It's been a very very long time but I thought I'd get the tortoise out of hibernation. There have been a few bits and bobs which had needed making before I could get my teeth into the build proper. The main one was the gearbox. I wanted to use a pdsgb on this beast but no suitable shafts were available. I had spoken to Carson about getting some custom length ones made but he said due to covid it wasn't possible.
Luckily I was able to get in touch with Saer at full metal panzer who make these. He was beyond helpful with this and some other things. He machined some correct length shafts for the tortoise at a very reasonable price.
The gearbox plate mounts nicely in the tortoise front end, however I did need to grind back the inside of transmission cover to get a good fit. I also milled out some channels to allow for removal of the mounting screws without removing the transmission cover.
The tortoise was suffering the effects of some poor storage on my part. Some of the bogies had corroded and seized, same with the tracks.
The seized parts were removed and replaced with new and new tracks were found in my spares box.
Guido Henn had been previously kind enough to make me an extra wide trade tensioner, this was finally fitted to allow adjustments to the tension and also stiffen the rear end up. Torro king tiger sprockets and idlers were also fitted at this point.
The chassis will be recieving some alloy bracing at some point to add some stiffness, although with the top on that's pretty much none existent now.
Next up it trying to fix some of the grime and corrosion that has accumulated. Iain used untreated steel bolts which had corroded heavily. These were removed and ground back to sound metal. Whilst removed the styrene around it was sanded back and cleaned. The rivets on the engine deck had also suffered so those were also cleaned up. Some primer was used to seal things up.
Next up I added all the missing bolts down the fenders, the template I got with it really helped here.
Lastly I've added a thick layer of Mr surfacer 500 to the barrel to smooth down down the undulations on the printed sleeve. This will be sanded when dry and more layers added until I get it right.
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My two seem curious.
