RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Hi all, I've rounded up the parts to go all-metal lower chassis for my Tiger 1, but I've noticed the bits are not perfect. The Taigen chassis is not square looking front-to-back, the Mato wheels have mould flashings where the hub touches the swing arms, and I haven't yet fitted the gearboxes, drive or idler wheels.

I could go all out and try to 'blueprint' everything, but is it worth it? Or will it just make me feel good. I've done a test-fit of the wheels and it all rolls along surprisingly nicely. Only one wheel has a wobble, where I'd imagine the white metal has cooled wonky, but the rest are good.

I'm hoping to start a debate on techniques.

I have 2 of what you're building and can tell you that time spent getting alignments as close as possible DO in fact pay off in a smoother running, nicer running tank. Biggest pain in the back side to be at the park and have it bugger up because you didn't take an extra 10 min to get it filed smooth or running true.

Cause then you gotta carry the damn thing out of the park to the car, go home and fix it then. Depending on how far you run it the walk back to the car can be a pain in the butt!

So, following on from my previous post, I slowly matched up the hub widths of the road wheels. I was satisfied when I bolted them on and could run a rule alongside them and see I had for all intents aligned them. Then I go to insert the new gearboxes and drive sprockets and lo-and-behold, the gap on the left indicated by the arrows is 9mm, while the one on the right is 3mm!



Not surprisingly the sprockets don't line up with where the road wheels will make the tracks sit. An obvious way to fix it would be to move the gearbox mounting plate half the distance 3mm to the left. That's an awkward amount to drill new holes as it will only elongate the existing holes.

Anybody been there and done that?