Old Tamiya King Tiger Re-build

[riggy]

Good afternoon, I have being 'lurking' on this forum for nearly 6 months, and after finishing my last model
a couple of months ago, I have being toying with the idea of doing a refurbishment of the original Tamiya
King Tiger that I brought ages ago.
It has sat un-loved in my model work space for ages, but after finding this forum, a spark of intrest was rekindled
and I dug it out, charged up some batteries, and to my surpries she still ran.
There was of course some problems,
1) The steering was a bit eratic (to say the least), I began to remember that I always had a struggle trying to get the clutch system set up.

2) The track tension was all to pot, and trying to adjust that caused a few, shall we say, intresting verbs.

3) The wheels wobbled about like a bowl of jelly.

It was at this point that I decided to strip her all down, and try and improve and update her ( And try and keep the price down).

Anyhow, here's a few pics to show where i'm starting from.

First up, the original before I started to strip her down.



Rear view



Front view



More to come.

Martyn.

[Steelhammer]

Hi Martin,

I've got one of those - I'm currently putting mine back together as best I can (some of the small parts I must have put in a "safe place").

This forum is a cracking place for idea's and inspiration alike!

[PainlessWolf]

Good Morning,
Welcome to the Forum. The older version Tamiya King Tiger is still a lot of fun to run when set up and all components are working. Searches of the web will lead you to places like the AAF Museum and JC's in Tokyo that can sell you Sprues of parts to redo any lost details or add ones Tamiya didn't on the earlier versions of the tank. Places like Impact can sell metal tracks and running gear if required. There are a few threads on the Forum in the Tamiya builds subsection where older King Tigers have been disassembled and completely redone. Please give thought to starting a Build thread for your tank and take lots of pictures. We have some guys on the Forums who are really good at Tamiya and will be happy to answer questions and provide tips.
regards,
Painless

[riggy15]

Hi Steelhammer, Painless, ta much for the warm welcome.
Having taken her to bits (Pics to follow) I have begun to realise that this isn't going to be a
quick rebuild, but I have started to get some ideas on how to try and improve her.

Anyhow, here's a few more pics of the strip down.
First one is with the top deck removed showing the gearbox, clutch, speed rheostat and traverse gear.



Top works

[riggy15]

All the plastic bits stripped down, and the only damage was to the main gun, and after a
quick surf soon found plenty of replacement options, so no problems there.



The next two pics are of the running gear all cleaned and stripped down.





First thing I plan to do is strip and clean all the paint of the plastic bits, and then get them stored in
a safe place. That's the easy bit, now my first challenge is trying to cure, or at least improve the
awful wobbly wheels.
I have being in touch with Axels Modellbau's model shop about the replacement wheel bearings that they
have advertised for the later version of the King Tiger, but they are not, apparently, compatible with my ancient
version.
So, the plan at the moment, is to try and source some replacement bearings, but if anybody has any other
suggestions on how to cure this problem I would be very grateful.

More to follow soon

Martyn.

[Steelhammer]

These are the one's I've fitted to mine. I'm pretty sure they came from Axel's Moddelbau but it must have been about 5 years ago.

They appear to be longer and made to closer tolerances to drastically cut down on the wobbling of the road wheels.

[riggy15]

Steel hammer,
Thanks for that, looking at the part number (KT0028ST), quick search done on good old
Googly poo, and they appear to have soom in stock at tankzone.
That's some crimble money spent.

[Steelhammer]

Delighted to have been of assistance Martyn

[riggy15]

Went online on Monday, ordered replacement bushings from Tankzone, and paid with
Paypal.
Then I was burbling about on some other posts on this website, and found, what can only be
described, as not overly flattering reports about Tankzone, bugger thought I, why didn't I
read the forum before ordering.

Yet today (Wednesday) one well packaged envelope appeared at my work,



Test fitted on one wheel, and it is totally amazing the difference they make, no more wobbly wheels.

Now back to stripping of the old paint job (That's taking longer than I expected).

More later,
Martyn.

[Merlin707]

Hi Martyn,

Looking good so far, always good when you can bring back to life a very old model and make it even better.
I too have recently had very good results from Tankzone even though they are still on the vendor blacklist.