Sunday 30 December 2012

Sunday 30th December

Not much progress today for no other reason than it was a bit poke and hope! First we chopped off the moulded round engine hatch off the rear panel of the top (does that make sense?!) which left a flipping great hole :-) We then cut and fitted a metal plate behind the hole and filled and sanded the hole and fixing holes. This doesnt have to be spot on as the whole of this is hidden behind the new hatch anyway. Then we started on the hatch itself. Howard didnt have thick enough steel for the hatch so he made it from a laminate of Aluminium and Steel, once painted of course it wont be apparent! Initialy we used M3 nuts and countersunk bolts but these turned out to be too small so we had to enlarge the rebated holes (twice!) and then fit M4 countersunk bolts and nuts. This looked ok. The hatch has a hoooge bolt welded to it, this passes through the rear panel and bolts into a crosspiece of the main chassis, similarly to my 1/6th JagdPanther, and together with the lip at the glacis provides the fixing for the top to the chassis.

This is the hole left when we chopped off the moulded rear hatch. We thought it was a stuck on detail peice like the exhausts (which you can see the outline of in the pic) but no!!!

We fitted a metal panel behind the hole and filled and sanded the hole. The rear panel is now the right way up!

 This is the front of the hatch. Uppermost is the steel layer with the welded bolt end in the middle of the picture. Howard had to enlarge the rebates three times as initially we used M3 nuts and bolts but these didnt look big enough once we'd finished this stage, so we then used M4 nuts and bolts but had to enlarge the rebates twice to get the right look. I've got so many pictures and diagrams of Panthers but very often its a case of try it and see as 1/4 scale is all new ground :-)


This is the Aluminium rear with the big thread fixing which passes through the rear panel and fixes into the chassis providing the fixing for the whole top. You can see the countersunk bolt heads as well in the pic.

More next week hopefully :-)

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