Tamiya / Heng-Long PzIV Hybrid

[grompix]

Well I've made a start chaps. I think I've decided to make it into an Ausf 'H'. Reason being my Asiatam metal sprockets are the early type which stopped being produced after the first 30 or so Ausf 'H's left the production line. The HL PzIV also has the hull side vision ports for the driver and co-driver and I'd quite like to leave them in place. Early Ausf 'H's retained these ports. Sorted! 

The first thing I wanted to do was to correct some of the more obvious errors on the HL Panzer IV. I picked up the methods for some of these mods from the German Militarr Modell Forum a while back.

http://www.mmodell.de/forum/index.php?p ... readID=577" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I started by giving the rear engine deck a slight slope as it should be and altering the side air-intake grills to match. This was easier to do than I thought it would be. 

Cheers
Chris       











     

[grompix]

Next I raised the height of the gearboxes by adding 3mm plastcard to the base of the hull. I needed to elongate the drive axel holes in the hull a tad to accomodate the heightened gearboxes. I used bolts rather than the HL self-tapping screws to fit the 3-1 metal gearboxes in place.

[grompix]

The next thing I did was to move the rear return roller down by 4-5mm. I did this by eye and by consulting original photographs of the PzIV. The finished result looks OK.

Removing the return roller was a bit of a pain though. Prising the pair of rollers apart reveals the screw that holds the roller on its spigot attached to the hull. The screw turns out to be one of those funny types which no screwdriver ever seems to fit. Someone here might know the correct label for them but I had several lurid names during my attempts to remove the sodding things!

Removing the spigot that's glued to the hull without damaging it proved another trial but they both came away eventually. One was cracked but easy to repair using a couple of drops of cyanoacrylate.
I relocated the spigots 4-5mm further down and secured the rollers with a long bolt running right through
each spigot and hull side.

And that's about it so far chaps. Hopefully more progress pics tomorrow.

Cheers
Chris 

[fv432]

wow that is some impressive start chris

did you or are you going to have any issues of clearance with the raised boxes on the upper lid?

[grompix]

did you or are you going to have any issues of clearance with the raised boxes on the upper lid?

Hi Rob. You are a mind-reader mate! Yes I did indeed have a slight problem of a 2mm gap on the front glacis plate after raising the gearboxes. The gap disappears if I screw the hull top in place with the original HL screws. But since I don't really want to do that I'll probably take out the gearboxes and grind a little from the tops (or perhaps just glue a filler strip in the gap LOL!)

Using a Bendini sound module with a Tamiya DMD would be really great but I suspect it can't be done. The 1/6th guys might know though.

Cheers
Chris   

[fv432]

two other options i have some plans for making stug gearboxes from h/long std boxes where the top motor is relocated the other option would be asiatam low profiles (designed with the stug in mind) this would be my choice(no i dont have shares with asiatam lol) as you could fit switches above them in the front hatches   although it would add another expense to the chart

[grompix]

Yeah the tamtoys brass low profile gearboxes probably would have been a better choice. I told you I wasn't that well organised! 

But the 3-1 steel gearboxes fit OK. The motors are well in the clear. It's the front 'hump' on the gearboxes (near the sprockets) that hits the bottom of the driver/co-driver front plate. You can see the 'humps' on the last photograph in the gearbox mounting mod. I reckon grinding about 2mm off them would be OK.

Cheers
Chris   

[fv432]

ahh see now yep reckon 2mm wouldnt hurt 

this is just the thing i hate on my builds one mod leads to another and another........

[grompix]

this is just the thing i hate on my builds one mod leads to another and another........

You're certainly right on the nail there Rob! 

[tankman]

Nice job so far Chris the model looks so much better with those modifications, can't wait to see what else you are going to do. All the best for now
Alan

PS Now I want a standard long barrel Panzer IV to modify