505th King Tiger.

[jackalope]

Ok so here goes lets see if photo bucket works here are some LONG over due pics of my King Tiger build.

Here it is when I first brought it home. A keen eye will be able to spot the smoke fluid stain on the turret requiring its 1st repainting.
But overall not bad for a less then $300 Taigen King Tiger with metal running gear and tracks!



And here it is in its first repaint. All quiet on the Eastern Front but DAMN its cold! A little spray of Ballistol on the running gear and tracks and it could run all day in the snow and never get bogged down, like a hot knife through butter!




But the more I saw some of the OUTSTANDING work done by you fine gents I quickly realized this would NEVER do! So a re-re-build was in order this time a little more then just paint!

First was a new Torro lower hull which I forgot to photograph! Next came a complete zimmerit job however much to my dismay I learn afterwards the kit for a Tamiya King Tiger was slightly different then that for a Taigen King Tiger. Biggest differences being the rear but I made the best of it.

Note I shaved off the molded on headlamp wire for work later.





With help and LOTS of parts from the one and only Forgebear all the hatches became metal and opened up!







Now at about this point I know some of you caught what just happened. And for the rest that didn't the Porsche turret was replaced in favor of a Henchel turret. Good news for everyone who didn't know it would work and was always too afraid to ask...IT DOES! The ring on the upper deck is held on with 4 dots of crazy/super glue from the factory and a little prying it pops right off allowing the Henchel turret to drop right in.

And here we can see first hand the differences between the H/L, Taigen, Torro King Tiger and the Tamiya King Tigers rear bulkhead, kinda rough huh? That's ok, it gets better! Note the mud? NOT A CARPET QUEEN!





In the next set of pics after some paint work and more detailing! Please stand by!

[edpanzer]

Looks great good work Jack

[jackalope]

Thanks Ed.

So I had installed 2 cooling fans in my King Tiger so keep things cool and they worked fantastic! However the down side is they sucked my lipo battery down REAL fast! Like almost flat line dead! The IBU2's battery protection kicked in and its been on the charger now for an hour and its still charging like it did when I first got it. So I'm removing 1 cooling fan in the hopes that the run time will go back up. Run time before the cooling fans was close to 4 hours, after the fans just over a 2 hours so I'm hoping this restores it somewhat.

[jackalope]

Ok some more build pics. Sorry nothing with the paint being done but here ya go some interior shots...

So here we have the Torro lower hull I got from Forgebear as the most solid foundation I could get. 4.1 gearboxes are from Dominique at rctanksde.com while the hi torque motors are from Tankbear as is the IBU2 and amp card. I threw in a cooling fan for the motors which due to pulling all that air over the IBU2 board helps cool it off at the same time it does the motors. WIN WIN! Moving backward is the remote mounted amp card with custom made by me 7 pin wire harness and behind that we have the TARR mark II smoker, which BTW is about the best smoker I have tried! Above the smoker and amp card is the Traxxas 5800MAH 2 cell lipo which between this battery, the IBU2, the motors and the metal lower with metal running gear this thing lives up to the name TANK!


This is the above location for the 2 Mato speakers for the engine sounds.


And this is the underneath where the speakers are mounted so they fire directly thru the radiator grills, they are mounter with 3M double sided tape. You can also see the re-located turret rotation motor and the underneath of the opening engine hatch.


And if anyone was wondering here are the 2 Mato speakers for the gun sounds located in the turret underneath of the loaders hatch and the commanders cupola. The one under the loaders hatch was attached with the same double sided tape where the one under the commanders cupola is held in place with hot glue due to the irregularly shaped area it was located.


And here is where the gun speakers fire thru. The commander, Max says hi. And yes I do plan to paint the inside of the hatches a light gray just haven't got round to it yet.


Here is the rear bulkhead exterior shot with the custom made exhaust hand grenade block off bars added to the exhaust pipes. The deck armor is an Abber kit from Forgebear again and you can see I deleted the jack and jack mount of which I lost 3 jacks at the park so the mounts were deleted! I have a set of metal mud flaps but I never use them because they tend to fall off when it goes off road so rather then lose another set they stay in a box.


Volume control knobs and smoker fill tube access is thru the engine hatch, again the inside will be painted a light gray when I get around to it. Considering making an engine compartment out of sheet plastic and a dummy engine that the air cleaners would be the volume control knobs but again when I get around to it. I figure I've taken 9 months getting to this point so a little longer won't hurt anything.

[jackalope]

Continuing our walk around heres a nice shot of the details on the left side rear, Abber cable and gun cleaning rod kits again from Mr.Forgebear.


Moving forward on the right side we find where a silly 75mm shell thought it could hurt the King Tiger but all it did was give the gunner a headache and a target!


And heres what happened when Max just HAD to go thru all that mud a while back and a couple big ass rocks punched thru the front fenders from the inside out.


Close up of the headlight wire conduit made from brass wire, this was pre weathering as you can tell.


Overall 3/4 front shot. Note damage to the right front fender again Max and his mud! Also the bow machine gun covered in model putty to simulate the zim coating as the one in the kit wouldn't work with the Taigen upper hull.



And the right side rear details. The track cable is woven thru mounting blocks epoxied to the zim coating rather then the use of brass strips because I tend to treat this like it were a real tank half of the time so I wanted the detail bits to stay put no matter what it went thru or where I drove it. Also note the fuel over flow tubes and yes I know I need to add the front 2, again I'll get there.


Close up of CHARGER which is stenciled on, no decal or sticker here nor any where else on the tank everything is painted on.


The paint scheme and stencil kit are from rctanksde and are from the 505th in Poland in 44. I tried to stay as true to the paint scheme as I could according to the pics supplied by them and other King Tigers from the 505th that I found.

I'll try to get some more pics up as well as video of it running so you can hear the fantastic sound and see the TARR mark II in action.
Well that's all for now let me know what you guys think as this is my first REAL build not just a paint job and a few aftermarket bits. Also if anyone sees something that MUST be done or corrected please let me know, I am trying the best I can but again it is my first real build and my first King Tiger I've built so please don't be too mean.

Thanks for looking!

[billpe]

Looks good. 505 never got replacement King Tigers (the didn't lose many despite continuous combat but had Henschel engineers in their maintenance section which might explain how they kept on trucking ) and had theirs the longest out of any unit so you can go as mad as you want on the used/battered look.

[jackalope]

Kieser, it has had several washes of just what you're suggesting think it still needs more?

[jackalope]

Pin washes, gotcha! As to that front fender why it looks like that is cause I had removed it but I didn't like it cut off so I reattached it, that's not black paint that's the shadow of it being a separate piece! But I see what you mean for the rear hatch details.

A shame you're the only one who has commented on it I guess no one else likes it.

I'll try some pin washes this weekend, I also recently got some new paint effects I may have a go at on it. This will take away build time of my Tiger project but oh well, just wanted to take a break from the KT for a bit but I guess it'll get some more this weekend.

[doc larsson]

any chance that you will re-paint " Max ? " that is the worst camo ever (although very well painted with awful colours) nice kt What's your final paint scheme for max ?

[jackalope]

Not sure Doc, I can't paint people worth a damn which is why I went with already painted figures. What should I do with him? I'm totally lost when it comes to panting people, I tried and failed horribly.