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Woz wrote:Nick's right, the gearboxes get it the way of a proper three piece transmission cover. To get it to look real it'd take a lot more work and means moving the gearboxes back.
I just went for the easy chop and swop way.
I kind of like easy ...I'm going to use one of yours when I do mine Woz
Wanted to do a little work on the back end so I could test mount the upper to the hull and check gearbox clearances etc. The back deck is for the diesel engine version so cut the card to shape and cut out the hatches. The whole engine deck can be taken apart for ease of access on the original and there are sheet plate and angle plate cross member that connect each plate, i've only recreated the ones you can see with the hatch open
Obviously I couldn't miss the opportunity to have the engine hatches opening and I expect them to get some high wear so I needed to make some robust hinges
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On to detailing the hatches themselves, again a few different versions have come to light, the mesh is held down by the surrounding frame which is riveted on to the engine hatches with round head rivets thank fully I have the right size rivets which are by Masterclub, some hatches which have been damaged have new mesh welded to the frame. The mesh pattern is thankfully very similar the aluminium support mesh that car accessory shops sell for body repairs
The rivets come loose and you can drill a hole and pop them in as required however I don't trust myself to drill lots of holes perfectly and not cock it up so I cut the heads of the rivets and then glued them down, again there's a set pattern to where the rivets go and both sides match up. The central plate that is riveted to the left hatch bolts to the right hatch when they are in place and it also extends over the edge of the top of the hatch so it can bolt to a cross member now a good bit of me wanted to use brass bolts but over the course of the whole tank there are a fair few different sizes and the cost would get silly, so ive used hexagon plastic rod cut to length
Id made the frames a little wide when mounting the mesh to facilitate gluing so it was trimmed back so its the right width and the central plate again re fitted as I hadn't allowed for the top overhang which goes to show measure twice cut once. All the rivets and bolts are just glued down and then the hatches dropped in place ready to drill and fit the hinges. The hinges are held in place by track pins from previous railway builds. They are a little proud so will get filed flat in due course. The second pic shows more clearly the overhang that keeps the hatches down when bolted to the top plate on the deck. At this point I made a slight boo boo i'd made all the hinges on a length of piano wire and each hinge pin can be removed. Id kept all four hinges in place on the length to work them and get them the same sizes, anyway when I was down to the last two hinges I caught one and flicked it somewhere in my model room so I ve to either find the hinge or make a new one (experience has shown as soon as ive made a new one i'll find the old one). So for the time being I'll leave the engine deck there
Now I feel like I have rivets on the brain and Chrysler bless them use four different rivets on the Grant upper hull (and hundreds of others in components throughout the tank, before some smartie tells me there are six different ones in a headset) so here's a quick run down, this isn't definitive, the engine deck has semi round head rivets, the majority of the hull has conical rivets (or bulletproof rivets) and they are in two sizes also there are some half round rivets. I havnt been able to find any conical rivets the right size so im making some up, I experimented with melting rod and pushing it into a former but it was woeful no consistency. So I made a brass master and heating it up pushed it into some dental moulding compound which I then poured some resin into. As I don't have a vacuum chamber I got a fair few air pockets as you can imagine so on the second test I injected each rivet with a syringe
...I'm going to use one of yours when I do mine Woz 
