In deepest darkest January, work progresses on the Big Panther! This weekend most of Saturday was spent altering the second drive chain tensioning arrangement as it was found to foul the suspension components of the first wheel station. Not much to show for this but we had one half of the gearbox running and it runs like a dream :-) Howards radio made more noise than the transmission! We had a rough measure and we reckon its doing approximately 6 km an hour in real time so does that equate to 24 km once scaled up??? Anyway, we wont know how fast it will be until we put it all together and run it which hopefully will be next weekend, yay!!!
Sunday was spent finishing the smoke generator mounting plate and fixings, and the smoke generator and exhausts itself. After this we started thinking about the speaker/controls panel but thats another story.
Here's Howard working through the turret ring on the smoke generator assembly. This view gives you an idea of the sheer size of the bloody thing! Just putting the top on and off the chassis is a two man job.
This view is looking through the turret ring towards the back of the chassis and the smoke generator.
And here's a close up of the smoke generator itself. Its a larger version of a twin element smoke generator I'd made before. Two elements (12v+12v=24v) in series to run off battery voltage and there will be two fans driven by a Benedini smoke generator control board giving proportional smoke with the engine noises. The idea of the big box is to give a nice reservoir for the smoke to be stored in before the initial start up big puff of smoke!
And lastly, a couple of views of the engine hatch complete with Milliput weld detail and a coat of paint. Not so exquisite as Kent Wiiks example maybe but a close second :-) I'm happy with it and thats all the counts!
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