RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Ecam wrote:Very nice start on the forum and to the 1/16 scale tanks. Sort of jumped in. You have even started with pictures (we are still working on that with some of our friends and family)!

Personally love the M4 and the variants. Welcome aboard.

"Family" has noted your inflammatory comment. You're getting cut out of The Will again.

Looking good...are you planning to lengthen the lower hull to a4 spec? What electrics are you planning to install?

frankie wrote:Looking good...are you planning to lengthen the lower hull to a4 spec? What electrics are you planning to install?

Hull will be lengthened but I need to build up to hacking the lower hull in to 3 parts. The DGS kit is designed to take the standard HL hull but it just doesn't look right- all that fuss for an extra 20mm or so!

Electrics I haven't thought about yet. The new HL tank electrics don't seem that bad. I appreciate they're not perfect but they'll do at the moment until funds allow for something more Gucci!

yep I know what you mean...the extra length isn't much but youll regret it if you don't....just makes it look "right"....

Great build so far , will be following this one.

A busy but slow Sunday has seen some progression with the hull, which is by no means square and resulted in some head scratching!

First things first was the 3 piece transmission cover which is one solid moulding.... Well, it's not straight, it's brittle and it's not the greatest moulding the world has ever seen- the bolt heads are all over the shop and it's too wide. Unless you fancy building a 3 piece transmission from scratch (I don't!) it'll have to do.



The HL gearbox won't fit with the 3 piece transmission so you need to grind bits off of it... I'm no metalsmith and I nearly lost a thumb when the grinding wheel flew off! It's a bit rough and ready but it is a prototype so I'm not too concerned. I will replace the gearbox in the near future and use this one as a template.



Once the transmission cover is fitted, with the aid of hot water and a sanding block, all you have to do is slide the hull on top... you'll see in the image that the resin hull is significantly longer than the HL plastic lower hull and it's not square! It has made it clear the hull needs lengthening whether I want to or not.



I've sanded the lower hull flat and will place a sheet of plastic card over the top to strengthen the hull and cover up all the holes!

I also fitted the grouser vents and used Halfords aluminium mesh as the grill. On top of that I fitted the tow cable fixings from schumo- which are workable.

Nice build. I like the work. Is the upper hull trapizoidal? Or, is that the camera perspective?

philipat wrote:Nice build. I like the work. Is the upper hull trapizoidal? Or, is that the camera perspective?

Thank you... the upper hull is more of a mild parallelogram in its shape.

IronDuke wrote:

philipat wrote:Nice build. I like the work. Is the upper hull trapizoidal? Or, is that the camera perspective?

Thank you... the upper hull is more of a mild parallelogram in its shape.

Time to quit the big words, you are start to lose some of us!

frankie wrote:yep I know what you mean...the extra length isn't much but youll regret it if you don't....just makes it look "right"....

You know what he is right, I didn't stretch mine and every time I look at it, it kinda bothers me Great work on your firefly