Ugly Baby...

[tankme]

What do you get when you mate an M551 Sheridan and an M41 Bulldog?

You get a T49. Since it was an experimental project I will have some creative license with it. I'm not going to bother narrowing or fixing the major flaws with the Bulldog hull. It's just a fun, simple conversion project.

[Exhibitedbrute]

Some paint and job done then

[Ecam]

Oooh aaah! Like it. Kind of those ones a mother could only love.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

It appears to me that either you have already fixed one major flaw or the M41 upper hull is a teeny bit more accurate than the Taigen. That is, the driver's "sky scopes" seem to be level on yours; whereas, the on the two Taigen M41s I have, the scope glass is tilted decidedly skyward. Am I seeing this correctly?

[tankme]

Yes...already fixed those. That was the first thing to be corrected.

[tankme]

Wanted some low hanging fruit and I got it (as in a non-complicated build). Installed the recoil, Taigen High Intensity Flash, and the servo elevation. Still need to install the MG LED and the IR LED. Also got the ammo boxes printed and mocked up in place. I need to fabricate some glass panels for the commander's cupula.



All I needed to adapt the turret to the HL rotation was to remove the ring from the old M41, drill a few holes in the Sheridan turret floor, add some M3 10mm long standoffs and it was good to go.



Finished up the days work with an installation of a smaller Visaton speaker in a box, added the receiver, added the volume adjuster, soldered in the new XT60 connector, extended the motor wiring, and installed the Clark TK50SP. All the components were velcro'd to the hull after removing the battery box and pouring about 4oz of resin in the hull for support. Everything tested good.

[tankme]

Got some further work done on this guy also. I cut and shaped all the glass pieces for the commander's cupola fashioned from some 1/8" acrylic sheet I had. Each window had to be hand fit after cutting to a rough shape.





Also got the IR battle system installed. I installed the IR LED in the optics tube, but lengthened it a little to get a proper 9-10mm setback for the LED.





Close to final wiring layout done. I'm having issues with the LEDs that came with the tank drawing too much current. Only half of them turn on. I have some micro LEDs I'm going to swap in to see if that solves the problem.