RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hey guys just thought I would show you some of the mods I have been doing to my Leo, is actually pretty much finished now so I will try and post what photos I can dig up over the next few days. Basic tank was a heng long leopard 2A6 2.4Ghz I bought from rctank.de ( great site and guys) got the upgraded version with heng long metal tracks and taigen metal sprockets / idlers/ road wheels with bearings.
So here is what we started with
Decided I liked the factory camo scheme so I kept this and just sprayed the sprockets, idlers and road wheels with tamiya nato green
I decided from the start that I wanted to keep the paint scheme so just gave it a wash and filter with dark brown after high lighting all the panel lines with an airbrush and also softening the came edges both with nato black
Also took the time to add smoked perspex to the gunners, commanders and drivers periscopes and added a dust wash for that used look, also alot of it is just dirt from running it as I want a good runner! Next I decided that after all those videos of tanks splashing through water I wanted to water proof mine as much as I could do first step was to grind out the battery box and extra mounting posts I was not going to use.
Then sealed up the holes with milliput and then over that with bathroom sealent, however my first attempt at water proofing proved a failure ( probably dude to me practically submerging the tank in a foot of water by accident) and decided more extreme measures were needed!
As you can see from the dirt inside the water got in! So then decided to water proof as far as the sponsons and basically create two bullkheads sealing the center section and electronics ( the motors run fine in water so this area was not sealed) also put drain holes in the front and rear sections.
This has proved to work so far! Also decided to use my IBU2 in this one and lipo's, I was also not to happy with the speed for a modern tank with the standard 4-1 gearboxes so changed to 3-1 and jp 480 motors, still got plenty of low down torque and creep ability but have me a fair bit more speed! More later dudes!

Still more to come scalawag! So keep a look out!

Looks really nice, like the weathering on the tracks.

John

Will I will let you into a secret bogeyman, no weathering involved, it's just dirt and use! By the way originally had the heng long metal tracks on, don't know if there any good as I sold them on ebay straight away and fitted the Mato metal tracks. The Mato tracks are great! Much more supple than the single pin heng longs however it is abit more of a fiddle to add/remove links but mainly it was just time consuming to glue all 320 odd pads on, once on the pad then two drops on the back off each link, that's like 960 drops of glue! But worth it! I used araldite for this and so far with weekly running and after about 3/4 months of use I have only lost about 6 pads, I may fit the winter track pads in there place or just leave it. I would really recommend these tracks despite the time consuming assembly!

I also got the mato tracks on my leopard and love them. I didn’t bother glueing my pads on and only lost a hand full so far, but to be honest it’s had little run time in the year or so I have had them installed.

By the way your Leo looking great.

Ian.

Thanks Ian! I may try the gorilla glue as I have heard good things about it when used for this application, but to be fair the araldite has done a good job it may just of been me not applying into well but we will see, any ideas what glue to use for metal on metal if i glue the winter pads on?

Time for part 2!
Well after sealing the lower hull I began to experience problems with the track overriding the drive sprocket I thought this maybe dude to the loss of hull stiffness from the removal of the battery box and screw posts etc, so I decided to brace the hull and this would also give me a place to mount a serve for the servo traverse I planned to install.
I was going to use some plastic angle I had but was not sure if this would give me the required stiffness, so I chose too use aluminium angle instead ( 20mmx20mm and 3mm thick) perhaps overkill but I thought ' it cant be too stiff! ). So after measuring and cutting I decided to rivet it all together and to the hull, it also gave me a nice semi enclosed section to install the electronics.
Also I wanted to be able to switch the tank on/off with out turning it over or opening it so I removed 2 of the upper hatches in the hull ( I believe there air inlets)
Then I fabricated 2 new covers from plasticard
Hopefully you can't tell they have been removed and redone! Also I wanted semi hinged mud flaps (I was worried if I did a double hinge they would be too flexible and liable to damage, so I cut and hinged ( hinged using some strong adhesive Velcro I had) along the lower section only
My finger for demonstration!

Now after all this the tracks were still overriding the sprocket so I suspected that the rear parts of the side skirts maybe causing this as they collect alot of junk behind there against the sprocket ( you see alot of Leo's with this part hinged up,I imagine for the same reason) I also decided to fit track inducers at the same time to help
I may at some point fabricate the skirt and model it hinged up, but as is for now!
Anyway after all this work- still the track overrode the sprocket! Time for some head scratching!

And the solution proved to be simple! Although the nice soft suspension was great it was to soft with the weight of the additional modifications I had added, meaning that the suspension compressed far to easily when turning causing excessive slack in the track combined with the horizontal torsion in a turn causing the track to override!

The solution was easy! I just moved all the suspension springs round to the next hole! It runs great now! Admittedly the tank does not bounce and roll like it used too dude to sharp turning/ acceleration/ breaking but its still there to some extent

Finally here is a picture of the internals crammed in, we have in there an IBU2 with TPA, visaton large speaker in the hull playing gun and other sound effects and another visaton speaker between the gear boxes ( where the smoker used be, there to much trouble with to be fair) playing the engine sounds also a turnigy 5000MAh battery, I had planned to drill out the engine grills on the upper hull to let abit more sound out but did about 10% of one and have not bothered with the rest yet! Also plan to fit some viper volume remotes at some point!
Now a word of warning! If you plan to fit servo rotation to the hull and have removed the battery box, DO NOT seal the battery cover in as it makes aligning the servo with the turret ring much more difficult! And led to alot of adjusting and trial and error,I will know for when my challenger 2 arrives! (hopefully soon!)
Also another interesting not is that if you have the basic IBU2 you don't need the pro version to have servo traverse ( although the pro does come with many other good features over the basic version) you simply need an RX/TX with more than for channels and map the traverse servo to one of the extra channels then program your TX to actuate the servo with the same stick moment as the normal traverse, the turret rotation sound is still played and you will retain the same stick layout.
Anyway once aligned I can't recommend this mod enough for modern tanks, I had tried several different motors in the heng long rotation unit and nothing was satisfactory.

Forgot to mention one adjustment I made to the hull! The rear brake lights on the heng long are not brake lights at all but reflectors, the brake lights should be in the corners. So I left the ordinal LED's in place to act as reflectors, drilled and ground out the rear light clusters and weird in New brake lights here's the results-
Looks much better I think

Part 3- turret time! Note I had already added smoked Perspex for the sights/observation optics so decide I needed servo recoil this was relatively easy to do and is covered else where on this forum, basically you cut the bottom off the BB unit, grind down the retaining ring around the barrel and extend the barrel back and connect a servo with linkages to this extended piece, the servo I simply super glued to the side of the BB unit sorry no picture!

In the tanks first incarnation I installed a slip ring and 360 turret ring
However as I added the servo recoil I also mounted an IR emitter in the gunners sight and the IR receiver plug in the loaders hatch so had to many wires for the slip ring! Now I have also added a flashing beacon the is 15 wires coming from the turret, at some point I may get another slip ring and connect all the necessary plugs but its a daunting task am leaving for after day!
I also fabricated some aerials from copper wire winding the base round a nail to produce some spring and the using some heat shrink tubing round the spring bit, am not 100% happy with them, but they will do for now, may try guitar string when I get chance
Started with this
Into this
This was the Mk 1 version then progressed too Mk2!
Still need work!

I had also fitted a charging port in the loaders hatch but have since removed them as I don't think this was the best location
Where am going to put them instead I have not decided yet!

CREW!
No tank is complete with out shine crew! So invested in some Tamiya bundesheer, very nice figures one problem, one is standing! So after some minor adjustment here is what happened!
Bit of milliput added
Base colours added
And we ended up with-

That's for the next post! But would just like to say a big thank you to scalawag as his step by step figure painting guide in his ztz was invaluable!

Well here are the finished figures, first ones I have done so quite proud