Progress in 2013!

This weekend its been mostly finishing the engine hatch. Its not 100% accurate but as I've said before, its all about capturing the look of the real thing and I think you'll agree this certainly looks the part :-) The cheek peices and supporting wings are all bolted together and to the main hatch with high tensile bolts so this will be capable of towing! Once the hatch was finished, we spent some time getting it all line up at the back of the model, the pics should tell the story. This took some time as its a two man job to move the chassis and top around and cramped in Howards workshop! After this, the battery support frames were welded into the chassis and a mounting for the turret traverse mechanism. At the back, a plate was added to mount the smoke generator and plumbing for the exhaust pipes but I forgot to take a picture of this!

Just some Milliput to add for the welds, some chains and some paint and voila! As you can see from the bottom picture, its huge, and heavy! Like I said, not 100% accurate but I'm happy with it :-)

 Next we took the chassis and top out into the garden to offer the two up and get the alignment right for the rear hatch to screw into. This wasnt a five minute job!

Look how small the hatch looks now in place on the tank!  The hatch screws into a steel threaded bush which is a sloppy fit in the rear chassis rail. Once done up tight and the top checked that it was in the right place...

 ...the bush was welded into place. The above pic is looking up under the engine deck...

... and this pic shows the bush position in relation to the rest of the chassis.

 Here's the chassis laying on its right hand side on the bench looking underneath with the longtitudinals for the batterys to lay in.

And now its laying on its right hand side looking inside at this post which will be the mounting point for the turret traveres. The mast, as Howard put it, is bang on dead centre of the turret ring.