Soviet BT series tanks

[MikeN]

Ive really enjoyed building my Renault FT.
Im now toying with the idea of building another tank.
Im struggling to find some very basic information and I hope someone can provide the answers or point me in the right direction.
Im thinking of building a BT 5 or 7. It has tracks that look like this:
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.a0ec97b1a97 ... ImgRaw&r=0

I would like to know;
a) The pitch of the link. Pin to pin centres.
b) Width of the link

That will get me started. But also;
c) Any decent drawings of individual components. Especially suspension, Preferably with dimensions,

Thankyou, Mike

[jee]

Hi Mike, I have some info for you, mostly copies of original drawings, Unfortunately the document is 24 mb big, I am not sure I can attach it here.

bt7.jpg (260.5 KiB) Viewed 191 times

all documentation is in Russian of course :

[jee]

bt-7 2.jpg (309.05 KiB) Viewed 191 times

[jee]

bt-7-3.jpg (229.3 KiB) Viewed 191 times

[jee]

1503645693_p1010361.jpg (391.85 KiB) Viewed 185 times

BT-7_model_1935_‘Б-3‘_-_Central_Armed_Forces_Museum,_Moscow_.jpg (1.64 MiB) Viewed 185 times

seems they used a lot of different version tracks

[MikeN]

Those are really usefull drawings. Thanks very much.
Do you have any any more!
Also, Can you confirm the track plate width. Its a bit fuzzy at my end. It looks like 240?

[jee]

Those are really usefull drawings. Thanks very much.
Do you have any any more!
Also, Can you confirm the track plate width. Its a bit fuzzy at my end. It looks like 240?
Pitch is 167 (with a limit of .75mm!) very generous tolerance. But then its Russian.

Mike, you can download it here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

2 books, and in the zip file you will find a PDF with the drawings.
Also another 2 books but in djvu format, I guess you need to download some viewer/reader for that.

You can easily enlarge the PDF to check the numbers. For me it is a bit unclear if it is 2 or 340, but in any case you will have the length (167), and I think with that number you should be able to recalculate the width of the track.

Have fun and please make a buildthread so we can follow.

[MikeN]

That's excellent ,thank you, I've got some bed-time reading now. (I can't read Russian but you know what I mean).
The amphibious version looks interesting.
Yes I will do a build thread.

[MikeN]

seems they used a lot of different version tracks

Yes, the type in my first post with the smooth tread plate is the only one I think I can fabricate reasonably well.

Also just realised that the smooth links are longer pitch so only 92 required instead of 136 of the other types.

[jee]

(I can't read Russian but you know what I mean).

I use google lens for that, works quit good.