RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Finally back to work.

Last couple of parts came in. Armored machine gun barrels and ammo belts.


Started simple, elbow grease. Lots of sanding to make these flat once and for all. Still not perfect but good enough I think. Will be hard to tell once it's all together and I don't feel like using even more filler.


Soldered the gun barrel together. What a nicely detailed part! Thanks TFTM!


Glued barrel in the "ball" and cut out the plastic pre-formed ball in the front plate. The new one fits well and looks much better than before.


Question for you all... Does the pintle mounted AA gun have an armored barrel or a regular vented barrel shroud? I'm guessing regular vented. I have that really nice Aber vented barrel with all the "AA" fittings on it. Going to chop off the old solid barrel and use that super detailed one instead! (hard to see with the reflection)



All that sanding wore me out, not much work today, too covered in sanding dust, lol. Spend a good chunk of the after-work day hanging out at the local hobby shop chatting with the manager too. This Tiger project MAY slow down until colder weather. I've had a 1970 Charger (1:1 scale, lol) for years and I'm about ready to start building it. If I can it's probably going to consume the rest of my warm weather nights for the rest of the year.

You better put up a Charger build in the "other Builds" section, That will be cool to watch.

HERMAN BIX wrote:You better put up a Charger build in the "other Builds" section, That will be cool to watch.

I second the proposal... ...."OTHER BUILDS"??????????????????????

ALPHA

Boring update. Lots of filler, which takes 2 days to dry hard enough for my comfort. One day is workable but still soft, not sand-able.




One fun part. I cleaned up and hollowed out and fed the bulb wires for my new headlights and fit them to the upper deck, cutting and sanding away the old plastic molded ones. I also made small plastic lenses that fit into the headlight and are held in with nice clear canopy glue.



The mantlet's co-axial MG hole was way too large. I decided filling it was the best option. I can drill it with a proper size set of holes once it's hard and fit my second brass machine gun in there. I noticed other problems with the accuracy of the mantlet shape which I will address later... Also drilled out the periscope holes the correct way with multiple size decreasing holes, a tiny detail that no one will probably ever notice.




More filler.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Fixing the headlight holes and the turret relocation filling. Here's another thing I end up re-doing. My gun cleaner mounts are now atomized. Going to make new ones using the voyager brass that are nicer than the old.




More and more turret work. Took the dremel and ground out the weld passages deeper all around. Deletion of the old style pistol port and put in the new one. Bunch more filler over the whole thing where needed to cover mistakes with the dremel mostly.





Preview of my other* project: (Don't judge )

This is an older pic of the car but it's in about that shape. Most of the parts I stripped out already and put away. I was going to keep the work journal on dodgecharger.com forums so I'll duplicate what I write there in "other" builds.

I do know what I'm getting into. This isn't the first car I'll have built, just the biggest amount of work...



*Other, lol I have way too many projects.

The Body looks solid on that Charger Zuul.... But yeah she needs some work

ALPHA

From long range it looks solid. Then you look close and see rot in all the usual places. Range about 2k to 3.5k for the sheet metal, for high quality stuff.

Going to do my own welding, and everything else save painting. I don't have the skills or facility to do nice paint work on something this big.

Sov, it's all looking good (although I am not qualified to offer an opinion on the motor).

You asked a question about the correct turret AA MG which I raised on my post a few weeks back - the consensus seems to be that the armoured barrel would be in place because the MG used would have been either the one from the coaxial or bow positions. I'm still plucking up the courage to mate my Aber barrel to the metal MG34 from the Hachette Tiger...

And what is that putty you're using? Two days to set!! You're not in a tropical climate are you? Magic Sculp sets pretty hard within an hour or two - and it's rock hard by the following morning.

SovereignZuul wrote:From long range it looks solid. Then you look close and see rot in all the usual places. Range about 2k to 3.5k for the sheet metal, for high quality stuff.

Going to do my own welding, and everything else save painting. I don't have the skills or facility to do nice paint work on something this big.

Sounds like you are going to replace panels... yeah that can be pricy ...How's the floor boards?...Too bad I'm not there.... did some paint work when I was much younger... but I still have my guns.... and technique

ALPHA

Charger needs at the very least the front floors, I think rear is okay. Trunk floors, rear quarters, trunk floor extensions, front and rear valance, rear window sails and window channel, hood. Yeah it's a lot of metal all around but not worth scrapping the car over, all fixable. Frames seem solid with minor pitting, wheel wells seem to be in great shape. Fenders seem okay, though the right fender has bondo on it, maybe from an accident 20+ years ago...

Putty is Milliput Teracotta, which I LOVE once it sets. After a single day the putty is workable with a sander and knife but it's not rock hard until two days later. I tried Mr. White putty and hated it. Milliput dries hard as the plastic it adheres to and doesn't crack and crumble like the Mr. White did for me. Maybe the other kinds of Milliput dry faster but this is just what I found at my local hobby shop.

It has been over 90 degrees with massive humidity in CT recently, very unusual weather, that could be why...

SovereignZuul wrote:Charger needs at the very least the front floors, I think rear is okay. Trunk floors, rear quarters, trunk floor extensions, front and rear valance, rear window sails and window channel, hood. Yeah it's a lot of metal all around but not worth scrapping the car over, all fixable. Frames seem solid with minor pitting, wheel wells seem to be in great shape. Fenders seem okay, though the right fender has bondo on it, maybe from an accident 20+ years ago...

That model is rare...its the same one they used for the General in Dukes of Hazard if I'm not mistaken... So yeah well worth the restoration...the steel is still relatively thick on that year.... I would strip that front fender down to bare metal just to see if it's workable ...a little shrink hammering and you might still have a viable fender

Nice project... wish there was stuff like that laying around in Hawaii... not that there aren't some old cars...but most of them are total rust buckets and not worth the effort


ALPHA