tiger 1 early production build

[spongehoobtank82]

so this is gonna be my second major build after my taigen/heng long late tiger 1, am aiming for a fairly detailed build with this one although am building a late production panther g at the same time so this could take a while! this tiger build came about as I wanted an IR tank for my nephew for Christmas and I saw a cheap non smoke and sound heng long on ebay, I had an IR turret spare and an RX18 so I thought it would be an easy conversion (I was so wrong!) but as these tank was so cheap cheap I thought -I would buy 2! so what to do with this 'spare' tiger? well here's the plan-
-remove all moulded detail from upper hull/turret (now just going to replace the turret, its easier!)
-working hatches, mud flaps, brass skirts, convoy light/head lights, metal wheels, not decided if am gonna upgrade the hull
-general detail adding will explain more as I progress!
internally I thing am gonna build a speaker box, get another IBU2 and add the TPA out of my other tiger, and new gearboxes/wiring and a decent smoker if I can find/make one!
will post pictures tomorrow of my progress! wish me luck!

Ok so were starting with one of these in the box

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First I cut out the loaders/ radio operators hatches, the fuel filler cap and mud flaps, then sanded off most of the moulded in details
Also added some welding to the top hull and glacis plate.

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Now I decided to make new mud flaps, I've seen this done on here using plasticard and dolls house hinges, so first I mocked up how they would look, this is rare for me as I usually just do stuff and don't plan!

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Then I measured, cut, drilled and screwed-

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You would not believe how fidderly these hinges and screws were! But got there in the end!

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Am not 100% happy with these and may redo them, they need tidying up and I think they might look better when I've added rivets and painted them, but we will see! Any way that's it for now as my panther build has more stuff to go on, next for this am going to try advert brass skirts and tidy up/ modify the back plate and fiefel air cleaners, also got an answer machine gun on the way for the hull.

[PainlessWolf]

Sponge,
Good luck and most importantly, Have Fun!
regards,
Painless

[ALPHA]

Good Luck

ALPHA

[spongehoobtank82]

added my progress so far on this, prob wait until I get a new turret/wheels to add to this!

[ALPHA]

Why not just detail this turret ?

ALPHA

[spongehoobtank82]

Its the old crappy heng long moulding alpha, the detailing on its not very good and its bb, I want the recoil version and ir, so a turret swap is easier! And a taigen turret is only 35 quid so well worth it!

[ALPHA]

Ah ...sounds logical...almost did the same thing...wasn't sure if the recoil hook ups where the same as the HL ports on the RX...about 80 us with shipping for me... but a deal came up...and for a 120 got a complete HL tiger w metal gears...S&S... and a few other metal bits

Going to strip it and use it for other builds..

ALPHA

[spongehoobtank82]

Well that's how I ended up with this, was just going to modify one to IR for my nephew but was so cheap I bought 2!

[ALPHA]

Well that's how I ended up with this, was just going to modify one to IR for my nephew but was so cheap I bought 2!

Yeah sometimes bargains are hard to pass up.... I got my deal from Mato Mart...they had a Labor day sale...the basic S&S was the best deal... the one thing good about ordering from them is that all their tanks have metal gearboxes... so the price was about the same as the low end tiger.

ALPHA

[spongehoobtank82]

So I started this build about 6yrars ago the only thing left of the original tank is the upper Hull, I have I few picture from over the last few years but most of the progress has been made in the last couple of months as a doner taigen metal Hull came up and I had a spare recoiled turret lying around so this is where we were at 5/6 years ago

Skip ahead a few years and we are onto this

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

There are various small details added and it far from finished, still need to add tool/ brackets, tow cables etc.
Here are a few small details I have done
The light cables

Smoke launchers
Currently she looks like this


I have also rebuilt the feifal air cleaners, actually did some detailed step by step pictures, will post later!