*Chuckles* Scalawag can be blamed for this. ;o). It was his great looking gurt sacks on his Tiger that gave me the idea to add one to the 'Palace's MG34.
Regards,
Painless
PainlessWolf wrote:*Chuckles* Scalawag can be blamed for this. ;o). It was his great looking gurt sacks on his Tiger that gave me the idea to add one to the 'Palace's MG34.
Regards,
Painless
Good morning,
Four years on, I ran the 'Palace' out in the North Africa section of the lot to do a photo shoot for a past Tank of the Month. Some great pics resulted but later during the cleanup ( dusting grit out of the tracks, etc ) I noticed a clicking noise while the tracks were running and the drivers side track seemed slower to respond. I knew that there is no slipper clutch in a metal gearbox so I opened it up and sure enough, the zinc cast gear box was kaput on that side. The great weight of this tank had finally worn away the teeth on the gears. The other side was not in much better health. Time for a Redo! A couple of months of collecting the right gearboxes ( had to order from Russian Federation since Taigen was out in the states ). Kindly assistance from Forgebear netted a brand new lower hull and return rollers. ( again, Taigen was out of stock ). Lower hull, you might ask? Well in the tear down, I noticed that the front of the lower hull was bowing out a bit ( from what I could not speculate ) and I went to tap it back into shape with a small brass hammer resulting in shattering the add on armor plate on the bow!!!! This included the 'L' shaped lip that keeps the upper in place. So after rueful searching later, months of waiting ensued. I had epoxied everything back together but I could not reach a point in the process where I was satisfied. So a serious Re-Do resulted. At the conclusion, the 'Palace' rides again, better than ever! Here are the pics: ( Click to enlarge as usual )
Attachments
Flats reapplied
Back on the road wheels again...another step done in the Palace' repair and upgrade.
Same with the rear plate armor
Paint matching on the bow plate...I changed the pattern slightly
Now to use the Rottbraun and the Olivegrun to match the paint scheme on the upper again.
Three coats of the Model Masters Desert Mustard
Two coats of the Tamiya metal and plastic Primer
A Desert Mustard refresh of the backs and rims of the road wheels and idlers
Good morning,
Many thanks! I forgot to mention that I am working with Maxmekker to upgrade the sound. Hopefully there will be some added rumble and boom when the new speaker shows up. The 'Palace' is one of those builds that is constantly fascinating. There is always something to tinker with to upgrade. ( This time a lot of the 'upgrades' were due to my ham handedness but hey! everything worked out for the Better ;o)
regards,
Painless
Even after four years of being thought "completed," (1) it was good that you found out there were some issues that had developed, (2) that you were able to tear back into it and end up completely rebuilding the offending lower half of the tank, and (3) that you were willing to share the process with us.
I an certain that many of us have a finished older build that needs to get looked over again for repairs and/or upgrades. (That doesn't apply to ME, of course, since none of mine ever seem to get finished! Ha).