My late Tiger conversion (Taigen)

[HERMAN BIX]

The season of application is not the point.
The actual month of the year and most likely the day of that month if not the hour the order was issued is most important!
Zimmerit on a Tiger is as iconic as the Tiger itself.................

[Herr Dr. Professor]

"There is quite a narrow band in time when it was applied which allows people like me to build Tiger 1 early, mid and late with out it."
"Zimmerit on a Tiger is as iconic as the Tiger itself."

Uh-oh! Once again, it's 6mm plastic BBs at ten paces. Wait! No duel needed: I have the solution! jarndice can build a naked Tiger 1 and Bix can build his with Zimmerit and then cosmetically beat the tank up so much that all the Zimmerit is shot off.

[LordLudikrous]

Thanks for the positive feedback, its always encouraging. Regarding Zimmerit - I agree the sentiment that its an iconic look in its own right, but I just hate working with it. Plus its very prone to damage when contacting other surfaces which is not ideal for an RC model. I think as well that the texture is a bit too big on the latex sheets so it doesn’t look quite right.

There has been some progress since my last post. I’m currently working on the upper deck, painting tools and applying decals. The turret is still being stripped – I have to say Tamiya paints are remarkably resilient when it comes to stripping them off. I use 99% IPA and with Warhammer models/paints it just comes off after a couple of hours of soaking with minimal effort. Tamiya paints seem to need about a week of soaking with various periods of being removed and scrubbed with a toothbrush before going back in.

I stripped the tracks as best I could and went through the bluing process using Birchwood Casey Gun Super Blue, and while they look much better than they did before I started bluing them, overall the effort has not been satisfactory. Which is a shame because they look terrific when they’re wet, but it doesn’t last as they dry out. I did wonder if mineral residue was playing a part as we live in a hard water area, so I gave them a scrub with some white spirit and it helped a little bit, and you can see the slightly darker look in the photos below.



Wet



Dry

I’ve been doing some more reading and I’ve seen suggestions that the Taigen metal tracks don’t take kindly to the process as well as the Heng Long ones do, and that other products such as Aluminium Black are required instead. These products are quite expensive to acquire in the UK so if anyone has any knowledge or input about this I’d be really grateful.

Colour of the tracks aside, they function just fine so I went ahead and installed them so I can make sure everything works, and it is starting to look more like a Tiger again.



However the tank is still not running great. The new wheels work beautifully I have to say, but there is still a roughness/jerkiness to the movement. I believe the issue is the gearboxes. They’re not in a great shape anyway, although a lot of that is down to them being over 14 years old. There’s more to it however.

Basically as touched upon earlier in the thread, this is a project that has spanned a long period of time, and the origins of some of this stuff is a bit murky. After digging through some very old email receipts, my original hull was Asiatam, the wheels were also Asiatam and came with the hull. The sprockets, idlers and tracks were listed as Heng Long. The gearboxes are simply called “improved metal gearboxes for Heng Long Tiger” and are pictured below.



The gear cogs are not magnetic so they’re definitely not steel.

As detailed in this thread I’ve changed the hull out recently for a Taigen hull, although they weren’t an issue, the wheels have also been changed to newer Taigen wheels, the sprockets and idlers are the late style Taigen ones that I got in 2018, and the tracks were replaced with Taigen ones last year. Every single replacement item has resulted in an improvement, but there are still issues, and the only last remaining common denominator are the gearboxes. I’ve ordered a set of the black Taigen 4:1 TG270 boxes; they’re the standard it seems for several years and everyone seems happy with them. Plus I’d rather change the gearboxes out now while the tank mostly in bits rather than have to take it all apart again once finished. Once installed, all components will be up to date Taigen parts (except the mainboard, that’s a V2); there will be no legacy components.

Over the years I’ve probably spent far more money than I should have done on this Tiger, but its been a learning experience and I’ve learned a heck of a lot of skills that I’ve been able to apply elsewhere.

With that being said, my next tank is likely going to be the Taigen M4A3 76 W Sherman, but I’m not going to repeat the mistakes I made over the years with the Tiger. I’m going to get a full unpainted Taigen kit and I’m drawing up another project plan to make sure it goes smoothly.

[tankme]

It could be gearbox related or it simply could be the Taigen electronics. The HL electronics at version 6 started to have much better low speed driving characteristics. Taigen has never improved their low speed control and therefore it's not great.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

I run mostly Taigen tanks, and I certainly agree with tankme that Taigen has not kept up with HengLong electronics for "low speed driving characteristics" or other flexibility of control. However, my Taigen tanks do not not exactly show "a roughness/jerkiness to the movement"; rather, they just run too fast for my preference. I believe the new gearboxes will help.

If this were my Tiger 1, I would go one step farther, changing out the Taigen V2 MFU electronics for V3, that is, the version with the separate sound module correct for the Tiger 1 Maybach engine. The Maybach 210 is for the early Tiger (as, e.g. with the Feifel aircleaners on yours). See and hear the selection here: https://www.taigentanks.com/products/ta ... rd-speaker

For an even better combination of running characteristics and quality of sound, I would dive into a system such as Beier, Clark, and many more. Among these boards, there are many who prefer one of these over the other, but my knowledge of these is quite limited.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

For tracks, I have just discovered a trick for blued metal that satisfies me. If the tracks are metal, I start at step 1); If the tracks are black plastic, I go to step 3)

1) Spray a light coat of a metal etching primer. Spray cans are available from RustOleum or other brands from auto parts places.
2) Spray a flat black primer. Rustoleum makes a great one that is readily shot from a spray can. But there are others of many brands.
3) Airbrush or brush on a coat of Tamiya or Vallejo "gun metal." (To me, these leave have a look that is too "silvery." So there's more as follows.)
4) Brush on a blue filter intended for German Dunkelgrau tanks, such filters being available from AK Interactive and Vallejo (and probably others, too).
5) Then airbrush or brush on a coat of a rust colored wash as offered by various paint manufacturers.
6) Then airbrush or spray from a can a flat clear coat enamel or lacquer, such as those from Tamiya, Testor's Model Master, or even Rustoleum "Dead Flat."
7) When that final wash is dry, lay the tracks flat on a concrete floor, grip them with your toes, and scrape them, or using a firm sanding block (easily may oneself), sand off the parts of the treads that on real tracks would contact the surface of a hard pavement. This final step is to wear through all the paint as if the tracks had been driven some on a hard surface (concrete, gravel, asphalt, even cobblestone roadway.)

Of course, using a bluing solution, as do many here on RCTW, might well be easier.

[LordLudikrous]

Thanks for the suggestion about the tracks, I might look at doing that if I can’t find a suitable bluing method that works.

The new gearboxes arrived and they are reassuringly heavier than the originals with noticeably larger motors.




I set about removing the old gearboxes and installing the new ones, which was an unfortunately lengthy process due to the need to test the new gearboxes, realign and reinstall the driveshaft support bearings, and solder on the wires for the smoker unit to the terminals. Due to the size of the motors it was substantially harder to get them into the tank than the old ones. I also chose to reposition and drill new holes for the support bearings, as the old holes didn’t quite line up.



I am delighted to say once the installation was complete and I was able to tweak the track tension, all the issues my Tiger had with its drivetrain have completely vanished. It now runs incredibly smoothly, all the jitter and shaking from before has gone, and the tracks are meshing nicely with the sprockets. Honestly I’m super relieved – nothing would have been more frustrating to have gone through the effort with the gearboxes only for it not to make any difference. It does have different driving characteristics to the old ones so its going to take a bit of time to get used to driving it again.

The upper deck is almost complete and I’m almost done stripping the turret, the results so far are encouraging.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

Woo Hoo! Success! Doesn't it feel good to see it run smoothly! Oh, yeah!

[LordLudikrous]

Honestly it really does, I didn't know these tanks could drive so smoothly.

I think one of the issues was that the old gearboxes were clearly meant to move a plastic Heng Long Tiger around and were not up to the task of lugging my much heavier Taigen machine about, and while they started off OK they were deteriorating rapidly. I noticed a lot of metal shavings from the cogs, so I'm guessing if I'd let things run their course one or more of the cogs would have eventually ground their teeth down to nothing.

Something else interesting I noticed as well with the old pair was that the mounting holes only lined up to use two screws to secure each gearbox to the mounting plate. The Taigen ones have 3 screw holes that lined up. I imagine even with the support bearings there was some movement going on that wasn't helping.

[tankme]

On the pot metal gearboxes, some of them have the final drive shaft just press fit on. It could be that the gear on the drive shaft was slipping. I've had it happen to one of my tanks. Glad it's fixed though.