My Hooben T-55 Progress

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Marc780
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My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by Marc780 »

I bought the "full option" T-55 from "Alen's RC" on Ali Express. I'm pretty sure I paid too much for what I got, and i confess I am a little bit red in the face to mention what i paid. I and I learned there are cheaper sellers - as a matter of fact for everyone that wants one of the "full option" kits (these include the transmitter and receiver and all the wiring and I can assure you it all works, and is very similar to Heng Long radio system) On ALI EXPRESS for 11/11/2019 they are doing a real sale with really lower prices ... so I bought another one. Sale price comes out to less than half what I paid for this one... from $445 to $356 sale price... you just put your tank in your cart and wait, you just don't pay til 11/11. anyway, you pick the tank you want, and put in your cart but don't pay yet until November 11.

I had wanted one of these tanks ever since I found out they made them but I was always put off by all the assembly work you must do to have a T55! But I finally decided to go all in and get the "full kit". This includes: motors with metal gears; metal barrel; metal idler wheels and sprockets; lighting kit; plus the Tx and Rx, i.e. the Hooben MCU (i.e. the "control box" everything plugs into, and which looks very similar to Heng Long) and the Hooben transmitter. My hope was by buying everything in one go the tank might work how it's supposed to without needing extra servos and the like.

When you buy a Hooben T-55, it is a "KIT" in every sense of the word, as it arrives as a large collection of bagged parts. To Hooben's eternal credit, most of the parts bags are really pretty well organized and labelled; that is, until you actually open one. At this point your tenuous parts system is in peril, unless you continuously keep track of them you will spend the most time on this kit just looking for the right part! I found that storing small parts in pill bottles, and stuffing in the little piece of paper with the parts numbers on it to be very helpful. And the best advice I can give you for making this tank, is that the FIRST thing you should do is to set aside at least 2 dozen boxes, jars, bottles for storing parts.
Organizing parts so you can find them when you need them, is one of the most important/time consuming chores you'll be doing throughout the entire project. The Hooben instruction manual is the only guide you get with it, and is a collection of line drawings, along with the occasional suggestion as to how you will piece it all together. Also,
practically every part requires some sort of hand-fitting, filing, sanding, drilling or re-drilling, re-machining and/or modification before it will function and this is just the nature of the beast.

I decided to start this project with the suspension system. The Hooben T-55 suspension system has more parts than a cuckoo clock and it certainly seems overly complicated. But once I had the tank, any concern about it being too difficult quickly proved groundless. Putting this tank together is not nearly as bad as it looks, once you have the parts in front of you. Even so, I spent lots of time reading other people's build logs and otherwise finding out how other people did it before ever picking up a tool.

Once I started to assemble the suspension I soon had it down to a system: Install the cast aluminum "wells" inside the hull and install the bolts; grease the suspension arm, then place the little metal cap and its spring (parts 1 and 2) in the well. Insert the suspension arm so its notch fits into the spring + the cap. Align all 3 parts so spring tension is pressing the correct way (i.e.downwards). While holding everything in alignment install the little wire clip (#4) to hold the arm in place. Repeat 9 X. Maybe the line drawing might cast some light on the topic
Image

There are additional parts to put together for the suspension arm assemblies (or whatever the nomenclature should be) on each corner. The function of these parts is to limit the downward travel of the suspension arms. However these parts are low-quality castings and very brittle. The end of one part did not fit into the other, so I tried filing it down until it did - but now the part was too thin, and it broke in half when I tried to install its screw! So now i had a problem. It is possible to get replacement parts directly from Hooben, but since they're presumably the same parts that broke the first time, what's the point? But, much to my surprise, somebody actually makes replacements for this (shabby) part after all! I sent away to Ludwigs-hobby-seite de for a set of 4 of these tiny arms... in the meantime I wanted to continue the build so I just bent a paper clip for a temporary fix.
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The tracks are assembled by hand, and this took me two solid hours. Each side is supposed to have 90 links, and assembling each link goes like this: start the pin by hand through one track link while holding its mate in alignment with it, using the same hand. Now using needle-nose pliers, or just your fingers for the tricky ones, proceed to maneuver, finesse, coax and shove the pin through all the holes to join both links. Repeat 179 times.

Some of the links go through easy and some are not so easy. Not all the pins go in easily, but I learned a little trick for the ones in which the pin does not go through easily on the first try: Shove a pin through the first set of holes, but use a pin on both sides; in other words just use two pins, one stuck in each side. Then try inserting the pin for keeps on one side or the other, until a pin goes all the way through.

I broke the end pieces off several track links by mistake while doing this but fortunately, there are several spares included in the box. I already have a set of the Hooben metal tracks ready to go - but I'll be using the plastic ones for a while if not permanently, while I get the tank running. The metal tracks (cast aluminum no doubt) look great but they are, of course, very heavy.
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Next I fitted the front idler wheels, and here too there was a problem. The idlers are made of cast aluminum, and a bronze bushing (TE6) goes inside the idlers along with one roller bearing ("TE5") that goes in the inboard side of the wheel behind a circlip. The bearing well in the idler wheel needs to be 8mm wide to hold the roller bearing, no more no less... but, maddeningly, the bearing well is cast just a bit too small to accept the bearing! It is not a press fit, nor a friction fit, so I didn't try just pounding the bearing in since that would just ruin the idler and/or the bearing. The problem is they made the the hole in the idler wheel too small. So the only way the bearing will fit how it is supposed to, is to use a flute reamer and hone out the bearing well. Take care to only ream out the bearing well just a fraction wider (but no deeper) than it already is. And if a drill is used, the pointy tip will make the hole deeper - and now you'll have two sources for slop to occur because it'll make the bearing tilt and introduce even more slop into the works, from bearing cant.
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I realize that it may seem like I'm making mountains out of mole-hills and slightly over-dramatizing the effort needed to fix the many shortcomings in the design of this tank. And indeed most of the problems with building the Hooben T-55 to run how it is supposed to, are admittedly very minor ones and can be resolved by a reasonably skilled modeller pretty quickly. The problem though is that these issues are seemingly endless and seem to come one after another! So I will say that actually putting together one of the Hoobens will almost certainly require a significantly greater commitment from most modellers (of time, energy and money) than any other scale model I've ever seen (and I have been building scale models since the 1970's).

Anyway, I sent away for a fluted reamer, size 8mm, since this is the proper (but at $20, somewhat expensive!) tool for this job. IF I had access to a grinder though, I'd just grind the pointy end off a cheap 8mm drill until the tip is square (like a reamer). The aluminum in the idler wheels is soft as cheese and so even a dull and worn-out drill ought to do the trick. But lacking a grinder, the reamer was my only option to fix this problem.
(I am slowly but surely acquiring many kinds of tools plus many other supplies - pins, bearings, clamps, et. al. whose only use will be for building this tank! When I think about it I'm truly tempted to buy another tank, while I'm well equipped for building a T55!

Next, fitting the gearbox and testing the electrics and running gear.
Last edited by Marc780 on Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:55 am, edited 13 times in total.
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General Jumbo01
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by General Jumbo01 »

Small bearings are available in just about every size imaginable so fitting one with a smaller outside diameter may be simplest/safest. Good ball race examples are very low cost on eBay.
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

I am building a T55 too. I did not get the hooben electronics, are useless for me.
So far I installed bearings in all the wheels, plan is to install servo elevation, and both cuppolas will also rotate. I will use a 12 channel receiver to be able to trigger all the functions.

Appart from that I installed a track tensioner, and replaced all the screws with high quality ones.

I also have for sale an aluminium mounting plate for stiffening the hull, if you want it let me know!

Read the manual carefully, because is pretty bad and has several mistakes.
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

General Jumbo01 wrote:Small bearings are available in just about every size imaginable so fitting one with a smaller outside diameter may be simplest/safest. Good ball race examples are very low cost on eBay.
The T55 wheels are bad casted, that is the problem. The hole should be a bit bigger, thats it. I enlarged it
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by General Jumbo01 »

The things we poor modelers have to live with! A good tool set is required then ;)

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Marc780
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by Marc780 »

Thanks for all the replies fellas! Regarding the aluminum plate, I have got one of those too, but I am not sure if and how I'll even fit it. Now that I've seen the inside of the hull I'm concerned how I am going to fit the rest of the works inside it, if I fit the aluminum plate that won't help the interior room.
This tank is a crash course in engineering, or more specifically RE-engineering. I have been working on it several hours a day, hoping to finish before my enthusiasm wanes! This is a unique and somewhat frustrating project, considering how bad the design on this is. For now I've just set myself the goal of getting the chassis moving and I don't even want to think how I'll make the turret work!

I re-made the road wheels so the bearing will fit. Using an 8 mm drill bit, I found I had a real problem with holding the fragile road wheel still enough to drill it. No matter how I clamped it in the padded vise, the wheel would break loose and start spinning with the drill. Clamping it tighter was not an option. So finally I made the drill run in reverse and gently applied the drill, it would then sort of melt its way through the wheel, after trimming the plastic far enough to finally hold the bearing.
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Today I test fitted the motor and road wheels. After this I'm hooking up the power and going to see about getting the tank rolling under power.... i suspect my work on this tank will come to a grinding halt if the Hooben electronics don't work! Since I see not point in doing any more work unless and until the tank moves.
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Last edited by Marc780 on Sat Nov 02, 2019 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

Hi, yesterday I discovered the sprockets are offset and they will cause track throw. I see no other way to fix it than machinning the motor axles and remove about 2mm... What are you going to do?
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

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Rad_Schuhart wrote:Hi, yesterday I discovered the sprockets are offset and they will cause track throw. I see no other way to fix it than machinning the motor axles and remove about 2mm... What are you going to do?
I think on mine I ammended the alignment by moving the wheels outward slightly rather than messing about with the drive shafts.
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by tomhugill »

Rad_Schuhart wrote:
General Jumbo01 wrote:Small bearings are available in just about every size imaginable so fitting one with a smaller outside diameter may be simplest/safest. Good ball race examples are very low cost on eBay.
The T55 wheels are bad casted, that is the problem. The hole should be a bit bigger, thats it. I enlarged it
The old version with bushes fit but I think when they went to bearings they used some slightly different sized ones.
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Re: My Hooben T-55 Progress

Post by Ad Lav »

Try my build for tips. They do run well and I had no issues once I fitted some upgraded bits from Stian.

viewtopic.php?f=41&t=22738&p=207483&hil ... 55#p207483
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