RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I've had this HL JP for quite a while, and after adding some bits & bobs to the upper hull, putting a rear-axle adjustment/stabliser and metal idler/drive sprockets on it, better speaker, I stalled when I tried to convert the BB thrower to a recoil & strobe flash unit instead. Cue my son getting into RC via a car I bought him, and he's reawakened my desire to get her working again. The other night the top hull must have fallen onto the heater in my workshop, which I keep on a timer even in the summer, having a little blast early morning to keep the moisture airborne so my dehumidifier can hoover it up. Anyway - the end result is a slightly melty upper hull, with some damaged appendages, as you can see in the photo. I've marked the melty areas, and it actually extends slightly onto the rear bulkhead of the casemate, which is a pest, but not the end of the world, as all the detail is scabbed on, including the rear hatch.
bugger! I've put up a wanted ad for a new upper hull in the wanted section, but my other option will be to remove one side of the upper hull and replace it and the skirt with some new 2.5mm ABS sheet, with the roof similarly "adjusted". You'll notice I have some metal hatches, but some of the details have been melted too much, so I'd have to replace those. I have a metal periscope waiting to be installed, which is just as well, as that's pretty far gone too. The other parts can be either patterned and replicated (I already have a few metal mushroom vents to put on anyway), or cut out of the existing roof and inserted in a new flat ABS roof, and fixed in place much like the original with the jigsaw cuts. however, if I can get a new upper hull, all I'll need to do is transfer the innards across and replace/scratch-build any of the racks & so forth that are missing. A bit of scratch-building never hurt anyone... apart from knife cuts, gouges etc.

Silly me, eh?

The lower half is still intact thankfully, and today wears a new set of metal tracks, although the gearbox is still plastic and I fully expect that not to last too long with the extra drag of the tracks.

I'd use that upper hull as a knocked down tank. Make a big hole there and paint it like it had a fire!

lol gotta sort out the replacement first, if I can. If not, it'll be time to break out the 2.5mm ABS.

Think forgebear has an upper for £19.95 I think

Yeah.....new upper and maybe turn that one into a knocked out tank.

Thanks fellas - already in discussion with Dave, and it's going to take around 3 weeks, but the price is right. It'll be a camo one though, but as I'll repaint it, I'm ok with that, and I'll use the melty hull as a test bed for creating rolled steel effects on the surface

In the meantime I've tested the tracks, which work great, soldered the new MG and headlamp electrics into the mix, and got the recoil unit installed and working. There's no + symbol on the motor though, so I had to take a guess, and yes, I initially chose wrongly! Sorted that out fairly quickly, and with a LiPo battery the strobe fires more often than not unless your rate of fire gets unreasonably fast. Any more work I do while I wait for my new upper hull will have to be on the lower hull, and to finish off the work I'd started on the rear bulkhead. I've got a set of Aber PE stowage boxes on the way for that, and have already detailed up the exhausts with texture and weld-seams, so we're getting there.

I have a Jagdpanther lower hull with metal idlers and Metal Gearboxs for sale if you need it

Thanks, but I'd better pass, as I don't want to get all fired up about ANOTHER JT right now

After I'd finished redoing the rear bulkhead and exhausts on my son's KT, I did a bit of tinkering with the rear bulkhead of the JP, removing the inaccurate locating peg on the lower elbow of the exhausts and filling the ejector pin marks with some Tamiya putty, then scooting round the net picking up photos of the area and the other details in preparation. I'm going to try out some rolled Steel effects on the hull too, so I need to dig out my AMMO AFV encyclopedia book to remember how it's done.

While I'm waiting for my new upper hull, I thought I'd press on with some of the upgrades I've got planned. I'd already textured the exhaust covers, but I noticed whilst mooching about on the internet that the curved deflecting covers on the late JP were different & you can see the bolts and a panel line where the two parts mate. I scribed a line round where I figured it should be, and used a round burr on my Dremel to add depressions to the four points where the bolts hold the cover in place, then smoothed it out with various sanding sticks. A couple of LionRoar hex-bolt heads were glued in the centres of the depressions and primed to check my work.

I've been wanting to test out my rolled-steel texturing technique that I picked up from one of the FAQ style books on modelling, so using a round burr, I attacked it randomly all over with various sizes, shapes and depth of ding, followed by a coat of liquid glue stippled into the plastic and paint to give it a roughish surface and break up the monotony. In between sessions I cut some of it back with a sanding stick, and then repeated the process where it looked a bit bare. Overall I'm happy with the look, and under a coat of grey primer it works well enough for me.

I also added the Tank-Modellbau sourced accurate braces to the hull after a bit of adjustment to thin down the attachment blocks (which still need weld-beads adding), although I still had to add a shim to the underside of the armoured exhaust surrounds so they fit flush to the hull. I'd added weld-beads from Milliput and textured them some time ago too, which adds a bit more detail.

This avo I've been assembling the ABER aft stowage boxes, which were time-consuming to do, but as I have all the PE tools I could want, it wasn't too difficult once I'd settled into the rhythm. I used solder paste dispensed from a hypodermic needle to get the stuff where I wanted it, and a flux pen to ease the connections too. The small parts were a bit of a trial, but I hit on a way of getting them in place and keeping any overflow to a minimum. After a dab with the solder pen, a tiny blob of solder was added, and the part pressed into it. Using tweezers to hold the piece in place, I then held it down with my soldering iron, and also gave it a blast with my gas soldering iron, with the hot-air adapter in place. This was great at melting the solder under the parts without letting too much heat escape and melt nearby joints. I suspect it took me 3+ hours to do one box including the clasps and hinges, but as I've used only solder to hold it all together, I'm quite pleased with the result. It should take a bit more hammering than if I'd used CA on everything, hopefully
There's still plenty of work to do on it, and I'm currently weighing my options with the pioneer tools, whether to improve on what is provided in the box, or to spend some cash on metal/PE upgrades. There are also lots of small parts, weld beads & so forth to look into while I wait for the hull from Dave @ Forgebear

As usual, the second stowage box took about half the time the first one did, and after a couple of bangs with some tools, they look a little bit dented, although not too much. After doing a bit on the jack, which is still a work in progress, I decided to focus on the towing shackle in the centre of the bulkhead. This was supplied fitted, so had been unglued previously and set to one side in the parts drawer for this tank. The likeness to the real thing was only passing, so I cut the horizontal bar off, reamed out the small holes to around 4.7mm, and made up a peg from 4.6mm brass rod with some sheet soldered over the ends and cut flush. Another piece of rod was added to the ends, and a small hole drilled in the other end for the retaining pin. That was made up from two diameters of brass rod soldered together, flattened at the thick end, and with a hole drilled through. I made up some rings from wrapping wire around rods, cutting them and then flattening the resulting circles, which I used to tie the pin and the large bar to short lengths of copper chain, soldering the rings closed so the chain couldn't escape. The rings at the other ends are welded to the shackle body, so I've just tack-glued them for now, and will attach them properly later.
I've still got to add the weld beads to the joint between the shackle and the circular inspection hatch, but I'm saving up a lot of those to do in one sitting, as I hate mixing up Milliput