has anyone got any good ideas on how to paint tracks?
Especially plastic ones.
I have tried heaps of different techniques but never 100% happy.
I need to paint the individual plastic links on my Merkava Mk4 and happy to try something new

thanks
Kev

what I do is:

1) paint assembled tracks overall dust/dirt color
2) add several MIG pigments and fix 'em
3) dry-brush with metallic color and/or pencil
4) add more pigments if necessary

when making dirty vehicle - add dirt after step 1.

Merkava photos show different tracks: dirty, dusty, rusty & almost clean - so you have to make a choice)

Thanks for that.
I am just assemling the tracks at the moment and should have them ready to paint in a day or so.
cheers
Kev

These are the plastic tracks on an Academy Magach 6 that I completed a few years ago (no comments on any inaccuracies )

The brew was as follows...

Primer: Humbrol (H1).
Base Coat: Tamiya XF-64 (Red Brown). Inner Faces Tamiya XF-1 (Black).
Mix a Wash/Slurry of Mig Powders 'Gulf War Sand' and Humbrol Thinners.
Paste it on and then let it dry.
After it has dried remove it from the tops of the tracks.
Dip your finger in some pencil graphite and rub it across the the tops of the tracks etc. to get some metallic sheen.

Cheers

Hi All

I base coated the plastic tracks from my AFV Centurion with some matt black from a spray can and then top coated with Tamiya XF-64 (thinned with lacquer thinner), in preparation for weathering etc.

I left it dry for a week then had a trial fit last night around the sprockets etc. and the paint just cracked and fell off , so I scrubbed them clean and brought them to work this morning and tried again with a lacquer primer, after a couple of hours drying i checked them out and the paint cracked and fell off again when I flexed the tracks

Has anyone encountered this before (It hasn't happened on other brands of plastic tracks for me before) and more importantly does anyone (please) have any solutions to getting some paint to stick to these plastic tracks without it cracking

TIA

Cheers
Andy

try washing the tracks in detergent.
Exactly what the instructions tell you to do but hardly anyone does it
maybe there is excess release agent on the plastic

When Injection moulding technicians have trouble with the plastic sticking to the mould, they spray silicon release agent all over the tooling.
The next "shot" that comes off has tons of release agent on it and this gets less and less with each subsequent shot until there is little left on.
Maybe your tracks are the first shot off after a spray of silicon.

Other than that, maybe they got the plastic mixed up and got a bit of polyprop mixed in with the polystyrene.
I have seen this happen heaps of time when they have been changing materials on a machine and have not purged it properly. In this case, you may have to spray a bit of aggresive solvent onto them and etch the surface a bit.

There are tons of possible reasons but try the obvious ones first

cheers
kev

Further to the Fitter tread, here are some pictures of the M113's T130 track links.

As for rust, the tone of M113 thart are in frequent use is not so red as the rust paint, thus the tone should be more "quite"

Subject is open for discussion...