I love the look of the Sandstalker hover reconnaissance cars from the old SF3D magazine articles. There is no injection molded kit of the Sandstalkers in any scale. There have been a handful of garage resin kits but these are super hand to come across. I decided to scratch build mw own Sdh. 222F
The basis for this conversion is two kits, the upper hull of the 1/35 Tamiya 222 armored car and the main hull from the Nitto 1/76 Nutrocker. The rest of the body shape was blocked out with styrene strip and sheet stock and filled in with epoxy putty. There was several rounds of putty and sanding to obtain the desired shape. After the basic hull was defined, it was textured with thinned Tamiya Grey Putty. The details were added and glued in place. I liked this better than dealing with a bunch of loose pieces.
The model was painted with Tamiya acrylics and weathered with oils, enamels and pigments. I kept weathering toned down as I wanted to show an in service vehicle and not a decrepit rust bucket.
Here are some in progress photos showing the basic construction. The Tamiya top piece was glued to the Nutcracker hull. Styrene sheet defined the contours and putty filled in the rest.
And a couple of photos of the basic paint.
