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This is a special tank for me, I bought the hooben Elefant back on release, I think in may 2011. It never ran well, one side would always throw tracks on grass, the gearboxes weren't great and the pins always walked out of the tracks after a run. I was fairly new to the hobby and metal tracks were suggested as an Improvement. I bought the asiatam ones, they didn't fit the hooben sprockets, I bought sprockets, the guide horns didn't fit the wheels, I bought new bogies/wheels. You guessed it, these didn't fit anything! I had a go at making them fit, it was a bit of a bodge and stopped the suspension working properly by with some tamiya gearboxes it did run ok(ish). I can't remember the exact circumstances but tank ended up being taken apart and put in a box. Eventually I saw Christian Ludwig did a metal lower hull that would take the hooben body and work with the asiatam suspension. This as purchased and due to issue with me finding a decent way of attaching the bogies, sat doing not much, occasionally listed for sale etc.
Happily nearly a decade later Armoured Models came to the rescue. James designed moints for bogies, fettled the bushes id supplied, fitted and aligned the gears and even designed and printed some bogie parts when the pot metal failed. I got everything back in the post today and couldn't resist trying it out. With a tk40 the controls excellent and it handled my grass with ease, all without throwing a track.

The hooben hull was chopped up to fit on the metal lower. I'm pleased to say everything aligned perfectly. I've used magnets to hold the top on.
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Next I'll get all the elevation, traverse and recoil converted to servo and start installing the electrics.

Again, massive thanks to James Canham for his work on the lower

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Excellent job Tom as always!

Some more progress on the elefant, a quick video of the beast in action first thought.



I've been first working to get the functions up and running. I've added magnets to the casemate upper to maintain full access to the internals. These are the very small type but give enough hold.

Next I've been working to get the recoil, elevation and traverse working. The original used tamiya style items, but things have moved on so the traverse and recoil have been replaced with servos. Unfortunately because for reasons beyond our ken , Clark has made the traverse work in a stupid self centring way I've had to use the elevation channel for the traverse for elevation and the esc mode on the traverse for elevation.




I've also started to put the hatches and the gun shield back on. I'm hoping to get the led flash in tonight and start adding the zim.



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c.rainford73 wrote:Excellent job Tom as always!

Thank you Carl!

Though I’m not directly a fan of German armour. I do like to see people make something good out of what seems to have started its life as quite a poorly put together/designed tank. Though it can be quite dis-heartening when we spend all this money on a tank just to have to spend the same again to get it working.

I would much rather spend money upgrading but with some of the manufactures out there or in some cases suppliers your lucky if it works properly as this thread shows.

That being said. Glad you got this monster running properly after almost a decade

Nice write-up, Tom. Will be following along as you bring another interesting beast to life.

Ralph

SCHWEREPANZER wrote:Nice write-up, Tom. Will be following along as you bring another interesting beast to life.

Ralph

Thanks Ralph. Now the hard parts done I hope the rest will be straight forward!

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Some more progress last night. First off I took the recoil apart to get it moving more freely and provide a clear path to get an led flash down.

Next and much more onerous was fitting the atak zim. Took about 3 hours in the end. The was a bit more fitting than usual and chopping than usual but it fit pretty well all in all.





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That was a lovely paint job but am sure you can blend it back in! Or you going for a completely different scheme? Looking good though

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spongehoobtank82 wrote:That was a lovely paint job but am sure you can blend it back in! Or you going for a completely different scheme? Looking good though

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I think it was the second or third one I've ever done! I'm.sure I can do better now

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