Tamiya Leo 1a5 (possibly!)

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tomhugill
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Tamiya Leo 1a5 (possibly!)

Post by tomhugill »

Picked this up off Dave forgebear a little while ago, needing a little work. It's using the perfect modellbau resin turret which is a bit of a work of art with lots of nice details. It had been fitted with recoil and elevation but I felt they could be improved upon. It also had a servo rotation but due to the ring placing had issues meshing. To be honest I'm not a fan as on the ibu the traverse is on of off with no fine control. Other issue were the driveline, lots of nasty noise and tracks were riding up and not meshing properly. Well at least it gives me something to do!

So first thing that was done was sort the recoil, as it was there was there was only 15-20mm throw available. So Pete Wright kindly turned the barrel down on his lathe and fitted a brass sleeve which serves the double purpose of supporting the barrel and strengthening the resin cover which was very fragile and had broken.

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Next up was to replace the pieces which supported the recoil and elevation servos and add proper linkages.

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Ideally I would have bolted it in place but as it was I chose to epoxy it. However seems to be strong enough.

Elevation and recoil, speeds need adjusting but you get the idea.

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Next up was sorting the rotation, never has one given me such issues! After trying to get the servo sorted I gave up as it refused to mesh all the way round. I had to alter the position of the turret ring as it wasn't quite centrered. I also had to cut the ring down so I could flip it over so it meshed better with the rotation mechanism.

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Now I've manage to replace the servo traverse that was mounted in the hull I now have more room to mount a second or larger speaker, maybe a TPA too. The electrical installation was very neat so I'll keep it as is.

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Last edited by tomhugill on Sun Sep 04, 2016 4:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mcevoyi
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Re: Tamiya Leo 1a5 (possibly!)

Post by mcevoyi »

Ohhhhh lucky you Tom
always wanted to get the Leo 1 turret to do the Canadian mexas conversion
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tomhugill
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Re: Tamiya Leo 1a5 (possibly!)

Post by tomhugill »

Next up was sorting the drive out, first thing of note was that the sprockets had adapters on them so they fitted the Tamiya gearboxes. These wee a good fit into the sprocket but weren't fixed in. So to try and minimise wobble these were epoxied in place.

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Next I took the sprocket halves apart chipped off the glue and squared them up so they would hopefully so grabbing the tracks and causing them to ride up.

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There was a horrible clicking noise from the gearbox so disassembled and found the pinion and first gear were too tight. A little adjustment and things were smooth again. Some adjustment of the track tension and we were ready to go.

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Things were a little slow so got the 3s lipos out!

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tomhugill
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Re: Tamiya Leo 1a5 (possibly!)

Post by tomhugill »

Some of the detail had been damaged when I was looking at the turret so these needed fixing next.

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And this is how she stands:

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Next up is fitting some side skirts and adding a battle system. I've priced up some visual upgrades from AFV model and the running totals £220 :S so will see how it goes on that!
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Re: Tamiya Leo 1a5 (possibly!)

Post by MEXAS C1 »

That is a nice looking leopard 1,
Is the sproket en tracks leopard 2 tamiya, or heng long.

I like to do the same to my leopard 1.

Do you have some pics of That setup.

Cheers en very nice.
Mexas C1
Tamiya leopard C1 mexas armor
home made T26 licht Russian tank
Heng long leopard 2A6 soon to be 2A5
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