Trumpeter T34 conversion to SU85 WIP

[BeeKay]

Some weeks back John (Mackem) started to visit us at the Washington Model Club and happened to mention that he had an old scrapper T34 if I could find a use for it. Not one to see anything go to waste, I offered to give it a home and had a germ of an idea to do a conversion (something I haven't attempted in any scale) to an SU85 tank destroyer. I just happened to find a 1/35 scale Tamiya kit in my collection and so began measuring and scaling up:

Front and rear were cut out of 1.5mm plasticard and for the side panels I used 1mm card - I will use 1.5mm for the top.

As you can see from the next picture I was able to remove the intact driver's hatch, complete with hinge as a doner part. I have removed part of the original side structures and the bottom section of the glacis plate to allow the angle to be changed and completely removed the side skirts. Also you can see that I have masked a further section of the glacis plate to be removed soon to make room for the gun assembly.


Pictures 5, 6 & 7 show the new structure taped up and test fitted to the original vehicle. The roof section will be fitted last.


New side skirts were made from strips of 1mm plasticard as they are longer than the original T34 and the front mud guards have been made from aluminium roof flashing as they are curved and not angles as the originals on the donor tank to be fitted and displayed as a later posting. I know I have my work cut out with the mantlet but have some hopefully workable ideas up my sleave to be revealed if successful and you guys will be the first to know. More challenges ahead will be the gearboxes (possibly Asiatam) and HL RX18, but fitting the original recoil mechanism hopefully with the genial Chris' help (Grompix) If I can get it looking good as a static first I will be chuffed and RCing it will be a bonus. Lots of work in the weeks ahead but hopefully all posted here.

Ta ta for now............Brian

[Matdragon]

nice work so far! long may it continue into this build!

[Mackem]

Your off to a great start with this project Brian, you've done a lot of work and it's looking really good.
If you are sticking with your original idea for the gun housing I can't see any major problems in that department.

The gear boxes may be a problem though. Rob ( fv342 ) fitted asiatam boxes into his T34 and as I remember it entailed quite a bit of work. There's a build thread on the 'other forum' that used HL boxes but they had to extend the transmission housings inward to fit them.

I'll be visiting the club next Thursday ( 30th ) with my Pz III, see you and the SU85 then.

Cheers
John

[grompix]

Hi Brian

I was hoping you would put up a build of your SU85 on the forum soon and now here it is. It's looking really good. I'm happy to help with anything you might need to get this project up and rc-running. Keep the pics coming.

Cheers
Chris 

[[ICE]monkey]

great start, keep it up
all the best, ice

[BeeKay]

Slowly but surely it's coming along, with a few tweaks and re-thinks along the way:

First couple of pictures show the beginning of the gun mantlet - Miliput modelled around a "chopped up" ping pong ball.....

[BeeKay]

Next task was to be the fenders or track guards. I was originally going to model them out of plasticard, then I had a "flash" of an idea. Flash indeed - I found a piece of aluminium roof flashing in the garage and thought "Thats a better scale looking fender material than plasticard and easier to shape". So I measured up against my Tamiya 1/35 SU85 kit, cut the metal with 'scissors' yes scissors and added a piece of plasticard for some strenthening........Ta dah! two front fenders:

[BeeKay]

Once I caught the aluminium flashing bug I decided to do the complete track guard and then join the full length up to the front fenders and I'm quite chuffed with the result. Maybe not too practical in a battling scenario but if they do get buckled, as long as they don't fall off, the dents should be in scale:

[BeeKay]

Finally with masking tape to hand, I have test fitted all of my scratch pieces to the donor vehicle and it's starting to look like an SU85. Now I need to get on and sort out the gun mount, which I now have planned and maybe get some paint on before the end of summer.

What do you think of the show so far..................now I've asked for it!

TTFN

Brian

[fv432]

fantastic work brian

those fenders and skirts are awesome top notch job mate

as mackem said the asiatam boxes are imho the way to go in these ive fitted them to 2 T34s now mine and dragon245s
does work a little costly about £70 all in for the bits but i reckon its worth the pennys

any assistance i can be with the boxes just shout think you have the rest pretty much covered


Rob