. Anyway my first mod was to the suspension following the guide here on how to stiffen the suspension and I must say it worked perfectly, thank you very much Birger I also plan to use many more of you how to's.
Next up I didn't like the bright silver of the tracks and I read about using gun bluing to make them black, yet ANOTHER awesome idea! Thank you whom ever came up with it first. So I went to the gun shop and picked up 2 bottles of instant gun bluing and went at them and sure enough they were black. However upon looking at pics of Tigers in the wild I noticed none of them had all black tracks more like a rainbow of colors ranging from black to rust so I got thinking and the next mod is all mine! I went out to my garage and got my bottle Brownells rust bluing and the sodium nitrate I had (sodium nitrate is used to make the bluing, blacker. I had these left over from last year when I redid a 1913 Luger left to me by my grandfather who brought it back from WWII. He also served in WWI in France) and thought I'd see what happens. I washed off the instant bluing and hit them with a wash of the Brownells rust bluing with a pinch of sodium nitrate mixed in and let them sit outside in the sun for a while and rinsed them off and then ran them thru a mixture off the 2 types of bluing mixed together. The results were PERFECT! They are a mixture of every shade from coal black to bright rust! I put them back on the tank and drove it thru my neighbors gravel and rock driveway and they look like real tracks now. Pics to come as soon as my wife and daughters come back with the camera from vacation.
I also found the rear idler wheels sat too far inward when viewed in line with the road wheels, thanks goes to GIJoe76 for the idea of putting a washer (or 2 in the case of the right side of my Tiger) behind the idlers to space them further out and make them more inline with the road wheels. The washers and the stiffened suspension made a BIG difference in my Tiger not throwing its tracks as easy, sadly however it will still throw them at times if I try to turn on anything but concrete, blacktop or dirt. Gravel or stones they'll pop off maybe 10 to 15% of the time, however grass and they seem to just fall off.
More to come later when I get my metal parts in and the wife gets home.
