For background, my own knowledge and experience with Heng Long is hopelessly out of date. My first RC tank was the first Heng Long Tiger 1 available in the UK back around 2007. It was in a lot of ways, terrible. No smoke, no sound, no proportional control, and a lot of glaring inaccuracies on the model. A couple of years later I started replacing it with upgraded parts, a project that was abandoned for a long period of time, picked up again in 2018, then abandoned again until late 2022, where I made up for lost time and completely renovated the tank. You can read the thread here: viewtopic.php?t=34395
I’m interested in the Sherman and while I like the metal construction of Taigen, they are expensive and from what I’ve seen the Heng Long 7.0 electronics blow the Taigens out the water. I’m aware steel gearboxes are a must and would likely be purchasing something like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322792890792 ... media=COPY
I consider myself a decent modeller and painter and would be giving the tank a detailed paintjob along with weathering.
So, apologies for the long list, but heres my barrage of questions.
- I found the metal tracks to be vastly superior on tanks like the Tiger with unsupported tracks with no return rollers, would there be a similar benefit getting the Sherman with metal tracks?
- I see all the tanks available with the full upgrade have metal tracks, idlers and sprockets, but the road wheels and suspension remain plastic. Will this be ok, or will the metal tracks damage the plastic wheels?
- Will the hull be ok with the metal running gear or will it suffer from flexing? If the latter is the case are there easily available solutions to add bracing/hull strengthening?
- I’ve found the adjustable idler wheels to be essential on my Tiger, does the Sherman come with adjustable idlers?
- If not, is it easy to add them?
- Would there actually be any benefit from adding them or is track tension less of an issue when the tracks are supported with rollers?
- I would have preferred to have a Sherman with the 76mm gun, I can see theres plenty of guns about but are there any decent commercially available accurate turrets to go with them that don’t require huge amounts of modification?
- If not, is it a relatively simple operation to replace the 105mm howitzer with the 75mm cannon?
- I know the modern HL tanks have both BB and IR capability, but does the gun have recoil like the Taigens do?
- Those that have the M4A3 – are there any glaring pitfalls that I should watch out for or are they fairly reliable and straightforward? Are you happy with the tank?
