RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

The barrel length is now 253mm, with only 0.5mm that will be permanently inside the mantlet. The remaining free space inside the mantlet is for the recoil.


That specific MK Modellbau barrel has an interior hole of 6mm. A 6mm brass tube is used to connect to the recoil unit, the lenght is left approximative but enough to create a good anchor that does not even need to be glued to the barrel, and i like the fact that the barrel is kept removable.


The recoil piston is connected to the barrel using a series of overlapping tubes for the joint.


The inside of the recoil piston is reinforced with a aluminum tube. I had to use a plasticard spacer because i did not have a tube that matched the interior of the piston perfectly. The screw for the pull rod will be anchored all the way into the aluminum tube.


I cut the bottom part of the body, not required. A notch is created at the top of the recoil unit for an M2 hex bolts that will be connected to the piston with a pull rod to a servo. The piston is well greased but not too much. This is the right time to run the LED wires across the whole thing as it would be extremely difficult later.


A regular size servo is glued to the left side of the recoil unit and connected to the piston with a pull rod. The elevation groove is on the right side. Forget about using a micro servo on a L7 gun, this is not a little panzer III gun. At that point, i had wrongly positioned the servo too far back and while testing the integration with the turret bottom, the servo was not clearing the turret ring, a junior mistake.

On the TONGDE control board, the servo recoil function need to be enabled by creating a permanent loop with the CN6 trigger wires, and by performing T+B with the emitter buttons. I also usually have to press the A button once before the recoil servo starts reacting to A+B to shoot the main gun.

The servo is flipped to have the main body forward and repositioned. The home made recoil unit is tested and works flawlessly.


But when i put on the mantlet and connected the barrel, i was getting a lot of resistance. After some investigation, i noticed that the mantlet part is badly designed. The hole is not centered and the barrel was being pressured against its right wall.


I had to adjust the horizontal placement of the mantlet cover by about 1mm to the right in order to have a strait and aligned hole for the barrel to recoil into. That fixed the issue.


Barrel is strait and looking good. Lots of tests are made.


Continuing on following post

Overview of the completed recoil unit with gun barrel.


It provides a long 20mm of recoil, its realistic.


The hole is a bit tight and the barrel is strait at this level. I will have to do something to help protect the paint job later when the barrel recoils.


That's it for the gun barrel and recoil unit. Next step, the turret.

Regards, Louis

Great start.

I used the MK Modellbau 105mm - wasn’t aware of the shortfall in the diffuser. I shall let Martin know so he can adjust.

I noticed a weakness in the idler adjusters. I was able to snap it in just two strokes with a blade. The plastic is thin in this area. It's ok for a 3 pound model with plastic tracks and wheels, but i am thinking that reinforcements should be done for models with metal roadwheels and tracks where the weight of the model quadruples to about 12 pounds. The area behind the adjuster is well hidden and more triangular braces are an option.

I came to the same conclusion about the idler wheel supports Louis, I made some reinforcing pieces that fit snuggly into the space above them and also fitted a plate on the inside of the hull to help with rigidity when the plastic is sandwiched between the 2 pieces and bolted.
While I was at it I made 3 lower hull braces ( one of which can just be made out in the pics ) that are spaced out inside as I also noticed that there was quite a bit of flex in the lower hull, now it all seems a lot stronger which is needed as you say especially with the metal running gear

Cheers,Lee.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

Love the sticky-outy bits all over an IDF tank, but only if someone else is building it

‘Not sure if it is the Ludwig that is too high or the TONDGE that is too low yet, but there are a few mm difference in height between the two. It won't be obvious how to adjust the height if required.‘


Would you like me to measure the width and height of my Tamiya one?

You could always go this way ..................
Sorry about the picture quality but its all I could do to to get it before I missed it all together.

Model Builder 4 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 7:51 am I came to the same conclusion about the idler wheel supports Louis, I made some reinforcing pieces that fit snuggly into the space above them and also fitted a plate on the inside of the hull to help with rigidity when the plastic is sandwiched between the 2 pieces and bolted.

Thanks Lee, that looks like that will solve the issue. I am not sure yet of putting on the metal upgrade, i'll see.

Ad Lav wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 6:46 am Would you like me to measure the width and height of my Tamiya one?

That would be great, Can you provide the height from the ground to the top of the fenders just in front of the first bin ?

HERMAN BIX wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 8:03 am You could always go this way ..................
Sorry about the picture quality but its all I could do to to get it before I missed it all together.

Great picture. thanks. It will surely inspire the Ukrainians...


Continuing with the build, starting the turret.


View of the AFV-Club turret. I've found that the TONGDE turret is really close to the AFV-Club turret in terms of shape, but not completely in terms of details.


Instead of providing the turret ventilator top, TONGDE has put on a thick plate with bolt heads... very similar in style to the plate that should go where the gunner's periscope plate would be on a Mk 5. There is no such option for the Centurion, there is always a ventilator. I think the designer got lazy and just put a plate easier to design there, as if no one would notice.


The turret is stripped out and many of the top details are eliminated and will be redone, like the plates with round bolt heads.


Before closing the turret halves, i installed the elevation unit, but not before removing the annoying stops that prevents the elevation wheel to do a loop up and down, eliminating the clicking sound it makes and avoiding the stripping of the gears inside.


TONGDE really screwed up the machine gun mount on the mantlet. Instead of putting the LED for the machine gun through the machine gun barrel, they created another hole on the side of it. Then they added another hole for the infrared.


As usual, i replaced the plastic machine gun by the Aber M1919. I drilled a hole through the tip for the fiber optic, and replaced the inner barrel by a tube.


The tip of the mantlet area for the machine gun was cut and replaced by a plasticard, with a single hole with a ring, as seen in reference. Also gave the mg mount some inward curves instead of strait lines.


The M1919 is installed, with 7.5mm of the barrel coming out, as calculated from the AFV Club model.


The machine gun is installed to the gun mount inside the hull. Black tape prevents the illumination of the turret inside when firing. The MG is not glued to the mantlet.


Continuing on following post

This post is for the casting effects.

Every Centurion turret seem to look different. The casting marks seem stronger on some tanks than others.

I've found that the top rear angle is sometimes more curved in some turret than others, even for models of the same mark.


As used on many of my builds, my first step is to use Testors putty and apply an overall coat using a finger.


While applying the putty, i notice that the edge of the turret with the top seems a bit high.


Then i do a first sanding.


After a coat of Tamiya primer to eliminate dust and see more clearly, i finetune the cast, smoothing thing in many places, adding grain in others. It's usually a three step process.


When i am satisfied with the basic casting effect, i give another coat of primer. I usually fine tune it over the whole build as there is always a scratch or something that could look better.


The TONGDE turret is missing the ventilator, and apparently also a plate next to it that goes over where a gunner periscope was located on previous marks. References do not talk much about the plate but usually show it on their graphs for a Mk 5, always removable with 6 bolts though.


Continuing on following post

The outer rim of the ventilator was made using the body of a TONGDE M-60 plastic roller that was of almost the right size, a leftover from the M60 build, then the cover is created in plasticard.


Then installed with M1 hex bolts.


I noticed the commander's turret is missing some bolt heads at the base.


I simply drilled the holes to slide in a M1.2 hex bolt. That was an easy one.


Started adding details on the turret top. Gunner's periscope plate is using M1 bolts. Two small plates at the back use M0.6 bolts.


I lowered that edge a bit during the sanding. Looks closer to ref pictures but again, different tanks look different. Maybe it was just the angle but that edge looked too high on the AFV-Club model and TONGDE shows the same.


The turret as it stands today.


Regards, Louis