Tamiya 1/35 Pz. III L RC conversion

[philbibbey]

After banging my head against the wall trying to get this to work on a M3 Lee, I decided to shift gears and focus on the PZ. III L. The panzer’s boxier hull shape has made the RC mods so much easier when compared to the American rounded transmissions. I’ve managed to get basic movement and steering to work. Debating on attempting turret rotation. I will post some photos of the build and can provide product links to anyone interested.


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[philbibbey]

I started off by working on the final drives and drive shafts. I learned from my previous attempt on another conversion that aligning your drive sprocket / shaft is critical in ensuring things don’t bind up or keeping the tracks from slipping off.

I picked up some brass tubing and rod that are sized up perfectly with no wiggle room. The center drive shaft mount was made from 1mm evergreen plastic sheet. NOTE: having this center mount line up damn near perfectly with holes drilled out for the drive shaft will make your life 100% easier! Also worth noting the brass tubing on the final drive area helps a lot keeping the drive shaft secured and no wiggling. You only have about 1/2mm of plastic on the hull to support the drive shaft that can bend when under track tension / running.

Glueing the drive shaft lengths to the drive sprockets can be a bit of a pain ensuring they are lined up correctly. To get around this I fitted / glued them while on the hull and braced with something heavy to ensure alignment. I used gorilla glue that is good for expanding and filling gaps that seems to be strong enough.

The same process was done with the idler wheels in the rears. Note: I did not glue the guide tubing until AFTER I conduced a RC motor test of the tracks. This allowed me to adjust track tension and ensure track alignment was good with the drive sprockets. Once it was working correctly I secured with a glue gun so later adjustments could be made.

More to come.


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[philbibbey]

The road wheels and track guid wheels had to be modified for movement. The stock kit had these items glued in place.

For the road wheels I used some 1/32 piano wire that was small yet strong enough to attach the road wheels. If I was to do this again I would also use some small tubing to help secure the piano wire like a bearing sleeve. The suspension arms had the plastic axles cut off and drilled out to allow the piano wire to fit through. Some homemade securing nuts were made from plastic sheet and glued on the back side. (Not pictured) before I secured the road wheels and track guide wheels I tested out the rubber band tracks to make sure everything was spinning freely and as always making sure track alignment was good.

Up next is the motors.


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[philbibbey]

Motors used for this project were purchased off of Amazon (n20 motors in search). I’m using the 6v / 100rpm motors and so far I’m happy with them. The speed looks correct for the scale of the tanks (no sprint track tanks here).

Securing the motors was done using a hot glue gun in case they’re need to be swapped out in the future. Some problems were encountered with the torque of the motor when under a load while running. The motors would break away from the glue and the gears would start to slip / grind. I’m still working on a better solution for this, in the mean time if just used more glue to encase the motors.


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[philbibbey]

RC set up.

Transmitter / receiver: Flysky is-6x / with included 6ch receiver. (Might get use a smaller 3ch receiver)

ESC: went with a dual brushed motor ESC. Was kinda confused by this and not sure exactly how it works but I was able to figure it out.

Battery: 7v / 3mAph lipos. Small enough to fit in the hull and run time seems to be adequate for driving around the house.


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[PainlessWolf]

Good Morning,
That is some amazing small scale RC engineering there. If you want to add a little realism, Spade Ace has link and pin tracks available for that scale of Panzer III. Following along.
regards
Painless

[philbibbey]

Good Morning,
That is some amazing small scale RC engineering there. If you want to add a little realism, Spade Ace has link and pin tracks available for that scale of Panzer III. Following along.
regards
Painless

Thanks for the tip on the tracks. I have been considering messing with some aftermarket metal tracks. Saw a company called Master Club I was considering but I’ll be sure to check out Spade Ace as well. Performance wise I’m satisfied with the rubber band tracks but would really like to up the realism.

Cheers.


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[philbibbey]

It works!


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[NAB]

Nice. Is this something that could be done with any 1/35th?

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[modler]

Motors used for this project were purchased off of Amazon (n20 motors in search). I’m using the 6v / 100rpm motors and so far I’m happy with them. The speed looks correct for the scale of the tanks (no sprint track tanks here).

Securing the motors was done using a hot glue gun in case they’re need to be swapped out in the future. Some problems were encountered with the torque of the motor when under a load while running. The motors would break away from the glue and the gears would start to slip / grind. I’m still working on a better solution for this, in the mean time if just used more glue to encase the motors.


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Very interesting gearbox setup. I also like tanks of this scale to move at a scale speed. I took a more conventional approach with my 1/35 builds and have recently motorized a Tamiya Panzer III using a gearbox from a Academy 1/35 M60. I will do a new thread on it in this forum if any interest. For now I will post a few pictures of my build in this tread.
The Panzer III is a very interesting tank IMO and is worth the effort to upgrade to RRC.