A wee update. I've made a retaining base for the latest iteration of the HL smoker, and now it's attached to the hull floor via 3M double-sided pads.
Then, a made a mount for the power switch from scratch. Conveniently, when it's attached to the inner wall of the hull (front right), the switch can be reached through the Driver's side hatch.
Then, I made a tray for the battery. It's also fixed with 3m stickies. This way, should I need to fit a battery with different dimensions in future,
this tray can be removed with nothing more than strong fingernails, and mild expletives.
The Battery tray and Power Switch...
The speaker's also attached now, again, with 3m stickies.
The rest of the soldering is now on track. One issue, though, is the servo cable from Heng Long's new alloy servo recoil unit (with provision for side rotating elevation unit), is on the short side. One thing I've noted with some of the latest HL tanks with TK 6 series units in them is that some of the leads are too short. In the 'olden days' the uper hull could be separated from the lower hull, electronically, at least, at the point where the ribbon cable went into the 8 pin connector. Now, all individual electronic compnents plug
directly into the MFU. Thats' fine, and I prefer not having the intermediary connecting block and ribbon cable. It's just that some of the components cables are too short to permit easy access to the separated hulls.
So.....I've had to order a 100mm servo cable extension from Ebay. All the other wires had to be adapted anyway, pretty much, and so I was able to tailor their respective lengths to access needs.
One potential plus of the alloy recoil, is that it's designed to accept the HL barrel smoking feature. I may consider that in future, as this barrel has no flashing LED light fitted as yet.