So if you have an out of the box Heng long Panther or Jagpanther, this post might be for you. As manufactured, many if not most Panther lower hulls have a problem built in: the suspension arms and thus the road wheels, have far too much outward movement (slop or play). Sometimes a tank will have this happening and run fine anyway and if so, possibly no need to even give it a thought. But if your tank is not driving right or even throwing tracks, much of the problem might be caused, because the run of your road wheels is not in a (more or less) straight line...because maybe the road wheels twist out too far. And often this is caused just by play/slop in the suspension arms at the pivot bolt.
So here is a cheap fix i found for road wheel/suspension arm play. it was thought up by someone name of CaptainNemo12 on rcuniverse. Here's the whole post below
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-tank ... -22-a.html
The problem can be traced to one issue: there is too much space between the pivot hole in the suspension arm. and the pivot bolt.
Tightening the pivot bolt won't fix it. The play has to be removed insofar as possible, by adding some sort of bushing here. So far as I know, no one makes these so they have to be fabricated somehow.
First an image of how the arms should be. If they are not straight like this, then we can make a bushing so the suspension arms will move only up and down how they are supposed to, and not bend outwards. Adding the bushings is easier said then done, to me at least...it's thousandths of an inch/MM and what's more, we will probably have to make several of them- maybe even 16
. (If only a few suspension arms have slop and the others work ok, why do all 16 arms - I wouldn't. ) The author of the post says he added the bushing by rolling in thin brass sheet inside the hole in the susp. arm. I looked in several stores and could not find brass stock this thin. This is the suspension arm after shim was added - it's barely visible.
Just for an experiment I cut up a soda can and made a strip for the bushing. After several attempts I did succeed in shimming one of the arms. Aluminum can metal, of course, is poor material for a bushing so that's getting redone...I think making the bushing is the only challenge of this whole fix.
So the picture below shows, top arm, original with no shim added. Bottom arm, shim added. On the bottom one the arm can no longer bend outwards so it will work correctly and so will its attached road wheel.
If this helps someone or you figure out an easier, or better way to make the bushings, please comment!
Use the TX antenna only if it fits...I used them on my Taigen hull used two diameters creating a double sleeve ...and yes they were the outer two for wheels 