RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Yea...thanks....I got my wsn hollow mid production tiger 1 friday....the detail on that thing is fantastic from laches on the tools down to the weld lines and turret layout. The only flaw I can see is no zimmerit....It will be interesting if I can make it work hl electrics and asiatam suspension....there has to be a reason more people are not converting these...

The turret stowage bin question

The issues with the Heng Long turret stowage bin have been much discussed on this and other forums. Having said that, these deficiencies shouldn’t be over-stated. The bin doesn’t look that bad and initially I had planned to leave it in place, settling only for opening up the rectangular hole between the bin and the rear of the turret and inserting the missing third lifting lug. The result can be seen in an earlier photo in this post. The opening should actually be deeper, but this was all the space the elevation motor would allow. However, I was confident that, once painted, it would give the illusion of the real thing.

The fact that the bin houses the elevation motor for the bb gun is, of course, the best reason for leaving it in place. Replace the stowage bin and you will have to find a new location for the motor. There are some ingenious solutions – e.g. see the post by Blimp: http://www.rctankwarfare.co.uk/forums/v ... =22&t=7333). Once I decided to go for the Asiatam recoil motor – which incorporates its own elevation mechanism – this ceased to be a problem.
I didn’t fancy scratch building a new bin – there are all those rivets for a start. Two alternatives are available: Tamiya and Hachette. Both have a fairly accurate profile compared to the real thing, although the Hachette part lacks the distinctive rearward slope of the top – this is easily corrected by sanding it down. The real advantage of the Hachette one of course, is that it comes with opening lids complete with photo-etched brass hinges. On the down side the plastic used by Hachette has a horrible soapy feel and can only be fixed with strong epoxy glue. Before I assembled thr parts I used my rotary tool to thin them from the inside where I wanted to add battle damage with a twisting knife blade – since they were made of sheet metal these bins were often peppered with shrapnel holes.
Once I had sawn off the old bin I cut out the rear of the old HL bin and used it to plug most of the opening. Since I had already filled in the undercut at the turret rear I then fixed this in place and used plasticard to fill the gap in between. Trickier to fix is the chunk missing from the top of the rear turret plate and weld bead where the old bin cut out had intruded.
I’ll be discussing zimmerit below, but it’s important to note that, on the real thing, this was applied to back of the turret before the bin was fixed in place. So before I fixed the Hachette bin to the back of the turret I used Milliput to extend the zimmerit to the area underneath, especially the visible patch where the third lifting lug is fixed. Finally I used brass strip to fashion the attachment points at the top and bottom.
Obviously I still have the hatches to install. There are also missing rivet details and the latches to be added to the rear.

Opening and working front hatches

The opening front hatches are a nice touch – and essential if you have an Asiatam / Taigen hull with the on/off switch relocated to the radio/operator’s position.

Some people on this site have spoken of cutting out and reusing the existing hatches. This sounds a pretty tall order to me and - since the opening underneath should be slightly smaller than the hatches themselves – would require a lot of tidying up afterwards. Once I had decided to go for Asiatam metal working hatches instead, I simply used a drill to open up the centre of each hatch and then a circular sanding attachment to enlarge the hole into a circle of the correct diameter. With hindsight I should have acquired the metal hatches before I started – it was only after I had bought them and added the ‘lips’ to the internal rims that I found that one of my holes was actually a little on the small side; so I had to work on it again. Note that the circular indentation on the underside of the HL hull, although useful as a guide, is not actually wide enough.
After all that I thought that adding the hatches themselves would be a breeze. They’re clearly designed for the HL hull because the hinges fit neatly over two small plastic pins which are moulded on the inside. Sure enough, once in place they sit nicely in place over the apertures. However, it’s when you go to open them up that a problem becomes apparent – the hinges don’t allow them to open enough: in order to stay open they need to swing wide enough so that the hatch passes the vertical.

I played around with positioning the hinges inside so that they would open wider – but still allow the hatch to sit level when closed. Eventually through trial and error I found that they only do so if the hinge was placed at right angles to hull roof. It’s hard to explain, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking…
I suppose I should get rid of those unsightly sink holes and add a little more detail. The periscopes, by the way, are also Asiatam. Some dealers sell the same hatches but without the internal locking mechanism attached – so make sure you look hard at the pictures before you buy! Other options? The Tamiya hatches are nicely moulded in plastic, but come without the hinges, so you will have to use the Aber photo-etch upgrades, which are pricey. The Hachette Tiger hatches are simply the wrong shape.

Thats really cool....I am not sure why it fixes things any more than moving the pivot point with wedges between the upper hull and the hing plate....but very slick...

Have you checked your gear boxes for clearance with those parscopes? Its hard to tell how long they are.

Believe me, I tried to solve the problem by moving the hinges every other way - but every time I got them to open the way that I wanted them to, I found they wouldn't shut properly. For whatever reason this just works...

If you leap forward in this blog (a mere two years or more) you will see that I found a much easier solution to this problem...

Oh yes, the periscopes do fit - but that was just luck!

cool, I am going to open the wsn tiger hatches and I will see if I have to do this....I still can not get over the detail differances between it and the hl.

Nice build mate , some changes I made to my HL Tiger are on your build . i to moved the turret hole and base , added rear cross member and hatch lips. One day I will dig my one out and finish it . I think at the time my one was the only HL Tiger with a turret protection ring fitted , as you know with out altering the turret base and mounting point on the tank you can not fit this . Theres more out there now tho. I like the moving MG ball .

Keep up the good work Andy

Electronics

As I have already said, electronics are not my strong point. However, through trial and error – and a lot of help from others on this site – this is what I have done...

Originally this was an old smoke and sound Tiger with an RX15 board. There was no flashing hull MG – instead the coaxial MG flashed in the turret. Then I up-graded the lower hull to one with an RX18 board. Because I was going to install an Asiatam recoil unit and install a working hull MG I stripped the electronics out of the turret completely.

Moving the turret traverse motor

The HL turret traverse is designed to stop the turret from traversing totally to the rear. Obviously it can’t keep on going round and round without ultimately snagging on its internal wires, but the choice of 6 o’clock was presumably made to prevent the gun from snagging on the aerial. Since I had relocated my aerial mount to its correct position behind the right rear of the turret it made sense to have the turret traverse stopping at 4 o’clock too. Because I had already shifted the turret ring back I was going to have to relocate the motor anyway so I decided to move it to sit under the new aerial. I simply glued it into its new place and wedged it in with plasticard and square shaped brass. It worked perfectly. Of course, I hadn’t thought about the fact that it would now get in the way of the speaker. This I relocated to the opposite side of the hull and fixed in place with sticky-backed Velcro.
Installing the Asiatam recoil unit

Although I had originally planned to keep the bb firing gun, once I saw the recoil unit in action on another tank I knew I had to install one. The unit generates a pretty strong gun flash via a bulb which sits inside the muzzle brake. At the same time the gun snaps back in a very satisfying way before sliding slowly back to its original position. The way the unit patches into the RX18 board means that all this is accompanied by the gun fire sound and ‘jerking’ tracks which you would otherwise get by pressing the bottom right hand button on the handset. Some people don’t like the track movement and there are ways of doing without it. Personally I think it’s better than nothing: after all, in any film of real Tigers firing their 88 the whole tank does shake.

Going for the recoil unit has other advantages, too. Once you have moved the turret ring back there is a potential fouling of the bulky bb mechanism on the front of the ring. I gave up before managing to resolve this problem. The recoil also requires a new metal barrel of the correct length. Although I had already extended my plastic HL barrel I was never that happy with its appearance. I was also conscious of the fact that it was a weak point, having already snapped the muzzle brake of another Tiger. The new metal barrel and muzzle certainly make the tank look more business-like.

However, once I bought the unit I started to wonder whether I had bitten off more than I could chew. The first problem was that it came without any instructions. I bought mine from Steve at Welshdragon and he was as helpful as he could be, but the instructions which he eventually emailed to me were for a Panzer III. Then I managed to find some on line for the Tiger 1. Both of these are in the form of blurry photographs with hilariously poor English captions. They are also misleading because, as I now know, they are actually designed for an older tank with the RX15 board. They are really only of any use when it comes to physically installing the unit inside the turret - but that’s the easy part!

This is what has to be done with the rather bewildering array of wires:
1. There are two short wires coming out of one side of the unit. Mine are blue and white. These are supposed to be attached to the turret switch under the loader’s hatch which turns the bb gun on and off. My switch was long gone and it’s hard to see why anyone would want to turn off the recoil anyway. Accordingly they simply need to be soldered together in order to complete the circuit.

2. There is a group of three thin wires coloured red, yellow and green. These are the main connectors. According to the instructions they are supposed to be soldered to the small square board under the rear of the engine deck to which the bb gun wiring was originally attached (this is itself connected to the multi-pin socket which accepts the multi-pin plug reaching up from the lower hull). The red wire goes in between the other two, opposite the red wire on the other side. Depending on how you connect the other two wires will determine whether pushing the left controller stick up triggers the recoil or the gun elevation/depression – or visa versa. At first I connected mine in line with the instructions by soldering them to the square board. However, then I realised that this would make removing the turret from the upper hull problematic. Accordingly I sourced a three-point plug and socket from a motorcycle dealer on ebay and used this to make the connection instead, dispensing with the square board all together. This allows me to easily separate the turret for maintenance.
3. Coming from the flash unit and battery unit are a series of wires which culminate in a small plug. My instructions had nothing to say about this, but the plug fits easily into the empty ‘MG fire’ socket in the RX18 unit. It can thus be easily disconnected if you want to separate the top and bottom of the hull.

4. Finally there is the most mysterious wire of all – a thick red one culminating in a bayonet connector. This is actually the earth and it needs to be patched in to one of the wires coming from the track motors to the battery. If you follow the instructions and simply solder the wire in place, however, you have suddenly lost the ability to separate the upper hull from the lower and the turret from the upper. To avoid this I simply found a wire with the female part of the bayonet connection (the same type used for the aerial) and soldered this into the motor circuit.

After all of this was done I fired up the tank and prayed. You know that you’ve done something right when you hear a faint whining sound and the barrel suddenly slides out to its full length – the unit’s initial setting has the gun in recoil and it’s the motor which then winds the barrel forward and extends the spring ready for the snap back. This all worked, as did the elevation; then the gun recoiled, flashed and ‘ka-boomed’ – but only once. I had to take the whole thing out to check the wires. Nothing seemed out of place. I even found that I could get it to work again (but only once) by giving the recoil cog a slight prod with a screwdriver. I was about to give up and send the unit back for a replacement when I read elsewhere on this site that the spring might need stretching. So I disconnected one end, flexed it a couple of times and – hey presto! It worked. It’s a salutary lesson that in electronics it’s not always the actual electronics that are the problem...

July 2012

Apologies for almost a three month absence from this posting, but I have not been idle. In the interim I have finally taken on a second hand Tamiya Tiger 1, which I intend ultimately to modify into a late model beast – steel wheels, turret armoured roof, Impact tracks and maybe a bit of Aber photo-etch work – if I can establish more cordial relations with my soldering iron. But don’t hold your breath!

Also the beginnings of a Stug III made up of a smoke and sound, metal-geared HL Panzer III bottom and an HL Stug top. This was courtesy of Lewis Nielson at Panzer-Command who I can recommend very highly indeed for his very friendly service and keen pricing on (and off) ebay. This one is likely to acquire a saukopf cast mantlet, waffle pattern zimmerit and all sorts of whistles and bells.
But don’t think I have been neglecting my son’s beloved HL Tiger 1. We didn’t come this far together to allow any sulking beside her posher (but oh so much more expensive) Tamiya cousin.

The next step, however, didn’t proceed quite as easily as I had hoped…

Taigen lower hull

The Taigen (formally Asiatam) lower hull is a serious upgrade for any HL tank and not just because it isn’t cheap! I had no plans to go for one of these until I swapped the HL early-style metal tracks for the Taigen late-pattern ones. After a few test runs in which one or other track kept riding up over the sprocket I realised that I would have to install some sort of track tensioning system. There are stand-alone track tensioners on the market, but the Taigen hull not only comes with these pre-installed – it also includes a metal floor pan and torsion bar suspension system, a strengthened front with metal final drives and metal tow shackles front and rear. There's even a complete rear panel and it's all moulded in a pleasing sand coloured plastic. Once you take all this into account I believe it represents good value. It also gives the tank a much more weighty and robust feel.

The fact that there is no longer a battery cover underneath means you no longer have to flip the tank to change it – instead there is an ingenious system for separating the HL hull top and lifting it to replace the battery and access the electronics. It does, of course, mean that you have to strip out everything from the old hull and move it to the new one. It’s also worth noting that because the on-off switch is accessed via the radio operator’s hatch you need to have these opened up first (you can buy another Taigen upgrade hull top with working metal hatches already in place but this preserves all the old problems including the mis-placed turret ring). NOTE: ACTUALLY I NOW BELIEVE IT DOES NOT HAVE THE OLD HL PROBLEMS...
Another advantage is that you can swap the Taigen lower hull with your HL one so if, like me, you have already done a lot of work above the tracks - it's not wasted. However, the only problem I have had with this upgrade (and not an insignificant one) is in the way it fits with the HL upper hull. The quick release mechanism works fine, but I did find that the bottom of the side panniers hung down a little beneath the sides – seemingly the result of a little warp in the moulding of the lower hull. This would not have been a problem had I been able to screw the top and bottom together, but of course this would have defeated the purpose of the quick-release system and made battery changes very time-consuming.
I gave the solution a lot of thought, but in the end the fix was quite simple: small, powerful magnets which are cheap and readily available on the internet. First, though, I tried making things much more complicated by attaching metal brackets to either the lower or upper hull and gluing metal plates to an appropriate location on the opposite part. The idea was to glue on one of these magnets at each point and attach the Taigen and HL hulls thus. The problem was that these magnets are so damn powerful that whatever glue I used usually succeeding in pulling the home made brackets away. Then I tried again with those plastic housed magnetic catches used for keeping cupboard doors shut. Again the glue would not hold, although I suspect that with a bit of perseverance it might have worked. I won’t trouble you with photos of any of these failed attempts, although the various metal plates seen below are their legacy.

But I told you that – in the end – it was simple, right? I cannot claim credit for this one, although neither can I recall who it was on this site who posted the solution (thanks anyway!). I went back to my small but powerful magnets and glued them into the screw recesses in the Taigen lower hull, then cut short the attachment pillars from the upper hull by a couple of centimetres. Into these I then inserted the old screws so that the screw heads came into contact with the magnets once the two halves were mated. They were then adjusted to make sure that the hull top and bottom fitted snugly. Voila!
The only other problem I encountered with the Taigen lower hull came at the nose end: the front bottom hull no longer dove-tailed neatly with the front upper nose plate. This was resolved with a little sanding and milliput. In the end it was all back to looking as neat as the original fit between the HL upper and lower hull…