Hasegawa 1/35 Hitachi Zaxis 135US Excavator

Hitachi Zaxis 135us – Hasegawa – HSGS6601 – 1:35

Hasegawa has launched his second kit based on the Hitachi Double Arm Working Machine ASTACO  from 2015 this time the Hitachi Z Axis 135. Built to be  ultrashort excavator, is perfect for contractors working in and around obstacles.  It’s built for heavy jobs with powerful cabling, a big bucket, a backfill blade standard in all models and the tight operating radius to get the job done virtually anywhere. The ultra-short Hitachi Zaxis 135US is hard at work all over the world. Smarter, Faster, more productive, more compact, and more efficient. Boasting a cleaner yet more powerful engine and a host of new items as well as significant refinements, Zaxis is the next generation in excavator developments.

 

About the kit:

Kit features new excavator bucket and dozer blade plus parts for an operator figure! The Kit comes in one bag with 8 sprue in colors, including a clear one for the crystals, decals, some rubber wire, and rubber belt tracks. The instructions are in black and white, but at the reverse side, include diagrams in colors of the whole kit, very useful for the process of applying decals.  We Recommend to study carefully the steps and the sprue parts, since you will find some extra parts from the previous version with the claw part.

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Building started with the wheels and tracks, then with the hull, that need some weight, I added it using some metal pellets. The cabin is the next step and as the previous parts, there are all done in a evening. The bucket need to fill up some pin marks, but no big deal dealing with it. 

The paint was in stages, I separate the interior part of the cabin from the cage, the arm, the tracks wheels, and the orange torso for easy of paint.

Started with a primer, using the White primer from Badger and leave it overnight. Next day, I started the painting using Tamiya German Grey, and a mix of Orange (3parts)/ Red (1part) .For the Arm and bucket I added some yellow to age the color a bit. The dozer blade was painted using Stainless Steel from Model Master.

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For the Weathering I started painting the tracks with a brown color as a base. Used tamiya Buff to start some dusting on the hull. The Weathering Continues with a series of color, from Tamiya Flat Earth, Deck Tan and products from AMMOMIG, like Dust Rainmarks, dark mud, kursk earth, and airfield dust pigment. A mix of black mars and burnt umber using oils was done for the grime on the joints of the arm and bucket. 

In conclusion, this is a wonderful kit to work with, very satisfying and quick to built, decals are the only thing that need a extra care to work, specially the ones for the crystals.

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Skill Level 3
154 pieces
Length: 7.9 in (200 mm)
Width: 3.1 in (78 mm)
Age 14+

Suggested price: $59.99

Street price: $41.99

 

Highly Recommended!
This kit fill a void in the construction and support vehicles line with an easy to built kit and a colorful one that can stand alone or be part of a Diorama .  My sincere thanks to Hobbico  for the review sample.

 

Author: Pedro Negron

Started with modeling kits at age of 7 with the Monogram Missouri, continue at age of 12 with the Testor F-14 and many other kits until University, work and marriage put at stop at it. Now I'm back working with kits since 2010, and dealing with every type from Tanks to Scifi, and experimenting a lot with the paintings and weathering looking to achieve life-like models.

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