RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Held up waiting for a couple of servo’s to arrive, so going on with basic little bits to keep moving on .
The immaculate guards had to come off! I just can’t cope with factory fresh unless it’s 100% unavoidable !
After they gave way,I used a carefully directed jet from a heat gun to soften the thinned out plastic, then bent it into reasonable shapes of crushed sheet metal.
I also added small sections of styrene to the cupola after seeing a period picture of an SU85 with this field applied add on armour on it.Still need to do weld beads on them.
The engine deck transmission cover mesh was also treated to a bit of abuse, I annealed it with a burner to make it easier to shape, and to touch up with damage.
The drivers hatch was assembled with all its shiny bits & might be made to remain open, if I can get a suitable figure to perch inside it !
The fuel tanks are ready, dented and right to fit when I can !

Those Taigen metal grab bars are really hard to bend...Looking good.

Ive also been experimenting with barrel flash.
Looking through a few threads on the V6/6.1s set ups & Mr Modelbuilder4 had some handy advice to get the cannon flash operating.
As complicated as getting a servo wire/plug into port LED1 and running a suitable bulb off the end of it.
With that in mind, I took a punt on using a spare Taigen xenon flash bulb(its not a bulb but who cares!) and sucking it & seeing..........

bright flash no dramas.
The jumper plug into the trigger port CN6 gets the sound , the plug in the LED port gets the flash so Im all set.
Servo's are in the post, hope they arrive before the weekend so I can get the recoil & elevation sorted.
I figured this model would not be any sort of battler, so no need to run the cabling for now, but that could be revisited if necessary.
The T90 sound option is not totally terrible, at least its not a Tiger, so for now I can live with it.
I will muck around with a Taigen sound system run by a better transmitter at some stage, but by them maybe H/L will release a sound module of their own ??
I might bung on a few welds around the thing, just to pass the time while the servos make the trek from OzArmour Rc Brisbane.........

tankme wrote:Those Taigen metal grab bars are really hard to bend...Looking good.

Thanks Mr Tankme, they are the solid & durable H/L plastic ones, I have spares, they bend well using a heat gun set on low & a hobby knife handle.
I think the next T34 series tank I do will have the auxiliary fuel tanks made out of copper shim sheet.
The plastic is hard to get dented & maintain a realistic shape, so copper shim is on the things to try list.

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=31578

Link to the original build thread.
Theres loads of great Russian tank destroyer porn in there

The recoil and elevation are done.
Small servo mounted to the case of the BB unit and linked to the piston by a bent up bit of HL aerial wire!
I made a brass mount & screwed the servo onto it using its factory mounting points.
The brass plate was then secured to the BB case with gel super glue.

For the elevation I used Lego glued to the servo with 2 part epoxy which then was secured onto a corresponding piece of Lego that was glued onto the underside of the resin Casemate.
One of the arms supplied in the servo box was slotted through one of its holes, then that was screwed to the side of the BB case.
Simple and works a treat.
No slop either.
I did have a need for some ballast weight in the front, and as I can’t drive anywhere, went on the hunt for anything that I could use.
Ta-daaaa kids Knuckle Bones game made out of some sort of very heavy metallic material!!
Some double sided tape to keep them in place & no one will ever know

A rare picture surely ??

Mmmmmmm priiiiiimer !
The grey that Mr Ram used seemed to be quite absorbent to finger marks etc so I thought a light coat of good self etching primer over it, and the added bits would tie it all in and help the paint stay put without finger prints becoming a problem.

http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/t3485bg_2.html

For those figuring out what bit means what Tank!!..............

Following on from the success of its use on my SU-152 , I hit the ‘85 with a light coat of Tamiya TS-42 light gun metal.
Now it looks like it’s off to the bloody moon, but it does make for a light base for the 4BO and allows scratches to show if desired.
As soon as it was dry I ran the shadow coat out of the AK 4BO kit in the usual spots.
So far so good.