O Scale GAZ-AAA

Overview – GAZ-AAA ~ or ~ Ford AAA?

The Truck GAZ-AA – or – Вантажівка ГАЗ-AAA (Vantazhivka HAZ-AAA ~ Ukrainian) is a 1:48 scale model by UM (UniModel) a Ukrainian company.

The kit instructions state – “Manufacturing of vehicle GAZ-AAA was launched in 1934. It was the auto truck of a high maneuverability carrying capacity of 2 tons. Carburetor 4-cylinder engine GAZ-M in 50 h.p. is located in the frontal part of frame. The machine in weight of 2,475 tons has the maximal speed 6mkm/h. Manufacture of trucks proceeded till 1944.”

The GAZ-AAA triple axle truck was a development of the earlier double axle GAZ-AA which was a licensed copy of the Ford Model AA 1.5ton truck (UM also makes a GAZ-MM which is basically the GAZ-AA with a larger engine). The GAZ-AAA was a simple triple axle 6 x 4 truck that formed the basis for numerous variants.

In any case .. as the GAZ-AA/MM is basically a licensed copy of the Ford AA I can happily build the GAZ-AAA as a “Ford AAA” – that Ford never did so bothers me not at all.

Step 1 and 2

Tires. The first two step are assembling the front tires (C35) and wheels (B2) and rear tires (C35) and wheels (B2) and (B1).

The wheels need to be painted prior to assembling to the tires. The tires can be made to look more realistic. Posts in Model Cars Magazine Forum address this.

• Scrub the tire with a coarse abrasive cleanser (like OLD Comet…the “scratch free” stuff is useless), hot water and a toothbrush. Elbow grease, effort. De-shines ALL the tire, including down in the tread groves.
• Emphasize the tread grooves. Paint with brown or sand color .. ‘dirt’
• Draw the tire tread across sandpaper (240-400 grit) rotating while doing this to remove the shine

Great article in Modellismo goes into painting tires that look hard used. Some of the same info about the treads and such but much greater detail overall.

The kit tires are nicely molded.  These would be I suppose, Soviet era tires. Can’t help but wonder if they licensed tires also? I suppose that somewhere on the internet there is someone who can look at them at state … “Oh .. THOSE! Those are Gromiskys” 🙂

Looking at the links I posted above the from Modellismo is using 1:35 scale tires but 1:48 scale is approximately 3/4 the larger 1:35 scale so all of the techniques should easily apply.

There are two extra tires and wheels not used – modified versions of the GAZ-AAA appeared in 1940 with the two spare wheels moved to the front fenders. I ‘presume’ these extra tires and wheels may have to do with a future variant model by UM. The photo to the left shows a single spare tire/wheel mounted under a Ford AA. I suspect something similar would have been used for the earlier GAZ-AAA. Makes sense to move the PIA spare placement shown here to the front fenders.

I figure it would be easier to paint all of the wheels at one time.