M60A1 Tamiya Kit. This was my first Patton that I build. It is as close as I can get it to the tank I had as a platoon leader in the 2nd ACR in Germany in 1978-1979. It is the Rise/Passive version, with the rise engine pack and passive sites. It did not have a laser range finder or other sophistocated electronics. There were 5 of these in my platoon.The kit is one of the best of the type. It fits well, is about right dimension wise and has good accessories. I added AFV tracks and aslo made the tow cables. I added a cover for the searchlight and handles on it as well. The searchlight mount was not right, so I made that, too. I used black computer wire for the searchlight power cable. The covers for the smoke grenade launchers were also added.

This is the Tamiya M60-A2 kit. I decided to make it OOB (out of box) except for a few things. There was no screen in the bustle rack, so I added that. The headlights have Grief lenses. I added a C-ration box. The tow cables are also Grief. The cable on the searchlight was not included, so I made that from computer wire again. The pack on the back deck was added also. The antenna, which you can barely see is a Minemica (spelling?) antenna. These are very nice little antennas and perfectly to scale. Note that the cupola windows are painted a gloss dark sea blue. I used AFV tracks... you can see that I had to add two after painting the. ... so they are black. This can be taken as two new track blocks, as they are nice, solid black when they come from the factory, but quickly become gray.

This is an M728 CEV, a conversion of the M60 tank.
The turret and chassis are M60, with the M-9 Dozer Blade. When these are built, the main gun is replaced with a 155mm short barreled demo gun and the crane added to the turret. These were deployed one to an Armored Brigade and one or two to an Armored Cavalry Regiment. I believe these were also allocated to engineer battalions in the Armored and Mech Infantry Divisions.
The chassis and most of the accessories are from the Academy M60A1 Blazer/dozer kit. I purchased the AEF Design CEV conversion. The kit lacks good instructions, so had to do some hunting for information. There are at least two errors on the machine, though they are invisible if you do not know what they are.
I painted it a flat olive drab, then used acrylic black and brown to camouflage it. It was weathered with railroad weathering powders mixed with very thin brown paint. It was meant to look dirty and messy. I added the box, bags, the road wheel and several packs, etc.
If you do this kit I recommend purchasing the Verlinden M-9 Dozer kit. It is more complete than the Academy, but adds about $20 to the cost of the kit. This conversion is very complex and I do not recommend it if you do not have patience and some skills. I have no idea how many hours I put into this between research and building it. As with all of my kits I used AFV tracks on it and Minemica Antenna. I also used Grief Lenses on the headlights.