RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I've had this HL KT for a couple of years, and it's seen limited use until now, as my son has got the "RC is fun" bug this summer after I bought him an RC beemer at Beaulieu museum on our holibobs this year.

He's been mucking about with it and so far he's bent (and broken) the exhaust parts, and the plastic sleeves on the gearbox have split, leading to one track dragging a bit. The exhausts were already scheduled to be pulled, and I'd got the metal Taigen ones from Forgebear last year, but never gotten around to fixing them. The gearbox was replaced with a Taigen unit after picking Dave's brains on the subject first, and that was installed yesterday.

Today I decided to install those exhaust stacks, and was thinking about how best to paint/weather them. I've been using the poorly named track burnishing fluid on my 1:35 static AFV models for a while now, and recently had in some Ultimate burnishing fluid, which you can find here. I'd already used it once on some white metal tracks, so it was already diluted 100% with water, so in the exhausts went after a scrub with a sanding sponge to rough them up a bit, and a wash in isopropyl alcohol to remove any grease. The cast lower section started going black almost immediately, while the aluminium tubes used for the exhausts stayed shiny for a while, but gradually they began blooming in little patches like spots. I took 'em out and rubbed off the residue, and dumped them back in, repeating several times before I was happy with the patina. I rinsed the fluid off with some warm water, and while I was applying some matt black primer to the armoured casing parts, I dusted the ends with a light coat of "soot". This is how they came out - I'm quite pleased with them for a first effort
I'm not repainting this one for obvious 6-year old reasons, so I'm going to pick some colours from the paint stash to touch things in as best I can with the parts push-fitted, then secure everything with epoxy. I've already filled the two extra holes for the exhaust supports that aren't needed anymore with suitably sized ABS rod, which has been cut and sanded flush. Now for tea

Black primer on and it's time for a test-fit. You can see the plugs in the holes at the top of the bulkhead if you squint

Since I took that pic I've been painting the green bits, using Gunze Mr Hobby 302 with some extra yellow and white added to give it a more accurate shade. Apart from the sheen on the fresh paint, which I'll fix with some varnish later, you can hardly tell the difference in tone. I'll do the same with the chokolade braun and dunkel gelb mixed to match. I'm quite proud of the quality of the match, and will post up a fresh pic once the basic painting is done.

I finished painting the new metal parts this morning, and was really happy with the colour matching, which I didn't even need to fade into the old paint, it was that close. All the mixing was done by eye, so I'm quite pleased with myself I overcoated the whole assembly with some automotive clear gloss lacquer to give it some strength, and once that had dried I hit it with some AKAN matt varnish to take the sheen down. Now I just need to glue the parts in place with some epoxy, and we'll call it done apart from the hoses for the smoke generator.
Now I have to try to work out why the new metal bow MG isn't flashing. Time to break out the multi-meter to see if the electrickery is getting there.

Very nicely done, and to good effect.

Thanks chap I've just glued it all together, and fixed the bow MG, which had a faulty LED, so I replaced the red 5mm round-topped one with a yellow one of the same size. The little boy didn't want red, but didn't want white either... fortunately really, as I don't have any white LEDs in stock