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Never threw a track on my T55 in six months of use... did you even look at the build?!

Ad Lav wrote:Never threw a track on my T55 in six months of use... did you even look at the build?!

I never threw a track neither, because I have not run it yet, lol.

But take a look at the pic attacked. This is with the gearboxes in the mount plate, and that plate bolted in the hull. Sprocket bolted in too.
This is an horrible offset that needs to be corrected. Tom said he put extra washers, but I think it would be better to make the motor axle 2mm shorter.

Rad_Schuhart wrote:

Marc780 wrote:

Rad_Schuhart wrote:Hi Marc, please tell us how did you solve the horrible sprocket offset. As stock, it is almost like the king tiger!

Sprocket offset? I haven't even gotten that far yet, right now I'm just happy all the motors respond to the transmitter! I guess that's something I'll deal with when I get to it? I'll probably search the forums to find out how others fixed the problem on similar tanks, although now that I know i have this problem to deal with I can't say I'm looking forward to it lol

Yep, before working on the turret I think you should focus on that first, lol. The sprockets are offset. I mean, are not aligned with the roadwheels, so it will cause throw track every 10 seconds, lol.

I planned to shim the wheels, but one shim is not enough, and two makes the roadwheels to bee too out, and the grub screw wont have enough flat part to fit.

Anyway considering doing that puts the wheels outside the fenders (and it should NOT be like that) the only thing we can do, is to machine the motor axles and remove 1 or 2 milimeters...

And yeah, recoil is a pain, lol

Thanks for the warning - another surprise from the amazing designers at Hooben products...

After doing quite a bit of gluing parts to the hull and those tiny, fiddly hangers on the turret (ARGG) I went back to redo some more problem areas. The left motor was held on by only one screw so I had to add at least one more to mount it securely. Only one of the holes lined up properly so I used that for a reference and drilled a new hole in the rear (red arrow).
I added the thumbnails in this post instead of the full sized images, since most of them look huge and ridiculous, and unless there's a detail no reason for them to be so big.

The odd thing is the motor mount plate is machined so it is chock full of threaded holes - but very few of them match the holes in the motor mounts. Clearly the plate was made for another set of motors and the designers just threw in this motor mount as an afterthought... Big surprise. Thank goodness for soft metal, the drill goes through the mounting plate like butter.
When you install the motor mount plate, you have one motor already mounted, of course. So to mount the other one I just glued in the screw sticking up through the bottom of the plate to use as a stud.

The next chore was fixing the front idler wheels - the line drawings showed a bearing was supposed to go on the inside hole right next to the circlip. But the hole for it was cast too small, oops! I bought a reamer, size 8 mm to enlarge the hole, since a drill would cut too much and go too deep. Now I realize if I had a grinder, and a cheap 8 mm drill bit I could have just made a tool for this. Grind the point off a drill bit, voila, 8 mm reamer! Instead of spending $20 buying an expensive flute reamer you'll only use once. The reamer went through the wheel material like mad and it took about 5 seconds to open the hole.

Finally the idler wheels would accept the bearing.

So here are the parts and nothing you haven't seen before, no big whoop. But once it goes together like this the circlip rides against the bearing and the idler wheel finally works how it is supposed to, with minimal wobble.

Now I had fixed those things I wanted to do a test run. But two of the road wheels spun too rough so it was time to fix them. I removed the circlip, popped out the bearings (it's a good thing I didn't glue them in place!) and replaced the bearings at the right height, and square with the hole - the real problem that made them spin rough - and slathered some grease on the axle so they spun nice and smooth, and put them back together. Then I reinstalled the wheels and tracks, hooked up the battery and took it for a merry spin around the kitchen floor. Finally it functions - after all that ridiculous amount of work, it ran fine, to my immense relief.

They must have changed something to fix the problem with the sprocket run-out problem that people are telling me this tank has, but I had no trouble with the tracks staying on.
The only annoyance - the tank goes forward when you push the control lever forward, and back, but push the lever right it turns left and vice versa! Naturally I thought the motor connections should be reversed, so I swapped them... nope, that wasn't it! Now the tank forward and back controls are reversed! This odd tank is just full of little surprises and it is endless. I never thought I'd be longing for good old Heng long quality but there it is... I've never put this kind of work into a model tank in my whole life, this tank is such an oddball contraption in so many ways, so I figure I can live with a few idiosyncrasies with function.

Next I need to clean up the wiring, finish the turret, and hook up the lights (IR searchlight and driving lights). Then - paint. I'll be doing a Syrian army pattern with Oil ochre base with Russian armor green camo - the last thing I want to do is go with solid Russian armor green, too dull and boring!

I would guess I have at least 10 to 20 hours working on this tank up to now. I thought about making this tank for a couple years but for a long time I thought the effort would be too much, too expensive, too complex, etc. but I kept coming back to it from time to time since I still wanted one, for some reason. Now that I'm doing it, I'm half tempted to immediately build a second T55. I have the tools, the supplies and the paint, I'm familiar with the design and the parts, and in practice. If I were to build another one right after finishing this one, I'd probably make it with a lot more craftsmanship and fewer sloppy mistakes and I think I'd cut the time in half...

Steering - just reverse the channel on the transmitter.

Sent from my ASUS_T00G using Tapatalk

Rad_Schuhart wrote:

Ad Lav wrote:Never threw a track on my T55 in six months of use... did you even look at the build?!

I never threw a track neither, because I have not run it yet, lol.

But take a look at the pic attacked. This is with the gearboxes in the mount plate, and that plate bolted in the hull. Sprocket bolted in too.

72155935_395602347777359_2539125884472786944_n.jpg

This is an horrible offset that needs to be corrected. Tom said he put extra washers, but I think it would be better to make the motor axle 2mm shorter.

We may have gotten different sprocket parts or different axles - but your sprocket looks to me that it is not pushed onto the axle far enough. That or perhaps the sprocket halves are reversed and that's why it did not fit all the way on. (I made the same mistake at least twice, also it is possible to misalign the teeth on the sprocket halves when you put them together and if you do that the track won't sit right, of course! - when I did this it took me a moment to realize the mistake, I'm just glad I didn't glue it together like that!) The flat spot on the axle is supposed to fit into the rectangular hole cast into the sprockets, at least on mine it did... I found the easy way to put on the sprocket was to lube the axle, align the slots and push on the inner sprocket. Then install the outer sprocket and the screw and it should be all the way on - it goes on so far it is almost touching the hull.

General Jumbo01 wrote:Steering - just reverse the channel on the transmitter.

Sent from my ASUS_T00G using Tapatalk

I confess I didn't even know you can do this... HOW do you do this?

I put together the turret searchlight with its bulb and wiring. I remembered to thread the wiring through the hole in the searchlight before I soldered the wires, but afterwards I realized I should have threaded the wire through the hole in the turret before I did the soldering too... I was picturing boring a large ugly hole in the turret to fit the connector through and puttying it shut later, which would have been dumb, not to mention sloppy, but that turned out to be a moot point anyway since the bulb did not work. (Once again I was glad I didn't permanently glue the searchlight together just in case this happened).


Testing the other bulbs and connectors into the MSU showed it was indeed that bulb at fault, more testing of the rest of the lights showed the main gun muzzle light is also dead, so I sent off for some more LED lights...

I fitted the hull and turret on for kicks, I'm happy that it's really starting to come together now - warts and all.

You have purchased a very good, flexible transmitter and at no doubt a good price and with some imagination can achieve all sorts of tricks. Reversing a channel however is a very basic function. You need to:
A) put at least an hour aside and find a comfortable seat
B) with your transmitter in one hand, the instruction book in the other and a drink in the other other, make yourself comfortable
C) read the manual cover to cover, possibly several times until is ALL makes sense.
D) think about how you can make all those dozens of special functions work for you.
Finally, E) give the manual a read through once a month for further inspiration.

Sent from my ASUS_T00G using Tapatalk

General Jumbo01 wrote:You have purchased a very good, flexible transmitter and at no doubt a good price and with some imagination can achieve all sorts of tricks. Reversing a channel however is a very basic function. You need to:
A) put at least an hour aside and find a comfortable seat
B) with your transmitter in one hand, the instruction book in the other and a drink in the other other, make yourself comfortable
C) read the manual cover to cover, possibly several times until is ALL makes sense.
D) think about how you can make all those dozens of special functions work for you.
Finally, E) give the manual a read through once a month for further inspiration.

Sent from my ASUS_T00G using Tapatalk

Manual? MANUAL - they give you a line drawing with the functions of the transmitter labelled and full stop. I won't be doing smoke or IR battle functions but I will probably do a tail light though - other than that I'm satisfied with the function I have... maybe the next one will be the cadillac model of T55 lol...

I sent away to a German site for metal headlight cages plus new swing arms for the four swinging links on the suspension... (because two of the parts are broken, I just installed those parts with only two in the front, where uneven ride height would be most evident). In the meantime I set about installing the searchlight and driving lights.

The driving lights present no great challenge but the searchlight is much like a ship in a bottle project. There are several critical parts that MUST be glued exactly right, and strong as you can make them or else they'll break off for certain. After thinking it over a bit I decided using JB Quick Weld would be a good strong way to mount the parts.

The wiring for the LED's is so fine I found it difficult to strip the wires with tools... After many shortened wires, cursed attempts, and facing a real shortage of functioning LED's, radical methods were called for and I finally decided my TEETH were the ideal tools for doing this. As strange as it might sound this was the best way to strip the insulation since regular tools didn't have enough fine control to strip these wires and get it right on the second try!

In the left side of the image is a small jar of a neat product I forgot I had, called "WIRE GLUE". It works just like solder without the heat and fumes. Just align the wires and apply the glue with a toothpick or disposable brush and give it an hour to dry, (dries fully overnight) and treat like a soldered joint!

After trying to glue the mounts (arrow) while holding the searchlight in place - which was futile - I realized if the mounts were glued strongly enough I could just pop the light in place later and it ought to hold. So long as the gap is more or less correct, just glue the mounts in place, one at a time (with Gorilla super glue) then reinforce the glue seams (with JB Quick weld) and let dry. Then you can easily pop in the searchlight without issue. So that's what I did.

Pretty it isn't but the JB Quick weld mounts so strong it's like they were molded on. The searchlight popped in place with no hazard of breaking those fragile mounts. The primer and paint ought to obliterate the ugly grey mess, I hope... but it was worth it to get really permanent mounts for the turret searchlight.
Of course I had to test the lights.

The new LED lights are here so now it's time to install a taillight and finish up other details, like cleaning up the wiring, and securing the hulls - probably with rare earth magnets - before masking for priming.

I was referring to the SkyFly manual! To strip the very thin wires, gently cut a ring around the wire with a scalpel then pinch the plastic off with your fingers. Okay, these wealth of various skills take years to acquire but don't be put off - we were all there once.

I am really in the home stretch now. The challenging parts of assembly are done and the working parts function, with a few minor wrinkles, and now it's time to start the paint.

Many months ago I built a couple T55 models to use for testing purposes. There were some paints and coatings I wanted to try out first before doing it to the finished model. I got a 1/35 scale model from Lindberg and a 1/72 scale one too (not really for testing I just wanted to have it around lol).


There are so many shades of yellow paint available I didn't want to pick one that looked wrong; and some shades I eliminated right away, like US armor yellow (much too pale), and German dunkelgelb (too greenish, at least the ones I've used). After a lot of research looking at other folk's models, plus images of the real thing (T-55's in Syrian service) I settled on "oil ochre" from MIG. This shade most closely matches how most tanks in the middle east are painted.

I also used the Lindberg model to try out "Mr Surfacer". And if it's a rough cast iron surface you want to show, Mr Surfacer is the stuff (it's just thinned-out putty though). On the real T-55 the turret is made from several castings welded together. And on some photos of the real ones the roughness of the castings is very visible, while on others not nearly as much. Naturally I wanted to try it out on something expendable first BEFORE slathering it all over the turret permanently! But after applying it on the Lindberg model, then comparing it to my test images, I decided not to use the Mr Surfacer after all. The turret on the Hooben is made with a rough "cast metal" surface - even after priming, the real test - and I did not want to go too far the other direction and have the turret texture be TOO rough. This image is what led me to this conclusion:


Next I got some velcro to hold the battery. I attached it to the hull floor (that is, the aluminum hull reinforcement plate inside the lower hull) using two sheet metal screws, plus some flat washers. Care in sizing the sheet metal screws is demanded, to prevent making an unwanted hole in the plastic hull (the aluminum plate does not fit flush with the plastic hull since the latter is concave). When installed there is a gap between the hull plate and the plastic hull of about 1/4" to 1/2" when installed. I'm thinking about tucking the motor wires under there and then through a hole, just to eliminate some of the wiring clutter - the hole being lined with a rubber grommet, naturally.


The tank is primed now and even the wheels are masked, since they will be getting their rubber tires glued on soon.

On goes the ochre yellow base coat.

I'll let it dry for a day before I start the green camo. MIG "light green khaki" is what's on the test tanks because it is a better match for the Syrian scheme (c. Yom Kippur war of 1973 and even many tanks up to those of the present day)than good old Russian Armor green, since RAG would come out too dark anyway. I'm even going to edge the green with light grey. This pattern was used on some T-55's from the 1973 war...someone else's static model in 1/35 scale

And here's the real item with the same colors... (the odd gap between the road wheels indicates this is actually a T-62 - colors show the picture was possibly taken in the Yom Kippur war)

Next was weathering the tracks. I first sprayed them with plain red primer. Then I went over the high spots and inside of the tracks with gunmetal. After that, a wash of MIG "dust". Then I thinned some Testor's "Rust" and gave the tracks a light spray of same, but only on the outside surfaces (since I figured the road wheels and other running gear would leave behind mainly a gunmetal surface there).


As I approach the inevitable end of the project, I find myself actually wishing there was more to do! But I may grant myself that wish, since apparently Ali Express is having an "11-11" sale if you put a purchase in your cart today! The sale reduces the cost for a T-55 for the "cadillac" model from $445 to $356 somehow (comes with the Hooben receiver, transmitter and even IR hardware) - and lowers the price of the the $319 package to $256 (that one comes with the motors but not the Tx or Rx; probably the ideal package for me since I already have a spare Rx on order - and there's no good reason I can't get by without a second transmitter). If this sale is what it seems I don't think I'll be able to resist - especially at this point when I have the tools, paints, supplies and most important of all, fresh experience doing the work...