Challenger II Mato Metal Tracks

[Navy chief]

I just took another look at my Mato Tracks. Initially, I cleaned each and EVERY pad and Track with actetone prior to gluing to insure proper adhesion before following Mato's customer support gluing instructions. My tracks are to the point now, after COUNTLESS hours and gluing attempts, crusted with Cynoacrilate adhesive. The adhesive sticks well to the metal, but not the silicone pads. Just spent 20 minutes cleaning with actetone and scraping my tracks. 20 minutes to clean only 4 tracks ! Hundreds more to clean. Unless I scrape all this crap off, the pads no longer sit flat on the tracks. Im done with this. To the rubbish container they go. I'll use my plastic tracks. Maybe some day, after this baby poo taste leaves my mouth, I'll try another metal track set. But NEVER, EVER again from Mato Toys. Hopefully others can use this thread as a warning against Mato's Challenger 2 tracks.

[Navy chief]

I also contacted Mato Toys concerning the 1 year warranty they brag about for these tracks. That was 2 weeks ago. Never got a response back. Maybe they should offer a lifetime warranty ? If your going to lie about your promise, may as well go big time. Hope they loose lots of potential buyers after others read this thread. Too bad as they offer other decent product.

[Navy chief]

See below...

[Navy chief]

You should have used an epoxy type of adhesive, or even a 3M weatherstripping glue (designed to glue rubber to steel) it can be messy but if you are disciplined it works great!

When Gluing, its a good idea to do a little research first. Super glue is garbage IMHO, it works for resin stuff (barely) and its my last choice, if it even makes the list, but there is alot better out there

Cheers!

The glue I used was at Mato's recommendation. I did try 3m's weather strip glue. Barely tacks on the pad. The gap between the pad and track is too small to allow an effective amount of adhesive application. As an aircraft engineer by trade, resin type epoxy is not very effective on Silicone ( as in the material the pads are made of) Silicon rubber is often used in resin molding for aircraft composit parts manufacture process. The radius of the molds are often silicone as it will not adhere to the molding part upon completion.

Thanks for thought however.

[Navy chief]

Could not agree more..

[General Jumbo01]

Or try Shoegoo

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[HERMAN BIX]

Ha ha! Yes, but he said Not very helpful before baby poo was mentioned. Ha ha! Ha ha! Tee he! LOL!

Has anyone else here tried the stuff? It should be in every modeller's tool chest.

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Jeezus..............
Just to clear up.

The "not very helpful" reference was a direct admission of "the comment I am about to make is NOT going to be very helpful, but....."
Two countries separated by a common language

I wish you all the best in finding a suitable retaining compound for your synthetic track components Sir.

[Navy chief]

++++++

[Navy chief]

Ha ha! Yes, but he said Not very helpful before baby poo was mentioned. Ha ha! Ha ha! Tee he! LOL!

Has anyone else here tried the stuff? It should be in every modeller's tool chest.

Sent from my ASUS_T00G using Tapatalk

Jeezus..............
Just to clear up.

The "not very helpful" reference was a direct admission of "the comment I am about to make is NOT going to be very helpful, but....."
Two countries separated by a common language

I wish you all the best in finding a suitable retaining compound for your synthetic track components Sir.

Thank you sir. No problem on my end.
I've given up on these tracks. They ended up ruined by all the MANY applications of different glues. They no longer flex easily. No adhesive of any kind worked well enough to keep the pads on when the tank is rolling. Disgracefully engineered product.

The original plastic tracks work just fine.