I'm not a Sherman guy but... Jussek's M4A3(76) 'Soul Reaper'

[Tiger6]

Sadly I put that one together while I was not much active on forums, but I can take some pictures later today. The Tamiya Sherman idlers are tensionable, you just need to cut some slots to allow adjustment, and make up a new backing plate (because the Tamiya one is rubbish).

I would look around for Heng Long plastic tracks because the Tamiya idler is not man enough for metal. Mine is equipped with the original double pin design pulled of an old Ebay 'spares or repair' Pershing, but they are hard to come by these days.

I've never seen a Sol turret up close, so I can't say if they are suitable/easy to RC or not? Nick's has removable trunion pins that allow you to pull the mantlet off for servicing, I can't tell from pictures if the Sol has that feature.
I have been able to squeeze the Tamiya recoil and elevation into the turret, but it is a bit of a struggle - maybe others have had better ideas with using servo's, but I wanted to use the Tamiya DMD system so that dictated the path I took.

[Tiger6]

Ok lets try to do this in some kind of semblance of order

Nick's turret comes with the early pattern loaders split hatch. If you want an oval hatch, just ask him for the loaders hatch from the Jumbo turret kit and he'll throw that in too - you'll have to fill in the round hole, but if I can manage it a man of your considerable talents should have no problem with this

You will need to come up with some track guard extensions - mine came from left over parts from an earlier conversion of a Tamiya upper to M4A3 VVSS standard, but you should be able to make a new one from plastic sheet quite easily. I thought I had seen the braces available on Shapeways, but I can't find them right now?

It would appear that I cowboy'ed the idlers, as while they are both roughly in the same place, they are at different angles Must have glued them where I wanted and then drilled thru the plastic and secured with nuts. The Mato hull has survived so far, but then it doesn't get a whole lot of rough off road driving, I'd be inclined to brace the backside with a steel plate if you are going to be a bit more adventurous..

The turret attachment was quite easy, altho I think I used a scrap Plastic Mato T23 turret so you'll need to look at your HL turret and see if it has the same feature? On the Mato there was a circular lip on the bottom face that contacted the upper hull. The outer diameter of this is exactly the right diameter to stuff into the opening in Nick's turret, so I simply used this as an edge to cut to, and then fine sanded the high points off until it was a nice press fit. Over time it wore the resin a way a little and had to be glued in place, so I can't take it apart to show you now. (If push comes to shove, we could probably come up with a suitable replacement turret base part you could get printed).

The only modification is to cut the original turret ring lip off of the base of Nick's turret with a razor saw (lip shown on one of my Tamiya hull versions)

[Tiger6]

As you can see from the last picture, I used the Tamiya M4 Sherman turret bracket to mount the recoil and elevation to. Nick's turret has the mounting points inside, tho the resin is rather thin and won't take too many assembly/disassembly attempts before it starts to crumble under the screw heads. The bracket needs to be drilled to accept the recoil motor, you can strip down the unit to remove the gear and use the housing to get the right hole centers. The Tamiya elevation motor sits on the bracket as normal.

To attach the elevation, I made a thin brass arm with a slot in (this last one might even have been from plastic sheet?), that can slide over the elevation motor arm as you assemble the manlet on to the turret front. Getting this right is a little tricky, as is making a linkage to attach the barrel to the recoil motor. you must allow for some kind of linkage between the 2 as the recoil motor does not elevate with the gun. Getting these 2 linkages right is by far the hardest part of the job, and requires a great deal of patience. You will also need to sleeve the mantlet with some brass tube for the barrel to slide in, as the mantlet doesn't have enough depth to allow the barrel to recoil on its own. (If you can use a controller that allows for a servo recoil, then this job likely gets a lot easier)

You will need short shaft gearboxes for the Pershing sprockets here. I had to add a little bracing as the MATO hull isn't designed for these gearboxes, but you should be better off using the HL hull.

As for preparing the chassis for the Tamiya bogies, I think I just took off all of the raised detail with a Dremel and backfilled any holes with Milliput. I would have used one of my Tamiya hulls as a reference for positioning the bogies, and then drilled and tapped into the plastic, securing them with glue, nuts and bolts. I do remember thinking that it would have been easier if I had removed the battery box, but I like to keep them in place as they do add a good deal of stiffness for general handling - especially if they get thrown into the back of a car and driven to shows like mine do.

[Tiger6]

I should also add to this lot that you need the later style bogies with separate axles and bearings, and not the original 1974 design that had the road wheels mounted on poly caps like a 1/35 scale model - they were no good what so ever even when new, and certainly not now when second hand and 40 years old...

[Jussek]

WOW, what a reply Sir!

Thank you very much Tiger6

i will read all the info at low pace...

call me looser... RCTank.de has sold out the SOL resin turrets...
is there any way to contact Nick Aguilar? with the luck that I have, maybe he no longer produces the turrets

best regards

[Tiger6]

He was still in the game about 18 months ago when I last bought some turrets off of him, I will PM you his email address

[Exhibitedbrute]

I have a Sherman m4a3 76 and mine is just the hl pro m4a3 with a mato turret but there are better resin and printed turrets out there

[Jussek]

goood & rainy morning lads

He was still in the game about 18 months ago when I last bought some turrets off of him, I will PM you his email address

got a reply from Nick Aguilar, he is still in busines

now i have to source the tamiya suspension components, so i need:

3x C-PARTS (C1-C15) FOR TAMIYA SHERMAN SERIES 56014
1x SUSPENSION BAG (MS1-MS6) FOR TAMIYA SHERMAN 56014

as i not have the manuals, i do not know if I need something else from tamiya, maybe the rubber road wheels? some screw bags? there are several items with the word 'suspension' for the tamiya sherman, and i'm afraid of miss something

if anyone can pont me to the necessary parts i can order all the stuff in one go

the track guadrs will be no problem, i did the ones for my tiger and my KöTi with metal sheet

best regards!

[Tiger6]

The manual can be found here: https://www.rctankwarfare.co.uk/downloads/

[Jussek]

yep! found it surfing the net, Thanks Tiger6, it seems a lot of parts are needed...

Seidel do not ship outside Germany, Axel's Modellbau do not have all the parts, I will look at the AAF tank museum too, any other online shop that you can recommend me?