Maybach HL-210 and HL-230 kits

[Roy Pickavance]

Hi John.
This has to be your best work yet. As I have said to you before your work is even better
in the flesh as they say than in your pics.
Regards Roy

[Robert E Morey]

Wow John, those engines are magnificent after painting. An incredible piece of work! They will make one great kit too! Superb job! Any plans for a Ford GAA tank engine for the Shermans? Hint Hint
Best regards,
Bob

[John Grima]

Thanks bob, I most defiantly see a GAA in my future but after doing these two Maybachs I will be taking a rest from engines for a little while until I recharge my batteries...or at least until I tackle another M4A3 or an M36 .

Out of all of the Sherman engines I think that the most insane and impressive ones to make would be the Chrysler Multibank, and the Continental R975 radial.

Currently I just completed the masters for the fan gearboxes, clutches, and plumbing equipment. Once ready I will post pics as well as pictures and a youtube video of the completed engine bay in detail.

[Robert E Morey]

John,
The Conti radial will be super cool to see in 1/6! I cannot imagine the amount of work involved to create a kit like this. I hope you sell a heck of a lot of them though!

Just out of curiosity how many molds does it take to produce say one type of maybach engine? I would imagine quite a few for each engine, and two mold halves per part. Wow, the hours (days, weeks) start to add up! I hope folks appreciate the amount of effort you put into these and all your products!

Great work,
Bob

[Carlos Vollenweider]

Beautiful work John,

What an excellent study on the two different engines.

[Dave Boller]

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[John Grima]

Thanks guys, I installed The engine and completed the compartment in my scratch built model.









All of the HL 210 engine bay components were added. These components include the fan gearbox, the fan shut off clutches, the engine bay cut off duct, and plumbing.



















These resin components and the resin engine bay components for the HL 230 have been added to the website http://www.eastcoastarmory.com/tiger.htm. The HL 230 set is different because rather than using one gearbox to power the fans with external clutches like on the HL 210, The 230 uses two smaller gearboxes for this function with a built in clutch.





lots of other small details were added like tank's throttle control cable, exhaust duct shut off cables and snorkeling shut off / venting equipment was also added.







One interesting feature that the Tiger I had built in was the feature to snorkel. To do this the tank's engine compartment and crew compartment were water tight, but the fan / fuel tank locations would free flood. Because of all of the duties the cooling fan cluster perform the tiger had an elaborate system for closing off the engine bay. The fan's drive shaft had a clutch mechanism that would interrupt the fan's power, and all of the cooling vents that would lead into the fan clusters would have a cable controlled shut off valves. Later in the production run to save time many of these features were removed or were disabled.



When I was pondering about starting this project I wanted to take advantage of the lack of a fifel system, and the lack of grenade guard grills. I wanted to do something special that I haven't done or seen before. I first started with the idea of the functional fan work, then from there the idea of the complete animated engine/ cooling gearboxes began to trickle and take shape in my head. When I was designing the Maybach engine kit I built in the spin able flywheel and spindle for this purpose.

The engine compartment animations include the main flywheel spinning,



exhaust smoke







and spinning fan cooling gearbox, universal shafts, and connecting shaft







To power the engine I hooked the engine up to a reduced geared electric motor, for the smoke system I used my standard system from harbor models. To make the smoke emerge from the stacks I casted a hollow tube in the exhaust manifolds so I can run the smoke through them direct to the exhaust stacks.



The part that required out of the box thinking was for the fan gearbox, to power the gearbox I utilized two small motors. The first motor was machined into the resin gearbox that is part of the engine. The wires were funneled through the engine crank case casting, a cover cap was then added to conceal the motor.



For the gearbox itself I actually transformed the static transmission casting into a small functional gearbox. The cavity for the gears and motor were all machined into the casting, The power wires emerge from the spot were the oil tubes would emerge from the real unit, thus concealing their purpose.







to hook up all of the drive shaft a small RC boat universal coupling shaft was mounted from the engine to the gearbox, and for the fan drives two modified small RC car drive shaft bones were utilized.







by using this format the optical illusion of the functional engine is accomplished. A sound system will also be added very soon.

A youtube video was uploaded which describes the compartment details in depth and shows the animations in action

More to come enjoy !

[yves mouton]

Hello John,

Outstanding job on the engine and cooling fans.
I watch the movie and it looks amazing.
You got a lot of modeling skills.

best regards Yves

[Ragnar Arntsen]

Hi all
Just want to say that I got my HL-230 kit today and it is even better than in the pictures. It will be a build for the winter