Introduction

Anyone who ever tried building the Italeri M107 or M110 kits knows the pain that is their stiff vinyl tracks. They often defied gravity, heat, glue, and physics. There was always a longing for better tracks. Welcome Spade Ace, a company from China that has answered our call.

Review

The M110A2 (203mm - 8 inch main gun) was always my favorite piece to call fire for when I was in the Army. The MNANG was the last user of the M110A2 of all the US Armed forces, and I got to help do some of the last calls for fire from this beast. Every time I went to build a model of it, I always cringed a bit when thinking of those horrible vinyl tracks that ‘honestly’ seemed to defy all laws of physics when being formed to the road wheels. Often if they were fastened down securely to the road wheels, they could break the road wheels or idler or sprocket if they were not reinforced. They never had a nice sag look that the "dead" track had. It was a HUGE impediment to building the kit.

BUT NOW...oh but now we have individual working metal tracks from Spade Ace, a prolific but relatively unknown manufacturer in China. The box the product is supplied in is sturdy enough to contain the bag of track links and the coil of what feels like steel wire (it is very stiff and takes a bit of effort to cut...not flimsy at all).

The tracks are very well detailed and measure out to the dimensions I have for them. They fit the Italeri M107 and M110 sprockets without issue.

The tracks have insertion holes on BOTH sides of the track, so they are NOT handed. The provided wire pushes through the track hole without the need to pre-drill the holes (nice). The tracks are fairly sturdy once put together even if you do not use super glue for the ends. However, the pins can move in/out if they are handled a lot, so gluing the inside pin end of the run may be wise.

I have to say that of all the metal tracks I have assembled, these were not only the most happily received, but also the least troublesome.