It Runs!!!

Like the title says, it runs :-) Most of Saturday and part of Sunday was spent assembling the running chassis. We (the Royal We, ie me!) lost one of the sprocket/driveshaft keyways so we had to do a 40 mile round trip to Uckfield to pick up another Saturday evening :-( Still, it kept us out the pub... Howard obviously couldnt sleep as he was up and out in the shed at 07:30AM Sunday morning! It must have been playing on his mind.

Anyway, after assembly the chassis went out for a run. We had to almost immediately adjust the tracks and drive chains but other than that you can see in the video how well it ran. We need to beef up the adjustment bolts for the second drive chain as these pulled slack. The rubber tyres were only placed on the wheels, these fell off more or less straight away hence why the model is making a lot of noise in the video (similar to a King Tiger, tracks on wheels). These need to be glued on when we've decided to what to use! We had a problem with one of the gearboxes of the rear idler adjustment so we need to get another :-/ Other than that we were pretty pleased with the speed, the power for turning and steering and the smoothness of the running.

 The rear idler adjustment assemblies mounted onto the end of the idler shafts.

 The transmission starting to come together...

 Howard assembles the secondary shaft in the transmission.

 The driveshaft fitted to the lefthand side

 And from the front, the drive shafts fitted with the central connecting shaft and the second drive chains fitted.

 Sprockets fitted.

 The suspension components being fitted. First the spring guide arms...

 ...then the internal swing arms and springs.

 Motors fitted showing them mounted on their adjustment plates and with both chains.

 

The main speakers and Aluminium plate which will be the control panel when finished.

 

And the speaker panel lifted to show the smoke generator beneath. Note the nifty prop :-)

 Here's the running video. For some reason the video wont upload to the Blog so here's the link to YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISS2qAKvDXA&list=UU09yqkEtgAkC5SBvWQB24Wg&index=1

Not bad for a first run, we were all pleased with the speed, power and running :-)

Not that I caught it on video but here's evidence of the chassis's power. Hopefully the neighbours wont be too upset :-/

Not too sure whats on the agenda for next week. Possibly turret traverse! Watch this space.

Mid February Progress

Sorry for the lack of update last week, we did do stuff but for some reason I didnt get around to making an update! I was quite surprised by the amount of enquiries I had from people missing an update :-)

Anyway, here's this weekend and last weekends updates. Last weekend we spent a lot of time cutting up sheet steel! Not much to show for it really but it needed to be done. Some of this sheet steel was for the 'wings' on my sheet steel tub and the rest for the second chassis.

 Here we see the chassis tub inverted and fitted to the fibre glass top to measure the size of the 'wings'.

 Howard uses one of his favourite toys, a plasma cutter, to cut the sheet steel to size. This is so easy with the cutter and makes a pretty good straight edge fit for welding more or less straight away. No jigsawing or hand sawing for us!

 Another new toy, a TIG welder, being used to weld the 'wings' onto the sheet tub,

 And cleaning up the welds afterwards. With this picture...

...and this picyou can see the shape of the steel tub. This then fits round the outside of the steel skeletal chassis to form the completed chassis.

 Another little job was making the bushes that fit into the towing holes in the chassis extensions.

 I bought some shackles from one of the shows that I went to last summer. I thought a shackle was a shackle, but typically German, no, they had to do things slightly different! Anyway, the biggest problem we found was that they were too wide and would look silly on the chassis extensions and I wondered how we were going to overcome that. H said "We'll cut them in half and make them narrower and weld them back together" Er, yeah, of course, just what I was thinking!!! Anyway, before on the left and after on the right. Obviously the thread needs cutting back a bit but you'd never know the modded one was anything rather than original :-) Note also the modified end to the threaded bolt to make it more like the real thing.

And here's how they look on the chassis. As you can see, if they were left at the original width they'd fit like a whatsit in a well lol

This weekend its been all about painting :-( Not the best of weather, flipping cold and the odd bit of rain which meant we had to spray in the shed and hope the overspray would find its way outside. On Sunday we made a bit of a lash up spray booth outside which was reasonably successful.

 I sprayed the chassis frame with silver hammered Hammerite. Covers a multitude of sins! Note the paper towel sticking out the Oilite bushes which the stub axles of the swing arms fit, to stop paint getting into the bushes.

 And the masking tape over the frame extensions front and rear. These will be sprayed in green as these bits are seen!

 While I was Hammerite ing, Howard was spraying red oxide primer on various bits! Some of which are hanging up from the travelling crane rail (yes, I have a travelling crane in the shed!)

 These bits are mostly for the motorised rear idler adjustment in lovely silver Hammerite again.

 

Kaths whirly line was pressed into service to hang more bits to dry  :-)

The wheel caps in red oxide.

 The assembled rear idler axle. The green and silver bearing housings will flank the rear chassis.

The steel tub finished in red oxide...

 And now in green on the outside and Howard spraying the inside with Hammerite. Note the adhoc tarpaulin between the two outward opening back gates to give us a spray booth!

 The finished steel tub, with some green wheels and sprockets below.

And here's our two helpers for the weekend. They only wanted to come in once we had all the doors shut and the heater on to help the paint go off!

Next weekend we hope to assemble the chassis (finally and for the last time) and give it a proper test run. Watch this space :-)

Late January Progress

After an idle weekend last week because of the snow a bit of progress this weekend!

Firstly, a panel was made to mount the 6x9 car speakers on and the aluminium sheet which will be the control panel reached through the engine hatch. Then we assembled the chassis for an all too brief test run. Unfortunately, one of the batteries was flat so we had to lash up something to do the test run which meant we couldnt try a neutral turn or find out the chassis running speed :-( However, it ran smoothly and we were both pleased with it :-) Next week we aim to finish the sheet steelwork and make the electronics panel then it'll be painting time!

 Howard welds the 10mm square tube frame up which will support the pvc sheet speaker panel with his new toy, a Tig welder! It makes a very neat job.

 Here's the panel mounted on the frame which in turn is mounted onto the rear of the chassis.

This side view explains better than words. The chassis is standing nose down and we're looking at the right hand idler shaft. The speaker panel is hinged at the rear for access below.

 This is the bare chassis frame with the transmision towards the right with drive shaft pointing towards the camera, and the idler arrangement to the left with the idler shaft poking out.

 Now with the wheels and sprockets on.

 A close up of the suspension arrangement. Neat eh?

 Now with tracks on...

and with the top on. We were quite pleased with the suspension as it worked well. Even with me stood on the chassis the springs didnt bottom out!!! Its a bit low towards the front (not surprisingly!) so we need to beef up the front couple of wheel stations but otherwise all was ok. If the idler looks a bit too far forward, its on its maximum (or minimum!) travel and as far forward as it will go. We'll make sure it goes more midway when we put the chassis together for keeps. In the foreground is the offending battery on charge (yes I know we should have checked it before hand)

And to prove it all works... :-)

A major step forward this weekend and one we were both pleased with! One thing we did decide on (and fix) is some limit of travel micro switches for the idler adjustment as with the top and tracks on, you havent got a clue where the limit of travel is!!! Onwards and upwards :-)

Mid January Progress

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!

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.