M3 Grant (Lee?) scratchbuilt... or that's the plan anyway...

[Rob1970]

Holy shit what a rusted piece of junk. And the price id after 50% discount

Oh, there's a painted version too, so the rust will be underneath...

So, yesterday I actually decided to contact a tank museum in the UK to get some answer... And today I already got a reply...

Hi Rob,

I will ask one of our mechanics to measure it for you and we will get back to you.

Kind Regards,

Laura Marchmont
Armourgeddon

Meanwhile, my victi... *cough* I mean donor has arrived. The 13th tank I bought? Lucky number 13... quite ominous, innit?
Did the Two Minute Test Run and it all checks out. A good deal at $200 dollar, since it's complete with the steel gearbox and metal tracks, drive-sprockets and idlers. Plastic road wheels and bogeys are just perfect, since I want to try to make those bogeys m more Lee-like anyway.



That first round of disassembly is gonna feel weird... She's so pretty and pristine. Now where's my hacksaw..?

To Be Continued...

TTFN,
Rob

[Rob1970]

Engineering Brain; "So... disassembling the donor, are we?"

Mechanic Brain; "Ayup! taking off the top deck, because we don't need that. Going to exchange the Sherman gearbox for a low-profile gearbox from a Stug III, because we need the space. Front cover of the gearbox is coming off too, going to either scratchbuild or maybe even 3D-design and print a new early-style3-piece cover. Turret is getting stripped for parts, the gun should work well enough as the 75mm in the sponson. Lifting gear will become a traversing gear, and a lifting gear from a Ti... "

Engineering Brain; "Lemme just stop you there... you've got a Sherman upper hull, gearbox and gearbox front cover going spare, right?"

Mechanic Brain; "Uhm... yeah..? And some sundry other bits. We actually have quite a collection of spares. I mean especially if we do all the upgrades to the other tanks in the armoury..."

Engineering Brain; "Yeah, about that... we've got an old 2.4Ghz set coming out of the KV-1, right?"

Mechanic Brain; "...Yes..?"

Engineering Brain; "Just thinking out loud here... if we get a Sherman lower hull and some plastic tracks we could basically, for Schlitz and giggles build a BARV... I mean, we don't need a turret, or guns, or any fancy IR stuff..."

*muffled screaming in the background*

Mechanic Brain; "...I... guess not..? What's that noise in the background?"

Engineering Brain; "Hmmm? Oh, that? That's Financial Brain... -someone- seems to have duct-taped a sack over his head and stuffed him in a trunk. Can't imagine who would do such a thing... Now, do you happen to know his ForgeBear log-in? Asking for... a friend."

[HERMAN BIX]

Piss-funny

[Rob1970]

Aaaanyway...


One cup of coffee later...


Stug III gearboxes in place for a test fit... ya gotta like an engineer that makes all the gearbox and interiors compatible. Well done, Heng Long engineer. All the holes for the screws match, the axles line up nicely. Only have access to two of the three screws per gearbox, but that's easy enough to fix.



And as good as the Heng Long Engineer is... the soldering department needs glasses. Horrendous joint that stick out a mile from the motor and rub on the gearbox next to it. So I desoldered the worst one and redid it, bending the tabs outward and adding a bit of heatshrink.


After that the clearance was still nailbitingly tight, so I added a thin sheets of 0.5mm ABS to the gearboxes to avoid shorting stuff out. Also removed as much of the sheetmetal gearbox sides as I could. I think I will need as much clearance as I can.


And there she is, all back together again. Still pondering what to do about the gearbox cover. I've got the option of remodelling the excisting one to look like a 3-piece. Design/source and 3D-print my own one. Or order one of the resin ones that you see around the internet. Not in a rush, so I have time to ponder my options.

To Be Continued...

TTFN,
Rob

[Herr Dr. Professor]

"Some people leave the bogies -as is-, some people rebuild them to match the look of a Lee bogey." Actually, I think some few of the M3s sent to Australia did use the Sherman bogies. I posted a photo somewhere... I will try to find it, but can anyone else remember where that photo shows? Bix?

[Rob1970]

Well, I used my Google-Fu and searched for "M3 Lee australia" and hit Image Search and Whaddayaknow... About three clicks of scrolling down the results...



Those are "Sherman" bogeys... On a M3 Grant.

And here's a few more... https://dokumen.tips/documents/m3-lee-a ... tanks.html

Still might convert them tho...

[HERMAN BIX]

Good catch mate, and all I know on Shermans can be written on the canine tooth of a duck !!

[Rob1970]

Last night after butcheri... I mean disassembling the donor, I went into "brain-ramble"-mode. This involves a glass of good whisky, some nibbles, a bit of distraction by a semi-entertaining movie (Last nights choice; Goldeneye. Awesome tank chase...) and a pad and paper.

Pretty soon the pad and paper were traded in for my computer, Tinkercad and more whisky.


A bad movie, a small cheese and sausage platter and some measuring later I ended up with this. I took the 3-piece cover of the Grant model I found online and based on the dimensions of the HL Sherman like the general width, the diameter of the axle-support thingy and several key distances like the gearbox and whatnot I arrived at this. Popped into my slicer program it gave a print time of about 2 and a half hours. Coulda been shorter if I had noticed one of my settings made my printer build a raft to print on... *sigh* At least I had the rest of the settings set to "fast prototyping".


And indeed, 2 hours and 22 minutes later... It looks rough because of the prototype settings, but it's all there.


Not too bad, with all the supports removed and the raft pried off. Not the greatest print in the world. This is just a tribute... I mean it's just to check my general dimensions.


So close... in my attempt to stay true to the dimensions of the 3-piece on the Grant, I came up short in the space department by about 5mm. When designing parts to fit on existing models, you (almost) always end up with a compromise. The Stug gearbox and the gears are as small as I can go (well, not quite true... my 3-dram whisky brain did consider adding an extra gear wheel and getting the space that way...) But the sensible thing to do was a small tweak to the design. The various aftermarket 3-piece covers must have done the same...


So, a little tweak to the design, as you can see the new part (here in orange. The green one was attempt #1) moves out the minumim I (think) I need to clear the gearbox. And in about an hour I will know for sure...

To Be Continued...

TTFN,
Rob

[EAO]

Awww! Rob, I voted for the BARF, oops I mean BARV! It's so damn hideous that it's cool!

Cheers,
Eric.

[Rob1970]

Awww! Rob, I voted for the BARF, oops I mean BARV! It's so damn hideous that it's cool!

Cheers,
Eric.

I figured out that I will soon have enough spare parts to whip together the BARV. Murph from Murph's Models https://murphs-models.webs.com is going to upload a revised paper model of his BARV model and I'm getting it when he's tweaked the last bits. And when I have that, it might be a fun side project. Because I rrrreally need another project...