Introduction:

During the 1960s a new type of track was designed for the Centurion with each link having three rubber pads to reduce road damage caused by the original all metal track. This new track was referred too as "Hush Puppy" track due to the reduced noise and was fitted to most later model Centurions used by a herd of users such as the Britain, Canada, Denmark, Holland, Israel, Switzerland and others.

AFV Club have now released this set of individual link Hush Puppy tracks to retro fit the applicable Centurion kit much like the real thing.

The Set:

The set has a plastic bag full of individually moulded plastic links with the only cleanup required being a small sprue bur and some thin flash of a few links only, there is also a couple of shallow pin marks on the inside of each link. These are mostly hidden by the road wheels along the bottom run and while fairly easy to remove do add to the preparation if you wish to deal with these?

Individual plastic links

The links are designed to be workable with each having two locating pins and two corresponding locating holes with the pins quite large making for a robust assembly.

Assembly if fairly straightforward by simply slipping one pin into the next hole and with slight outward pressure (I used my thumbnail) slip the other pin in place, due to the larger pins these don't tend to snap off like some smaller pins during this process but if you just click the links together the pin tends to leave an indentation in the locating hole surrounds, hence the outward flex to avoid this.

Details of the track links

Link assembly as described in text
note shallow pin marks on each link.

You simply repeat the process for the full track run but there is no indication given for the number of links per side to be used and you can use the kit vinyl track as a guide for the correct length.

The assembled track runs are quite robust and did not want to come apart with normal handling and also articulate freely while at the same time being fairly stiff and don't tend to flop about. This is not a problem as there is no track sag on the Centurion track, even more so if the side skirts are fitted.

The track fits precisely to the AFV Club Centurion kit drive sprockets as you would expect for a quick and easy update.

Tracks fitted to AFV Club Centurion kit

Conclusion:

This set of individual "Hush Puppy" track requires very little cleanup and assembles very easily for a robust track due to the larger locating pins with simple fitting to the applicable AFV Club Centurion kit.

This track provides a very good option to update the later Centurions and gives the kit a very distinctive look.

Highly recommended 8/10

See the Centurion Subjects page for other Centurion related reviews.

References:

Centurion Modern Combat Vehicles:2 Simon Dunstan Ian Allan Ltd. ISBN 0-7110-1063-3	Centurion Universal Tank 1943-2003 Osprey New Vanguard 68 ISBN 9 781841 763873
The Centurion Tank by Bill Munro. Published by: The Crowood Press Ltd ISBN 1 86126 701 0 Hardback, 192 pages	Centurion in action Squadron Signal Publications No.2013 Stephen Tunbridge ISBN 0-88740-341-7

Thanks to my credit card and the excellent service from for the review kit.