RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

The Panzer 1 has always been a favorite of mine. When I saw Louis's build, I felt motivated to give it a try. I'm active in a local r/c IR battle club, and have quite a few Heng Long 1:16 r/c tanks, but I haven''t (yet!) graduated to other brand electronics. Being new, I was reluctant to dive that deep into a conversion project.

Anyway, my LHS had a Heng Long 1:30 M4 Sherman r/c tank. It had a transmitter, main board, speaker, turret rotation, lights and gearboxes, all for USD $50. Off I went!

I won't duplicate Louis' build here where I used the same techniques, beyond mentioning them. I built the road wheels as he did, except for the first road wheel spring suspension. I left that solid.

First, some photos of the Heng Long Sherman to be "repurposed".

The box it came in and it's size relative to the Panzer hull. The Sherman dissected. Upper left; the overview. Upper right; closeup of the transmission. Lower left, the turret ring and motor.. Lower right; the main board.

The largest task was to adapt the Sherman transmission to the P1B. The front axle is freewheeling. Each motor runs a gear train down to the last gear which is attached to the sprocket wheel.

Here is the transmission with the top off, sitting in the P1B hull. Too narrow! My solution was to split the transmission in half and make longer axles. The tops of the transmission halves were replaced later, as they are required to hold the gear axles in place.

Ok, the biggest headache was to mate the now separated transmission gear trains to the P1B sprockets. In the Sherman the final gear goes through the hull wall and has a hexagonal shape on the outside which the Sherman sprocket press fits onto. This had to be altered. I did this with brass tubes of descending diameters, pressed and glued onto the final gear. I sanded the hexagonal shape off for the brass to fit over. A bolt was run through the sprocket wheel into the brass fitting.
Would I do this again? I don't think so! I already have some Arduino robot tanks on order for their transmissions, per Louis' recommendation, to be used in future projects.

The last major segment of this build was the turret rotation. Up to now, I'd managed the project using hand and bench tools, and general hobby supplies. So now I had to adapt the Sherman turret rotation equipment to the P1B. Fortuitously, the Sherman ring gear was the right diameter to fit into the P1B turret ring.

However, to get the motor and ring gear to mesh, two things had to be done. The motor unit had to be made level with the ring gear. Because of the sloped rear deck, the motor had to be lowered to be made horizontal. Plastic sheeting was cut and formed to do this. This put the motor pinion gear too low to meet the ring gear. I have a friend who is very knowledgeable and equipped to design and fabricate a 3D printed part that allowed the ring gear to sit at the same level as the pinion. I don't know how this could have been done without that resource.

Here is the file photo of the part. Although the 3D "extender" part is hidden, here is the mount.

Quick and dirty thread, I know, but here is the final product:
And here is a short video clip of it running outside:
https://youtu.be/DSREPJ_uUjA

I know I've left out a lot of detail, but questions are welcome! As I'd posted earlier, this was to be a simple, low budget project. It runs, that's the point of it all!

Fantastic work Bob, clever thinking to repurpose the small-scale HL equipment like that. The early-war two-tone camo looks great too, I love the distressed effect you've weathered into it.

It's funny how little attention the early Panzers get compared to the later big cats, when it's the little guys like the Panzer Is, IIs and 38(t)s that won all the territory for the Nazis. I think people wrongly conflate the late-war heavy tanks with the Wehrmacht's military success, when it's the other way around.

Yes absolutely. It was that inter-war creativity that changed the face of war. Thanks for the compliments, by the way!

That really looks good. The painting and weathering is very well done and the engineering involved adds to it’s street cred . Get ready for TOTM.

Love the job on this.
Almost inspires me to try to achieve one too.