RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hey folks!

It's time I put my Pershing build here. I'm just going to hit the high parts here. But, if you want to real my original build thread, with all of my bumbling, you can find it here.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-tank ... shing.html

Mid last year I caught the bug. At first, I was a bit put off at the prices of the Tamyia tanks, but I continued with my Google-Fuu in hopes of finding a cheaper alternative. It was then that I discovered Heng Long with 1/16 tanks going for ~$100. This was well within my price range for starting a new hobby that I was unsure about (what can I say? I'm cheap ). I wound up with an $89 Pershing from Amazon. In typical cheap seller fashion, the thing arrived with no decals, no aerial, and no battery! It was alright though, because I was going to put a 3000 MaH battery in it anyway

First set of upgrades were Taigen metal tracks and sprockets.



The next mod was to the sand skirts. Sticks, leave, mud, and whatever else kept accumulating in them and made it hard to drive with the plastic gearboxes still in there. So, I cut them down.





I also trimmed the rear fenders, Super Pershing style. Made removing the upper hull much easier.



Even with the skirts trimmed down, debris still got stuck. My solution was to cover the hollow underside of the tool boxes with styrene. I have not had issue with debris since.



The next mods were simple ones. I just added some brass tubing to reinforce the lower hull pylons and made some splatter shields from styrene.



All of these mods I did while waiting for my local hobby shop to order new gearboxes. Well, after several months and two wrong parts, I called Erik at Taigen to order them directly.



Also added more brass tube to the motor mounts.



Next up was a mod that I copied from MAX-U52. Here's his video on that.



After all of that, I had a very good running tank... However, I wanted more.
So, the next thing to add was a metal suspension and road wheels of course!



Tire removed for paint.



Some primer.



Ta da!




Woo! That's long post! I better break this up a bit.

Robo - looks like you have a very good start there. I presume this will be a WW2 M26. Make sure to check all the reference photos out there or you might end up more of a Korean war version which is what both the Tamiya and HL are if details are left as is.

Once the metal suspension was on the tank, other problems sprang up.
The first one was with the metal wheels and rubber tires. At first they were not aligned properly. The metal guide horns of the tracks would grab the rubber tires on the idlers, and throw the tracks.



I had to shim the idler arms to prevent that from happening.





Got some nice mud during my testing too.



After adding all of that, one of my gearboxes began giving me trouble. I wound up frying 2 RX-18's before I got it sorted out. I narrowed down the cause to when I would fire the gun and the track recoil kicked in. upon inspection, it wound up being a loose screw and some tight bushings. I tightened all the screws and gave both boxes some 3 in 1 oil love. I have yet to fry another board. Even so, the track recoil had to GO!

There are a few solutions to this. Either adding a KOMODO from rctank Australia, or upgrade to the expensive hobby grade electronics. These two solutions have different drawbacks that I did not want in this tank. The KOMODO, while cheap and very reliable, disables the ability to fire on the move. And Hobby grade was not within the budget.

What I did was the third option. I wired up two RX-18's (I bought several backups). This let me eliminate the recoil when firing the gun, fire on the move, and I could still get the effect with the K button.

Here's my demo video.



My adventures with this tank were not over yet though! All that extra weight was causing a fair amount of flexing in the hull. The hull was bowing inwards, totally screwing the track alignment, and causing tracks to throw.

So, I made a bracing frame out of aluminum. I had to cut slots in the holes to allow the pylons in the upper hull, because they have flanges on them. In the below pic of my mockup, I discovered my aluminum piece is the exact width between the hull and the gearbox wall. Score!



At this point I drilled the holes in the hull, and marked where the holes on the brace would go before removing them to drill on the bench. Once the side rails were in place, I measured the width of the hull by the motors to make the cross member. I had to cut a notch out with a Dremel so it would clear the turret rotation motor. Here's a pic of the frame on the bench.



And finally here it is installed. I made the side rails flush with the top of the hull.



This thing is rock solid now! And the tracks are strait as an arrow!

Great build and smart thinking with stopping the mud and crap!

I hate to think how much the extra metal tacks, wheels and suspension arms and gearboxes cost on top of the base model. Heavy stuff too!

greengiant wrote:Robo - looks like you have a very good start there. I presume this will be a WW2 M26. Make sure to check all the reference photos out there or you might end up more of a Korean war version which is what both the Tamiya and HL are if details are left as is.

I'm not much of a rivet counter. At least not with this tank. My intentions with this one is to have a tank that I can beat up and drive just about anywhere. Between work and starting a family, I don't really have a lot of time for the actual modeling. I do however, have time for research! ( IT job, yay!) And I have decided that I want to make a "what if" tank. Like, what if Cooper's Super Pershing didn't get scrapped? What if someone decided to "modernize" it? Fun stuff to think about!

Ad Lav wrote:Great build and smart thinking with stopping the mud and crap!

I hate to think how much the extra metal tacks, wheels and suspension arms and gearboxes cost on top of the base model. Heavy stuff too!

With this build, I took my time and shopped around for the best deals. I'm only about $300 total into this tank over a year of working on it.

It currently weighs over 12lbs!

Ok, I think that's enough for now. I'll post more about what else I've done with this tank either tonight or tomorrow.

Here's the quick video of my hull bracing.

The next upgrade was a set of metal shocks from Tankarmy.com



Super secret painting tool



Had a bit of a mishap whilst installing these. Turns out that either the slots in the return roller post, or the shock themselves are not the same size. I broke a return roller post trying to ram the shock in. I repaired it with some Gorilla glue, and it's holding strong. I wound up having to grind a few of the shock down to make them fit.



And here they are installed!

Now that I have my Pershing running the way I want, I decided to make it look the way I want. I've been playing with the idea of a Super Pershing, but then I though why not make a more modern Super? Well that though led to a quick mockup. I tried to think of how I would have modified it instead of Cooper.

What do you guys think?

Here's a test video with the shroud halfway glued together.