Greetings and happy holidays. I just finished building three of the Takom Lee/Grant M31 recovery vehicles. In the final assembly of the smaller parts, there is a set of towbars (2ea) that are mounted on the side of the crane boom. One of the two is molded as a solid piece, while the other one is a two part unit. My main question is pretty simple. Did Takom just mold one as a solid piece to simplify, or was the solid towbar arm supposed to be two pieces, like the other one? Or, conversely, was the two-piece arm (in real life), supposed to be solid molded?
The reason it becomes important is that I want to make two of the M31s towing a vehicle. The way the arms are molded in the kit was not so they could be shown towing a vehicle (I consider this point to be a weak point in the kit itself). It was molded in such a way to only show it stowed on the side of the boom. So I will have to cut off the actual clevis assembly and remake it so it can be used to tow a vehicle. However, in the process of doing all this, I still don't know how the REAL towbars were made. Was each bar on the towbars assembly a one-piece arm, or was each a two-piece arm, or was it a combination of one of each, like the molding of the kit arms portrays?
I have put off the final assembly of these arms while I was looking for reference photos, but have not had any luck. I now am at the final stage of finishing these three M31s, and need to have accurate information about these towbars.
Does anybody out there have definitive information about these towbars arms? Thanks in advance for any help you might proffer.
Regards,
Mark Pinson

The way the kit portrays it is correct. The attachment plate was welded onto one arm and the other arm pivoted on it. The piece in the kit with the plate attached is the fixed arm and the other arm pivots.

Modern ones are still of the same basic design; one arm fixed, one arm pivots.



**EDIT**
I think I am following your question now. Each arm is two U-shaped channels welded together with a spacer plate.

Haven't got the kit to hand at the moment, but Gino hit the nail on the head. The towbars are designed so the "loose" ends with the shackles get attached to the tow lugs on the broken-down tank, and the large round loop at the "fixed" ends of the bars drops into the tow pintle on the M31, forming a triangular arrangement that keeps the towed tank from slewing away as it gets towed. Those bars can be tubes or the paired U-channel construction to form the body, but the ends are the same. On the end where they join the loop and pivot plate are indeed welded to one of the arms only, with the other one pinned so it can pivot. That way they can be adjusted to fit the spacing of lugs on different tanks, and more importantly they can be folded for easier stowage!

At top is the one from the Asuka M32B1 kit. The resin U channel type is from the Legend M31 Conversion. I needed another U Channel type so scratchbuilt my own.

Hope these make sense

Yes, your photos match the previous photos. Your scratchbuilt one looks exactly like the photos. The solid-molded single arm in the Takom kit is obviously not correct. Thanks.