Neil's early Tiger 1 (2023)

[neil graham]

After a family holiday to Japan, got back into things in earnest.

Grates and hinges all sanded, degreased & etched.

Putting the hinges together. One of them was perfect but the other one did not open more than about 30 degrees, it was jamming (see picture)

Filed it down until a test fit was smooth

I have done all the deck detail except for the clamps. I discovered that the rope clamp latch piece (CP0293) had an alignment issue, not sure why but all four of them are the same. The larger clamp type in the same bag were perfect length but where the hole aligns seems quite different. In the pic below the pin holes are perfectly aligned on both of these. The dremel will get another outing to try fix these.

Those square bolts were all very cool looking but I was glad when I had done the last one up. I am using nylocs so getting them all done up was fiddly, used needle nosed pliers to hold the heads.

Ready for priming

Primed, but needing a touch up mainly due to a bug landing and getting stuck!

[Sean-Armortek]

Potentially.... the short top clamps you slotted previously for the jack clamp were the correct ones for these shorter rope clamps. There's about 2mm difference between them iirc.

[neil graham]

Potentially.... the short top clamps you slotted previously for the jack clamp were the correct ones for these shorter rope clamps. There's about 2mm difference between them iirc.

That would make sense....either way, these are a cosmetic detail and I am not complaining! Gives me a good excuse to get the dremel out

[neil graham]

Long break with only doing a few bits and pieces.

There aren't that many steel parts, but even of those there have only been a few pieces with a few small bits of rust, until I needed these parts:

Bag o' rust!

They looked even worse out of the bag

There is steel under there... somewhere

I think I have had this vinegar for 10 years

After 2 days in the vinegar they came out clean, but slippery!

Then a good sanding....

I etch primed them immediately after the sanding.

[neil graham]

Prepared all the pieces of front mudguards, will put them together and paint them this weekend.

Finally decided to put the wheels on, its now looking very 'tanky'

Now I am about ready to put the sprockets on, but before I do that I need to get the motors in..... so battery tray in first, then the supports

Rear deck plate as well

Finally managed to connect all the electrics and test the gears......the motors are pretty noisy but the gears are smooth!

[neil graham]

As always, I did what I felt like doing.... not what I said I would do

Attached the turret ring, but not without some issues. Nothing very dramatic, but took me into new areas. I have seen others mention this one, and indeed I had the same problems about length as others (bolt length!!!, I swear!).

This is the before shot....this is deceiving...its only halfway in the nut!

Normally I don't hesitate to replace bolts/nuts, but these bolts were trickier... its very hard to get M3 countersunk bolts of exactly 18mm!! They cant be longer due to the turret ring gear for those with the option packs.

So, I had to man up instead and fix the actual issue. The countersink wasn't drilled deep enough, so the bolts sat about 1-2mm proud. Normally that would be no issue....but this meant that there was only a few turns on the nuts underneath. I had to buy a countersinking drill head, and carefully correct the countersink depth.... scary stuff!

Clenched while drilling... but here are the results:

After the countersink...note the silver lining :-)

After countersinking.... bolt only just protudes nut... clearly overtightened!

[neil graham]

As I moved onto the top deck things became very much more fluid, the instructions become more like guidelines....though its pretty clear what needs to be done.

Some of the instruction errors were obvious.... the M3 bolt simply doesn't screw into the M4 threaded object, though trying to guess which M4 bolt you didn't need for other things wasn't obvious (I hope I guessed correctly).

The rope clamps:

Hmmmmm, that doesn't look right

I therefore switched the bolts the other way around, it seemed to work.

I just tried to centre them:

Seems a little loose

Not sure why one of my parts has been rounded... but I expect it to work without issue

Rounded

The other one

After all that, I emptied an entire bottle of the paint I am using on this

[neil graham]

I have been super busy the last few months with work, but I have still managed to get a few things done.

I got the front sprockets, steel upgrade tracks & front mudguards on!

Started painting the rear mudguards:

Cracked open the turret parts:

Sanded, etched and primed:

[Tim Carr]

Little here and a little there makes for a Big Tiger Tank.

Keep up the good work.

Later Tim

[neil graham]

This last few weeks was involved with a bunch of things.

Firstly fixing up my mistakes from my stupidly linear reading of the instructions and then dealing with flaws in the smoker option pack.

I originally attached all my square headed bolts to the rear plate first....then attached it to the chassis, with the nuts in between the chassis support and the rear plate. This actually looked pretty good, the rear plate lined up with the sides. However, when I then went to put the main turret plate on....this no longer all lined up nicely, the main plate sat too high. So....had to undo most of the square bolts to remove the nuts....only to find that the main plate now sits too low. OK..... I guess I will add a few washers or something under the support to raise it a little.

The more I build this tank the more I realise why a lot of people seem to dry build the whole thing first, then dismantle and build it for real.

However, one bonus to removing the rear plate was I now had easier access to the smoker option pack. It had some obvious issues that blind optimism told me would be fine....but after a 5 minute test run in the backyard I had pipes falling out everywhere. So, I decided to fix it so this would not happen again. Overkill? Ugly? Maybe not workable? Probably....but at least these pipes arent falling out!! The original pipe is still inside the copper....well, at least 5cm of it anyway, new oversize pipe that goes outside the copper fits over the top of the original pipe.

More pipes than my CPAP machine.....

I put together the rear mudguards...just need to give all the bolts a coat of paint.

After a lot of back and forth, I decided to give Milliput a crack and fill in the big bolt holes on the sides. Obviously I did this after fixing all the top plate alignment issues. Obviously its not very well done.... but its my first attempt.

Milliput amatuer hour

Painting/touching up a few things here and there. Turret bins looking good

As seen on another thread, the hatch on the top of the turret had some serious CNC issues going on.

These were easy to feel

Phew..... a lot of elbow grease just to get them to this stage...

Halfway there!

I dont recall handling an almost solid ingot of aluminium before..... but this was impressive!

Jeez, this is a solid weapon.... it could be added to Cluedo (or Clue for the Americans). Neil with the mantlet thingy, in the shed.