Although the Tamiya M4A1 kit includes both pierced and solid road wheels, to match the photo of Adjunct the bogies for this project were created using Tamiya towers with Hobby Boss solid ribbed wheels and early track skids from the M4A3 kit, both of which better represent the early production Chrysler parts used on that vehicle. Actually, this parts swap is kind of a win-win: even after you take the solid ribbed wheels from the Hobby Boss kit still you still have a set of solid disc road wheels (and a set of not the greatest pierced wheels), plus a complete set of Tamiya road wheels left over from the M4A1 kit that can be used to improve the Hobby Boss kit. If you do not want to use the Hobby Boss solid disc wheels on that kit you can easily substitute the Tamiya pierced wheels (they are a lot nicer) or use the Tamiya solid ribbed wheels (no backs, but still quite useable). As an added benefit, if you use the early narrow mantlet from the M4A1 donor kit on your M4A4 conversion you also end up with a spare full width Tamiya mantlet casting to substitute for the oversize Hobby Boss part, and depending on how many Sherman based conversions you build, you may accumulate enough parts to find a use for the left over die cast Tamiya lower hull. And for the icing on the cake, if you build a 75mm gun tank from the Fighting 48th set you get a bunch of neat parts to add to a Tamiya Firefly. As the old saying goes, parts is parts.
To use the Hobby Boss skids (or the later style photoetched track skids provided in the Fighting 48tth conversion) the Tamiya skids have to be cut off the towers, and because the Hobby Boss parts are pretty thick they were thinned as much as possible. To match the wartime image of Adjunct the road wheel tires were heavily 'chunked' (although that effect sort of disappeared under the weathering).
 
The Fighting48th conversion includes extra lengths of rubber chevron track to extend the kit tracks. They are a perfect match for the kit tracks and assemble with a minimum of effort. Assembly of these tracks took about an hour. They were built in place in three sections - taking care not to get glue on the suspension parts – allowing them to be removed for painting off the model and leaving only three joints to deal with they are reattached. This seems to be the best way to accomplish this task on the Tamiya Sherman if you are doing your tracks separately, which produces a very clean finish. As it turned out, this build was moving along a little slowly at times, and Fighting 48th actually release the correct British pattern riveted steel chevron tracks before completion, so they were substituted for the completed rubber chevrons before final assembly. For a more complete review of the Fighting 48th British chevron trackset, take a look here on this site. After finishing the suspension, the upper works are the next step.
 
Turning to the details, the turret shell was given a heavy coat of Testors Olive Drab enamel decanted from their spray paint line to smooth the texturing. The Fighting 48th conversion contains an extensive photoetched fret, and the compass mount and fixed sight blade from these details were added following the image of my chosen prototype. The photoetched tie downs are from the Hauler M10 set.
On the hull, tools came from the Tamiya M4A1, while the smoke grenade launchers and the antenna mount for the turret came from the Formations British Sherman detail set. Although Fighting 48th includes an excellent set of the heavy duty lift rings used on later M4A4 production, lift rings were created from steel wire again to match the image of Adjunct, an early production tank. The excellent Fighting 48th brush guards replaced the overscale Tamiya bits. As this was one of the earlier production versions of the Fighting 48th set, the hull casting as one tiny glitch: the four little bolt heads on the ventilator mushroom to the rear and right of the turret (tucked in the corner of the turret guard) are a bit to proud and could do with reducing in height a fair bit. These are actually screw heads and are virtually flush with the top of the mushroom, so two or three swipes with a file will do the job. Tim promises to put an amendment in the instructions, and the masters for this hull and the following direct vision hull have been revised accordingly.
The tow cable was fabbed from twisted strands of lamp cord wire and bits of brass. To make the cable ends strips of .005" brass cut from some left over photoetch fret was rolled around a pin to make the tubes, and eyes bent up out of .020" brass wire. The eyes are inserted into one end of the tube, leaving about half of the tube empty to accept the cable and soldered, which creates a nice fillet with no additional effort (and sometimes a nice burn, but that is another story), but you could use epoxy or ACC. If you worry about these sorts of issues make sure the twist of your cable matches the twist of the one you are modeling - these things are 'handed.' The often ignored retaining clamp on the back end was made from a strip of scrap photoetch fret, held down with a small bit of brass wire pinched into a wing-nut shape on the end, just like the real thing.
Stowage is always quite distinctive and Adjunct had its own unique collection of junk piled on the rear deck, not to mention an odd looking box on the intake. After creating the intake trunk from styrene sheet the stowage was assembled from a combination of Tamiya, Hobby Master, Hobby Boss and Verlinden parts, topped off with a tarp and a tarp roll and bundled camouflage net sculpted from, aptly, Andrea Sculpt. Strapping was made from a bit of wine seal material. Coming up with the camouflage net was a bit of a stretch, and I ended up jabbing it repeatedly with a pin to create the look of rolled netting, leaving me a bit nervous that it would look like a net when painted, and not just a large loofa pad. In the following images the stowage is not glued down yet, so it is floating a bit - a bit of glue will fix that.
Adjunct also had some unusual field expedient jerry can brackets, which were cut out and soldered up from some copper sheet, allowing them to be crushed to match the photo but still be strong enough to withstand some prodding from my sometimes clumsy fingers. Not shown are the vertical parts of these brackets which were made from soda can aluminum and the photoetched tie down added to the jerry can in the left-hand bracket, again sourced from the very useful Hauler M10 set.
   
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