I picked up this Centurion lower in a big lot of other things. Seemed a waste to not do anything with it but buying the replacement bits off the shelf from haya would have blown the megre budget I had for it.
However I spoke to Andrew and hes been amazing in providing the bits and bats I needed and where he didn't have them printing them (for example the drivers hatch and the holding down bits for them).
Being stingy I bought the turret shell (£20 Vs £80 for the one with internals) and then had Onebengius recoil unit printed up in resin by a friend.
The really really big stumbling block was the tracks, sprockets and idlers. I was looking at the thick end of £200 plus for these from haya. Luckily I did some horse trading with Zooma and got the TD metal set for their centurion.
How different could they be I thought? First instance I thought maybe TD tracks with haya sprockets. No. Very much no. Whilst the pitch of the teeth is roughly the same the sprocket it's self is smaller on the TD so on the larger haya sprockets the tracks have no chance.
Next thought was use the td tracks sprockets and idlers, again no dice. Because TD have an interesting philosophy of having very very short shafts on their gearboxes and then really really long necks on the sprockets meant with the haya gears the sprockets stand miles too far away from the hull. Bugger.
To add to this woe the idlers are drilled very differently such that you cant get bearings with a large enough bore to fit the haya shafts. Disgusted I put the tank down and went to bed.
Some time later I thought maybe if I try some really short shaft gearboxes maybe I could get close to where I needed to be. Had to rob the gearboxes out of a Toro Sherman but hurrah it's working. The sprockets were a little away from centred but this does actually help with keeping the tracks on the sprockets on difficult terrain.
The idlers were achieved using bronze bushes I found on amazing, they fitted perfectly and using a washer to retain them were spot on. I had to glue the halves together to achieve this.
Another hurdle were the out drive casings. On the haya the longer shafts goes through 2 bearings with a little bit of shaft out side for the sprocket to attach to. With the TD sprocket theres a massive taper neck which doesn't fit through the out drive. I wanted to maintain the inner bearing to support the gearbox shaft. To get this to work I had to drill and then grind a taper into these out drives. A bit laborious but we got there in the end.
Cosmetically I managed to get the 105mm barrel from haya on eBay for a much reduced price
Randomly I had a mk5 turret top with the hull so I've used that.
Next up I'll be adding the turret internal brad printed and will but adding smoking barrel, tk50 (off Andrew) and start on the detail bits.
I'm in two minds whether to continue with a British mk5 or go idf and make up to a shot kal
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