RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Once you start working with metal RC gears, there is no way back to plastic... Working with these metal parts is a great modelling experience.
Because the space is limited between the axles and motors, that little drive shaft is extremely valuable. Most sold on ebay are the longer ones for regular WPL 2 or 3 axle, they do not fit here. I had to order more of the small drive shaft because the other I have available in stock were all too long. I temporarily installed some cheap drive shafts on the others axles so that I could finish the installation of the suspension. Each drive shaft need to extend a bit like this one in order to keep the suspension functional.
The designed suspension really works great. I am happy with the results and the look of the whole thing.
It is critical to get the right spacing between the wheels and the right height. It needs to look good, centered, strait and all. Not easy.
The front and rear engine need to be lowered as much as possible.
This is the interior arrangement with the front motor providing power for the front axle, and the rear motor providing power for the middle and rear axles. This will be a true 6x6 and should be quite powerful. The Clark TK40 control board allows for two motors to work in tandem, pretty much the same way it does for the left and right gearbox on a tank.
The dampers were provided with adjusting mounts. Little gizmos available on eBay for a few dollars and are fun to use. They were quite valuable during the positioning and alignment of the suspension, the three main axles needed to be aligned. Be aware that the bottom of the Fuchs hull is not flat...
Overall, this was a great new modelling experience for me, to design and mount a 3 axle drive train on a large scratch built vehicle, never done that before. I hope they will run well. Next step is to install the steering servos, wire the motors and do a powertrain test.
Regards, Louis

This is amazing work once again Louis your ingenuity and skill to perform such builds and at the speed you do them is second to none, look forward to its progress

Cheers, Lee.

The assembly of all this did not have to be easy. Another very interesting post to follow!

Hi Louis,

Another very interesting and unusual subject.
You interpretation of the drive system looks fantastic!

Barry

Looks great, I’d just say that the driveshaft angles look quite steep - is it possible to ‘clock’ each axle towards the attached gearbox output?


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Hi, thank you very much for your encouragements

jimbo_wa wrote:Looks great, I’d just say that the driveshaft angles look quite steep - is it possible to ‘clock’ each axle towards the attached gearbox output?

Actually, it runs quite smoothly as can be seen in the video i uploaded on YOUTUBE below.

https://youtu.be/C8GHSZ9eyF0

The Clark TK-40 also provide incredible low speed control and well synchronized power over the two engines and gearboxes. As mentioned in an earlier post, i ordered better drive shafts for the middle and rear axles. Only the front axle is equipped with the definitive one.

Regards, Louis

Hi,

The steering servos have been installed and a short video has been posted on YouTube below.

https://youtu.be/0vmcjCn7G0k

Maximum steering as been provided for the front axle using a small metal steering servo.
A regular WPL steering servo has been used for the middle axles, with a more limited angle, calculated approximately. The two servos are connected with a Y splitter to channel 4 on the receiver. Do be finetuned later when the axle extensions and wheels are installed, with actual road test.
Now that the more technical components of the build has been mostly completed, i can focus on the building of the vehicle itself on this beautiful weekend coming up.

Regards, Louis

Looks great so far, Louis. This might sound strange, but I'm curious to see what your final weight will be and how all that additional un-sprung weight affects performance. Those look like rims from the Ural, are they also the super-super soft tires? I have one set of those but I'm still not sure how I like them. They give a very realistic "bulged" appearance at rest, but they don't seem to be as stable as the regular stock tires when in motion. Have you given any thought to the leaf springs? I know you're not using them but I wonder what just stacking two sets of springs would do? Hmmm I might try that when I do the GAZ tow vehicle project, depending on how the fifth wheel takes the weight.

Anyway, I can't wait to see video of this puppy in action!

Max-U52 wrote:Have you given any thought to the leaf springs? I know you're not using them but I wonder what just stacking two sets of springs would do?

Hi, oh I tried that on the V-150 build below. Although it made the suspension more firm to support the weight of the vehicle, the suspension lost a lot of its flexibility. it's something I will not repeat.
I would recommend the use of the WPL metal pull rod and damper mount available in pair on eBay. You can mount a simple or reinforce single leaf spring on top of them and add a shock absorber/damper on the side bar, as shown below. There are all kinds of WPL replacement gizmos that can be purchased for 10$ to 15$ and its fun experimenting with them. I am using these mounts on the Fuchs. If the Fuchs had not been such a wide vehicle, I would have mounted the shock absorbers/dampers externally on the sides as well. But on a simple WPL truck, it should be straitforward.

Spring is finally here !

This post is for the upper hull core components.

After having been cut away to make room to maneuver during the installation of the mechanical parts, the cabin section is now re-attached to the hull. The weak link connecting it to the hull is re-enforced with plasticard parts.
Building of the remainder of the hull has started with high maintenance inter-locking joints.
Rear hull section installed. The trick to a strait hull, smooth build and avoid bad surprises is to constantly dry fit these main parts while building the lower hull.
The cabin sides still have their inner component in order to keep them strait while positioning and gluing them. Its important as they have weak sections. The doors will be installed later.
The fit is not too bad but plasticard strips are required to fill the gaps with superglue.
The main hull parts are all assembled, sanded, some putty applied and re-sanded. The TPz-1 A8 version is no longer amphibious and is totally covered with additional armor plates (for Afghanistan I assume), so there is no point polishing these at this time because I will soon install all the extra armor sections.
Here is the 1/16 scale Fuchs hulk next to the 1/35 Revell model.
After having analyzed references during the planning stage, I decided that there would be no attempts to build the interior of this vehicle. The Fuchs interior is of limited interest, is surprisingly ugly and the canvas seats would be difficult to reproduce. These suspended seats are obviously designed to increase troops survivability in case of mines or IED blasts.
Rear view. No servo operated ramp here. But the two doors will be made to open and close.
Continuing on following post