RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I discovered Vandra conversion kits a while ago, so I tried a couple. One is the M3 Lee tank built upon the HL M4 Sherman chassis. I set myself a goal of using as much of the Sherman as I could, keeping costs down, since it would be my first conversion. This posed some limitations, which I'll share here, but I came out with something I liked. Maybe someday I'll do a more complex build.

There are a number of HL "static" kits on eBay. They are fairly complete mechanically and physically, but with no electronics. I've gotten kits with and without speakers and smokers, apparently whatever they are trying to get off their shelves. They've had old 27mhz MFU's and wiring but no transmitters. I purchased a Sherman - in this case, plastic tracks. Fortunately I had a spare 6.0 MFU and speaker to use.

So, to Vandra. Resin castings, requiring varying amounts of sanding, filing and fitting.
In the case of the Lee, they caution that a "low profile" gearbox system is necessary because of the main gun recess on the hull. Not having such a gearbox or wanting to buy one, I decided to work around this.

There are alterations to the gearbox that I'm guessing would be needed even with a low profile set. The M3 transmission cover, like the early M4's, are tighter. Some of the metal of the gearbox frames has to be removed for it to fit.
But the biggest issue is that the gearbox on the sponson side sits too high for the deck, hence the need for a low profile box. My workaround was to cut a space in the deck for the gear to sit in, and to cover it all with "stores", a box.
Yucky I know, but the final product looks ok.

Again to save costs, I did not make the main gun to elevate or traverse, at least not yet! I used the barrel from the Sherman, obviously of a larger than authentic calibre, but I needed the space to insert an IR LED anyway. I do have a thinner barrel enroute that I will add later.
Note the box covering the gear. Also, I took the Sherman headlights and added them. Later I will describe the turret setup. Stay tuned!

My main objective was to make the turret rotate, again using whatever I could apply from the Sherman kit, in this case the traversing motor. I also did not want to permanently alter the turret, mainly in case my plan didn't work.

Fortunately I have a buddy who is a 3D printing wizard. We came up with a setup that is completely adjustable and removable.
There are two disks. One fits inside the turret and is anchored to the turret ring with three wide washered screws screwed into the disk. The disk has three posts sticking down below the turret bottom. A gear disk is screwed into the posts, and the disk will mesh with the HL motor.......maybe! The problem is that the gear disk must be aligned with the turret ring, and the turret is not exactly truly round. I finally enlarged the screw holes on the gear disk so that I could adjust the alignment.
The traverse motor is simply glued to the hull interior. Its structure keeps the gear disk from rising or dropping which would pop the turret out of its track on the hull. I placed another post with a tab on the opposite side that helps hold the gear disk in place. You can see a white rectangle which is the top of that tab. Both the traverse motor and the tab have shims in place to set them at the right height.

A couple more turret details: The Vandra kit does not include a commander's cupola, but I found a 3D printed one on Shapeways.

Without: With: I put the machine gun LED from the Sherman hull into the turret MG. I had to use an oversized CF tube for it. Ah well.
By the way, I'm new to this forum, learning the methods to post photos. Don't ask me why these photos are rotated, they just are!

So what did I end up with? Here ya go.
If you're interested, here's a short youtube clip: https://youtu.be/fC9i4gDvhmg

I'd say it was well worth the effort, and improvistion.
The crew figures are also very well painted. You should feel very pleased with yourself.

Yes, I totally agree, well done sir

I love your improvisation with the storage box over the gears

A beautiful model of an ugly tank, you've done great work Bob. Resin kits have a few interesting quirks, I like your workarounds.

SoCalBobS wrote:By the way, I'm new to this forum, learning the methods to post photos. Don't ask me why these photos are rotated, they just are!

Your camera/phone will usually embed EXIF metadata into the photo that contains information about things like camera settings, including orientation. Some software can't read that, so the forum doesn't reorient the photo to match the way the camera was being held at the time. If you click the photos to enlarge them, they show up correctly.

I really like these M3 configurations myself - imagine what a smashing view you get from the turret sitting up there like that, great for sight-seeing and stuff!
Very nicely executed RC example too.