Blood and Skulls Industry Tracks on a Land Raider - A tutorial!

So in building my Ultramarines 30k army, I decided that I wanted some Land Raider for it.  However, here's the catch.  I didn't want them too look like the 40k era MkIIIb Landraiders.

I bounced back and forth about picking up the MkIIb Land Raiders from FW,

but since I had some store credit to burn at my favorite FLGS, I decided to just pick up the regular Land Raiders, and work on converting them up to look like the old Warhammer 40k Epic Land Raidersm which I dubbed the MkIIa

Namely, I needed to get the tracks to look like the ones from the OTHER 30k FW vehicles I have for the army, which consist of 2 Land Raider Spartans, a Land Raider Proteus (MkIb), and a Sicaran.  I have also been eyeballing some AWESOME tracks from Blood and Skull Industries, a one man shop manufacturer of quality resin conversion parts.  Machinator runs an fully stocked Ebay store, which you can get to off of his Facebook page.

I picked up four of the Liberator 0 track kits. You need 2 for each Land Raider and I am building 2.

The quality is great on these, and the detail level is amazing.  They are molded from some really nice hard resin - well at least harder than GW or Forge World Resin.

So first, I assembled the sides of the Raider.  I made sure that they were nice and tight, and started dry fitting the tracks.  I used a long link section to start and worked to dry fit them in. I noticed that the side rivets on the tracks would not clear the channels for the tracks, so I had to shave them off.

In the channels, there are locator nubs that have to be taken out.  I cut these out and then filed the areas flat.

I then started on the front facing area, sliding the 6 link section down until the track "face" was even with the little lip in the channel. I lined up the single link and ran it on the front. There are only the single and 6 links, and hind sight being what it is, I probably could have cut some really thin plasticard stips and mounted the 3 links going down and back to them, however, I had to push them around a bit to get them all lined up.

I worked from front to back, gluing as I went......OOPS.  First GOTCHA!  I should have left spacing into the middle of the section to allow me to better align the end to the up moving portion.  It's hardly noticeable, and is on the back.  Now I know for the other side. 

I wrapped them all the way up the back, and then did a dry fit of the track skirts.....the hinge piece under the skirt would push it up a bunch, so I cut it off.

After that, it seated nicely.  I went ahead at this time, and started working on the other side. Once done, I started looking at the front.  I normally forget those danged headlights.  So I decided to cut the bars on the skirts below them and run the tracks all the way up as far as I could get.

I as able to get another 1.5 links in.  Unfortunately, it was late, and I did not get a picture.  However, here is what I cut from the last link to get them to fit. On the back side of the track link, I cut off the drive tooth.

On the rear of the track link, I cut off the two tangs (is that what they are called?)

I set the full link into place, and then laid this one down behind it.

The final product, from the bottom

And from the front, with Forgeworld UM Front door.

Next step on these Land Raiders - a set of Dual Weapon Sponsons Beta with 2 sets of Light Laser Cannons for each tank. 

This will get me pretty close to this setup.

Okay, yeah, I know.  I just took a $75 dollar tank and made it a $119 tank.  But the parts are quality, Machinator is a nice guy, and I'd rather give my money to him.  Could I have bought the MkIIb kits for a bit cheaper.....Yes, but not my much.$217 for 2 by the current exchange rate, and then I still would have bought the tracks.....

Machinator makes all sorts of tracks, turrets, weapons, conversion kits.  I highly recommend you check him out.