Converting a HL king tiger into a e50 build 6/3 update

[mustclime]

If you do not know what a E50 tank is...here is a little page


http://fingolfen.tripod.com/eseries/e50.html

I am planing on doing this build with the hl king tiger. I am starting with the running gear....the e50 suspension looked like this...

[tisaksen]

Interesting, I will keep track of this build

[mustclime]

I first started out moving around the hl wheels.....



well, thats not right....how about this....



nope.....the wheel spacing should look like this...



Thats a 45mm spacing...

So its time to start laying out and cutting....







time to turn a $180 dollar tank into a pease of junk....



and time to sniff some glue....



I thought I would look at making the tank rwd....



maybe not...I do not think I am good enough to make a small rear drive wheel....so she stays fwd

[mustclime]

OK, got the hull put back togather....



this after a little clean up...



And a test fit of the suspension to check wheel spacing.....



looks about right imo....Time to pull it apart again and puddy in the rough spots...
While that is drying, time to start on the upper hull.....first I unhook the light that the ball mg mount because I have to change the front armor angle to 60 degrees.



then pull off the turret....




and then the cutting....



The light is going back on the new armor plate but the ball mg mount is going away because the e50 wasn't supose to have one. At this point the germans had decided that the ball mg mount was a week point in the armor and that ground troops were to move forward in apc with the armor for support. At this point I am thinking I will run the mg light in the turret next to the main gun...but I have not decided on what mantle design I am going to use..


enought posting...on the the hunnydo list....

[mustclime]

here is the "best" build I have seen on a E50.....

http://www.battletanksnederland.nl/phpB ... =60&t=5310

My build will be nothing like this one.....the goal of this build is to have fun IR fighter....

It will not have the "f" turret because it was designed for a 75mm gun, I will be designing my own turret to house a 88mm from the kt.

[caddyshack]

You sure have you hands full there.
I like the wheel arrangement as it was,but thats just me. Just seems like a lot of work for some thing the tank was already doing.
But as i said , thats just me. Others will prob love the new wheel arrangement.

[FreakyDude]

Umm for my 2 cents you should have trashed the upper hull totally. Kept all the good stuff like turret guts, elevation etc and re-used them in your build.
You should have moved your wheels on the lower hull and scratch built both the upper hull deck, rear plate and turret, Hull sides and glacis so that the appearence is a true likeness.
What you have now is a modified King Tiger. Its unfortunate but the KT is very distinctive in it's shape, size and look.
Changing a few minor details will not be enough to erase the appearence of the KT.
To get the E-50 look you would have been better off using an HL Panther. After all the E-50 was not going to be no where near as large as the KT and realisticly was just an upgraded Ausf G.
Personally I do not like it, as caddyshack said it looked better with a full set of road wheels.
I don't mean to be critical, just honest. Perhaps the E-75 or Lowe would be a more suitable subject for the KT as a base.

[mustclime]

let me quote the above link...

The E-50 hull was to be longer than the Panther, in fact it was practically identical to the King Tiger in overall dimensions except for the glacis plate layout. The hull of the replacement for the King Tiger, the E-75, was going to be almost identical to the E-50, except the armour would have been thicker. Two extra bogies, one each side, would have been fitted to compensate for the extra weight. The bogies were re-spaced as well giving the E-75 a track to ground contact length of 4095mm, compared to 3850mm for the E-50. The whole drive train would have been the same for E-50 and E-75. As they were both to be armed with the same gun, ammunition stowage and overall internal layout was to be identical.

As mentioned earlier the final drive for the whole series was meant to be at the rear of the vehicle. However none of the drawings of E-50/75 make any space allowance at all for a rear gearbox and final drive except for adding teeth to what was the idler. For instance the turret would probably have to be a couple of feet further forward on the hull top. Also they all show the standard Tiger II sprocket at the front of the vehicle as well! I think that the E-50 probably had the gearbox at the front: the E- 100 certainly did.

here is a pic with the mybech motor in place...



The reason the e50 was going to be as big as the kt was the gun....the kt 88 is f-ing huge. the panthers 75mm was on the verge of being out dated with thanks like the t44, m26 and centorien comming on the seen. I do not think the panther f turret would have been used because there was no room for the kt 88 and the almost 4 foot long rounds that would have been loaded into the rear of it.

[tisaksen]

Any progress on your e50 build?

[mustclime]

Yea, the runnning gear is about done, i have a couple tweeks to get the track lines right but that should not be a problem. I just need to load the pics...I am starting the front armor this weekend. I ordered the dbu3 with the bendi sound card and some 3:1 gears with 400 motors but thats 2 weeks out....I am not going to mount tracks till I can mount the motors.