DB Chieftian build

[David Brady]

Hi John,

Noted on the grills, turret support was installed as you did.

Cheers

[David Brady]

Small improvement- three slots added to resemble the original a little more

Reshapped and 10ba fasteners added.

Cheers

[David Brady]

Filed and reshaped a small crease in the turret today, thanks John and Steve for the idea.

DB

[David Brady]

I love it when the grills come together!

Couldn't of done this without the help of loctite 480

Cheers

[John Clarke]

A very satisfying job, even better when put the vanes in the right way round as I did on the second time round.
Your fun now begins with the hinges, what jolly japes you'll have with those.
Patience.
Just out of interest if you want a finer mesh, Wick's, the building materials supplier does a very nice steel product that looks pretty good.
Ideal for the baskets too. £7.70

[David Brady]

HI John,

Thanks for the tip on the wicks steel mesh, I will get some. All my grills are now made....the vanes can only slot in one way?

Cheers

[John Clarke]

I managed to put some of my vanes in upside down. Trying to follow the originals patterns.

[David Brady]

Hi All,

Managed to do a little this week after many weeks of just looking at my armortek stuff.

My T piece angles up towards the turret! I've tried to resolve this but I need the height in the middle for the turret to sit level....anyone else encountered this?

Grills (especially the rears) required a good amount of small adjustments, the outermost ones now open with the centre grills in place, the front grills fitted with some manipulation.

Some reshaping as others have - slow progress with a file but with some filler and a little more work makes better.

[John Clarke]

Hi David, Glad see the files are out, nice job on the filling/topping up covers. Lettering time!

It looks as though your cross member is raising the T piece deck upwards at the turret end.

Before chopping my rear deck plate, it sloped upwards from both sides towards the middle, if left like that the rear deck grills would be all ways sloping upwards towards the middle in the down position.

Cutting out the T piece area, allowed the deck area to be refitted flattened. The deck grills need to actually lay flat as with full size tank. So to do this I added sandwich plate (see picture) underneath the T piece effectively lowering the resting point of the deck grills so that they now lie flat.

When fitting the extra crossmember support, it has to be lower than the rear turret ball race support bracket (supplied). To get this awkward height for the cross member between the chassis and the rear turret ball race support bracket, I measured up two lengths of aluminum T section
bolting them together to the correct height making a H section cross member. It looks like one piece crossmember, but it's actually two pieces cut so that fits together snuggly.

I also suggest nipping to B&Q for some smaller U section than the wade rail supplied. Not only does it look better is won't catch the turret either.

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[David Brady]

Appreciate your help and advice JC...Will give you a call to discuss as I have done as you have listed.
All best,
DB

[David Brady]

I've removed the 4mm spacer in-between my Tpiece.

Looks better now grills sit nice and level.

Better

Cheers

[John Clarke]

I'm glad you've solved it. Chieftain's full of surprises, everyone of them is a custom build.