Comrade Stalin's Autobus

Štefan Pásztor joins the MMI team with MiniArt’s GAZ 03-30 Model 1938.

In 2015 Ukrainian company MiniArt released a series of kits of buses and ambulances, which completed their successful range of model trucks with the GAZ AAA/AA chassis. I immediately knew that I had to have it in my collection and after finding the materials needed for the civilian version, it was decided. I was not even discouraged by the difficulty of the assembling the chassis and the large number of parts.

Construction

As usual, I started by building the chassis, which is, as it has been mentioned before, the biggest weakness of the kit. Ensuring that it is straight and true, and remains so throughout the build, is a challenge to say the least. The slightest imprecision can cause fatal inaccuracies which you will discover when you try gluing the engine bonnet or the front part of the cabin. Not pleasant!

1 Here you can appreciate the complexity of the chassis. It is a thing of beauty, but the slightest error in aligning the various parts will cause big problems later on in the build.

2 Having finished the chassis I started working on completing the seats. Because of all the modifications, it took me quite a long time. Each seat back has an added wooden structure and is divided into two parts (it is one piece in the kit). On both sides of them, there are extra nuts and bolts. Similarly, the bottom parts of the seats are also modified. I indicated parts of the seat that were heavily used and the cracked leather with a milling machine.

3 Next came the construction of the engine bonnet and the front part of the cabin. These parts did need some putty and sanding to make sure everything fitted.

4 I filled the small gaps with the MagicSculpt two-part putty; any subsequent sanding was almost unnecessary. In the end, I glued the side parts of the cabin on and attached (dry fitted) the roof without glue.

Painting the Interior