At this point at long last
I only had a few things to be done with the tracks anymore. The front's track armour was about 40% of what I needed, as the earlier one was a link too long. So I sat down and assembled what was missing, and was left with two links and some A/B pins.
The new part got primed black and I used the airbrush to dry the paint. Next I applied a general, imperfect and varied layer of brown (VMA 71077 Wood) on all three tracks from different angles and distanves. I most definitely didn't want a uniform paint coverage, but the opposite.
In addition to the tracks needing a bit more paint from the flat side angle, I ought to have used the graphite pen on the wearable surfaces, before the installation. I just wanted to avoid making a mess with the graphite, so I purposefully left it for later.
Before installing the tracks I glued the roadwheels on, and detached the drive sprockets and idler wheels to make my work easier. Had I thought of this well in advance, I'd left the return roller installation until the tracks were in. But as I've admitted before, I haven't often been praised for smarts.
The right track
One of the tracks had to go in first, and as I had grabbed the tank this way, it was the right track that got installed. For some reason I decided it was a great idea to connect the ends now and then put the track around the running gear. I guess I thought that the loop connection was easiest this way, especially if it had broken bits like the frontmost link of the track armour.
The biggest thing in this approach was to get the guiding teeth of the track past the outer return roller without breaking the teeth or the fender. The plastic was forgiving so with only a bit of stress the track was hanging by the return rollers and hugging the outermost roadwheels. Then I positioned the drive sprocket into one loop-end of the track and put the wheel in place. The toothless idler was left last and pulling it into place was easy, and the tracks settled into place very, very nicely. My track was pretty tight and there wasn't much drooping. In a standalone model like this that was all good, but a diorama tank might have benefited from a bit more of drooping on the upper loop.
Ah, it looked marvellous!
The left track
In the name of science I decided to try the other approach of track completion for the left track. I'd connect them after looping them in place. I expected this to be quicker and easier to pull the track in along its natural route along the return rollers.
Nope, I was wrong. The gap between the rollers and the fender was tight, but I knew that since the first time I tried the track behaviour weeks ago. Using my tweezers to pull, poke and push I managed to get the in millimeter by millimeter through the upper loop and to join under the roadwheels. Attaching the two ends together was a tiny bit more complicated now with the whole tank on the way, as opposed to freely floating tracks, but it didn't take much time. With the track unified I put the drive sprocket and the idler wheel in the exact same way I did before.
Nice, nice, I was very excited! In all of the side profile photos, and in the photos below, the unpainted A/B pin ends were pretty clearly visible in both tracks. Those had to be covered up, of course.
Graphite
With my tracks in place I poked the drive sprocket teeth with the graphite pen, and then proceeded to touch up the guiding teeth of the links, and the parts that the roadwheels kept clean. This was much more fun than ever before, as the articulated tracks moved gently out of the way and I got the covered up bits poked instead of suffering the glued-tight tracks.
After the tracks I did a bit of the same metal highlighting on some chosen edges of the steel tools. The key was keeping this in few pieces only so not everything would shine.
The track armour I left graphiteless, as it was just hanging there and wasn't worn in use like the driving tracks.
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