie. And here's why:
726 parts! This small box is crammed full of sprues - all twenty one of them, plus one with clear parts, a small fret of photoetch, and a small sheet of decals. It wouldn't be possible to fit all that into such a small box if not for the fact, they were packed only in two foil bags. That's not good as I already found one rather delicate piece broken - this will require some careful repairs.
The manual is very well presented, in lots of small steps which is quite useful with such a detailed model. It's hard to lose track throughout the detailed CAD-based drawings and for that, kudos to the manufactured. Seriously, this is one of the best manuals I've seen. Quite unusual is the color reference, which is given - surprise, surprise - in MIG colours. And while I'm talking about the colours, it seems that most of the build can be done without painting - then painted as a whole.
Time to show the sprues! They are moulded in a gray styrene that feels a bit harder (and more brittle) than Meng's or Tamiya's. Time will tell how easy it is to work with this material, especially that there is a lot of injection gates - sometimes all around very delicate parts. Fortunately I haven't noticed any flash on the parts themselves, and the ejector pin marks seem to be very rarely placed on something that will be visible on a finished model.
Some funny tiny sprues below. The one on the top left is repeated two times, the one in the middle top - four times, and the track links sprue is provided in eight copies. OK, so that's 360 parts for the tracks, almost half of the total number of parts in this kit.
Now the detail. From the number of parts alone it can be guessed this is a very detailed kit, with hopefully great representation of engine and suspension. Closer inspection shows a great number of very fine elements and some exquisite, jaw-dropping moulding. On the other hand, it looks that removing some of parts from the sprues will be a challenge in itself.
Injection gates craziness:
Very fine surface detail:
Very complex and fine oil or fuel lines - you can see the breakage in the bottom left corner:
Each track link is composed of no less than five parts:
More amazing surface detail:
And weld lines:
Moulding is very crisp, very impressive:
And the last photo, intentionally left as the last one in this review. Have a look at this spring - this is, actually, quite an amazing feat of injection engineering. The spring is made using a slide mould (actually about half of the sprues are slide-moulded), in a way the coils are almost open. It will be enough to just score it slightly with modelling knife to get a proper spring, instead of a spring-like lump of plastic. Is this magic, or what?
MiniArt surprised me with the quality of this kit and it won't be my last one from this manufacturer - especially since they produce at least four other military engineering vehicles. For now, this goes into the stash, but should provide many days of fun when I get to building it. I'll be posting a build log but that probably won't happen sooner than half a year from now - too many models on my bench at the moment.
Any images I post on my personal builds are free to be used and shared under Creative Commons Attribution license, which means you can do what you want with them, on the condition you mention I'm the author.
Happy building :-) http://www.model-space.com/gb/
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 Nice review I have a couple of there kits in my stash and can only agree with your own opinion I can also recommend there dio bases. I used one of there bases for my stug build  Current builds:-C57,Zero, Lamborghini Countach, Caldercraft HMS Agamemnon,Robi,R2-D2, MFH Cobra .
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 Rank: Super-Elite   Groups: Registered
Joined: 27/01/2014 Posts: 5,060 Points: 14,980
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Nice review Michu, it does look like a very nice kit with some great detail. I've only seen one other Mini Art kit myself which is the 1/350 Titanic which also contains some nice detail. I will keep my open for your build
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Rank: Vice-Master Groups: Registered
Joined: 07/01/2015 Posts: 856 Points: 2,479 Location: Sevenoaks, UK
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Did I say I won't start this earlier than in a half a year? Forget it. Everything else I'm working on either waits on some etch or paint to come in the mail, or requires painting (and I don't feel like painting anything this weekend), or requires too much setup and preparation to start in the evening after work. So, I pulled this little guy from the stash. The manual seemed pretty straightforward, there's no painting to be done until at least 6th or 7th page of the manual, and it seemed like fun. Initial impressions: Plastic quality: easy to work with, scrapes and files easily to a nice finish, a bit brittle which resulted in three breakages already. But nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of glue. Fit: just perfect. Very positive confirmation that the part is in its place, joining lines almost disappear, everything so far fits. Overall impression: complete, utter insanity of a kit. I'm gluing together parts so small, no photo etch I've used came even close. The amount of microscopic detail, number of parts building up to things that in other kits would be one part, the precision needed to remove parts from sprues just insane. After 4 hours of work I just got through the first page of manual. This was 47 parts building up into something the size of a zippo lighter. I enjoyed immensely every moment of it. This might be my favourite plastic kit of this year. I'll start a build diary and post some pictures tomorrow. Any images I post on my personal builds are free to be used and shared under Creative Commons Attribution license, which means you can do what you want with them, on the condition you mention I'm the author.
Happy building :-) http://www.model-space.com/gb/
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 Rank: Pro Groups: Joined: 24/08/2009 Posts: 48,827 Points: -13,348
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HaHa!! Knew you wouldn't be able to resist temptation Michu!!   
I have a couple of MiniArt kits myself, they are VERY detailed but like you say, a lot of small parts to make something that could have been done in one or two bigger bits? They are very like 'AFV Club' kits in that respect in which they too are slightly over engineered though personally I really like AFV Club and MiniArt because they build into such cool models as a result of all that fiddly detail and and are great value too - even if they do take a long time to build?!!
Looking forward to seeing some pictures of this build Michu?! 
Kev 
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Rank: Super-Elite  Groups: Registered
Joined: 30/01/2013 Posts: 4,604 Points: 13,607 Location: Monmouthshire UK
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Really looking forward to this one Michu, lovely kit Steve
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