RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

By experience of my frinds owning HL Tiger - better to buy one Taigen than four HL

Kaczor wrote:By experience of my friends owning HL Tiger - better to buy one Taigen than four HL

I agree with you BUT we are dealing with a Forum member who has a Heng Long Tiger 1 so it is what it is.

Sure, almost everyone starts with HL Tiger. Mine ended as burned prop on the battlefield

Kaczor wrote:Sure, almost everyone starts with HL Tiger. Mine ended as burned prop on the battlefield

Taigen produced and sold metal reinforcing bars for the Heng Long Tiger 1 chassis. They had/Have metal studs/bushings as a more secure fixing for the suspension arms.

Hi whitecitadel: the title you gave this thread and what you have shown us already suggests that you won't readily be discouraged, that you are accustomed to making repairs and upgrades. And I sure would not want you to be discouraged because I can already tell that your experience has already made you an RCTW member from whom I can learn. I do agree with the others about the advantage of an OOB Taigen or Torro AFV, but your level of skill could mean you will leap to even better yet.

jarndice wrote:Hi, The Drive shaft support bearings go on the INSIDE of the hull and in my opinion are an absolutely vital fit.
Do bear in mind that to secure them they have a pair of nuts on the inside and if you do not place the two holes in the bearings that secure the bearing in the right place on the hull you will never get the nuts on making a dry run essential,

That was not immediately obvious (and some online info has them outside!), but I looked and the ones around seem to be a brass bush not a bearing? At least the ones I saw. The drive shaft is 8mm, so I had a rummage and: A skateboard bearing is a perfect fit (I don't skateboard but I bought a pack for something I 3d printed!), but too thick to fit in the chassis at 7mm - it seems that with a suitable bearing like 8x14x4mm would be perfect if you fabricated a mount? I am partial to a bit of mechanical tinkering I might look at that further.

jarndice wrote: And now to the knowing heads of almost everyone on the Forum here is my Homily on the Tiger 1,
I advised you that the Heng Long Tiger 1 came with a few faults built in,
3 of the more obvious ones are easy to fix and FREE.
Cupola,
...
Spare Aerial Tubes,
...
Fenders

(I chopped the quote a bit so its not mega-long)

Thanks for this, I already spent quite some time looking through the "how to fix your tank" guides, although the latest moulding seems to have been updated since some of the guide was written.

The cupola just pulls off... at least on the "latest" version that I have?! Your right though there is no vision slit at 12 and 6 o'clock they are all "late" at 10 past or 10 to... will have to investigate further if the pull of part can be split to correct.

Aerial tubes - definitely cut off the extra one, contemplating the other one and doing a tube, but I don't think I have any suitable tube so it would mean more raw materials.

The side fenders/mud guards I will probably score the join to make them appear more separate parts, but I am not going to the extremes of replacing them or cutting them off or removing one etc - it might be more realistic but its a step to far... for now

jarndice wrote:

Kaczor wrote:By experience of my friends owning HL Tiger - better to buy one Taigen than four HL

I agree with you BUT we are dealing with a Forum member who has a Heng Long Tiger 1 so it is what it is.

Thanks for being polite on my mistake! As you can see form the title of the thread - I am self aware at least...

In defence of the Heng Long, it did come with metal tracks, metal sprockets and idlers, metal road wheels (amazingly with bearings it turned out!), a proper metal gearbox - I checked tonight and gears are very magnetic and when removed the gearbox is heavy I am pretty confident they are steel.

The turret also has recoil as well as BB and IR included, and the v7.0 electrics has a lot of functions built in like the 70% throttle option, remote volume and other features that seem to be missing from earlier iterations. Oh it also has a Li-Ion battery with XT60 not NiCad and Tamiya connectors (for which I have no charger... unless a 1980's vintage Tamiya counts).

To be critical on the HL - it didn't even run properly out of the box

I am not sure if the gearbox has bushes or bearing still, its not quite clear, they are flanged and they run smooth but I am still not sure - assuming bushes. The weak side plates let it down a bit, the gearbox I pictured earlier in the thread seems the side is a bit bent is the cause of my not perfect axle. The gearbox looks just like the Taigen ones pictured online apart from the gears and side plates are not black.

The unpainted Taigen Tiger 1 is about £450 here? although I saw a few kits with no RC for less (Torro branded) Europe is out as an easy option (avoiding politics, but its not like it used to be where you could order anywhere if you could take the postage fees).

Am I shopping in the wrong places?
(Forgebear and other's that seem well respected here)

As a newcomer, its a bit bewildering, as no two shops seem to have the same version. I now think there may be a Taigen version with metal hull, tracks/wheels and gearbox but plastic turret that is a little cheaper.

If I can get a Taigen for about £400 - point me at it!

Son of a gun-ner wrote:Taigen produced and sold metal reinforcing bars for the Heng Long Tiger 1 chassis. They had/Have metal studs/bushings as a more secure fixing for the suspension arms.

OR... you could just swap the whole chassis to Taigen

Diving in further today to details, I realised that the Taigen wheels come with two sets of Axles, HL with threads to screw into the arms on the HL, and smooth axles for Taigen chassis that are secured by a grub screw in the suspension arm that is part of the Taigen chassis. The axles are NOT supplied with the chassis.

So to upgrade your HL with existing metal wheels and sprockets/idlers to Taigen you need to buy Taigen wheel axles as spares.

They come in a pack of 16 for the roadwheels, but not including the short axles for the idlers. The short axles only seem to come with the Taigen sprockets - I had assume AliExpress and a 3 week to 3 month weight would supply cheap spares - but what I could find was more expensive than local sources! These are the ones: https://www.rctank.de/Tiger-I-Metal-axl ... ium-wheels

At this point you then need to start a spreadsheet to calculate if your budget metal upgraded HL with a Taigen chassis would cost more than a Taigen in the first place...

whitecitadel wrote: That was not immediately obvious (and some online info has them outside!), but I looked and the ones around seem to be a brass bush not a bearing?

Just to add more on this... looking at parts again tonight, I realised where I saw the external mount was:
https://www.rctank.de/Tiger-I-axle-supp ... l-bearings

And these ones are bearings, the ones I saw on Welsh Dragons and ForgeBear were more brass bushings as I remember, and it seemed like bearings were a better idea to me at least.