My Beaut Aussie Cent

[Iacopo Di Giampietro]

Hello Stephen.
Your order and your cleaning inside the hull of the tank, are truly enviable! Compliments.
And congratulations for your interesting document!
Ciao,
Iacopo.

[Stephen White]

Thanks Iacopo. Pretty mundane stuff to report, just the mountings for the motion pack modules. Firstly the new bulkhead to mount the Speed Controller ahead of the motors creating a sound box in the engine compartment:







For the Auxiliary and Amplifier Modules, I've prepared mounting bars bolted to the hull sides:







With the LiFePO4 battery's reduced weight and size, that will go in the front of the hull and with the modules mounted vertically, the hull under the turret is pretty much clear.

Next, the mounting tray for the battery.

Regards

Stephen

[Stephen White]

Mounting tray for the battery. Construction is done but it will need finishing and priming and the retaining strap and padding fitted. Sorry about the rivets, Fabrice, standards are slipping. Trial fit looks OK. The battery is offset to port to allow some basic detail to be added to the driver's compartment if I decide to do it. I may just fit the longitudinal bulkhead and the access to the fighting compartment as not much will be visible once the driver figure is installed.









Regards

Stephen

[Stephen White]

Working through the motion pack installation. Rather than rely on double sided tape or foam, I prefer a hard mount for each box, which chews up the workshop time. The battery is now strapped in:



I find the eight way connectors for the turret loom very stiff to use, although they do loosen up with time. I choose to replace them with a cut down ATX power connector, which gives a good positive lock but is easy to separate:



The smoke system is installed, smoker on a plate on the hull bottom with Adrian's fan regulator and the switch on the rear mount beside the PSU:



I put the turret on for the first time to do some sound tests, so a bit of landmark. I tried the speakers in a number of positions, including flat and standing vertical. It's surprising what a difference standing them vertically makes - the lower notes seem to resonate much more and produce a deeper tone. By facing the two speakers in opposite directions and putting one in a sound box in the rear hull and one under the turret, there is a bit of separation between the gun and engine sounds. Rear speaker hard mounted to the new bulkhead but supported with foam:









Just the front speaker, recoil box and rx to go.

Regards.

Stephen

[Kevin Hunter]

Hi Stephen
Forgive me asking, but presumably that's the forward speaker attached to the bulkhead in your photo? I'm curious about the rear speaker, have you hard mounted that to the hull floor? It can't go on the bulkhead due to the speed controller.
Not knowing much about these things, is the rear speaker affected at all by the magnetic fields from the two motors?
Finally, is there room to get the exhaust tube from the smoke unit straight over the speaker or will you need to offset that around it?
Still enjoying your work very much
Regards
Kevin

[Stephen White]

Hi, Kevin, well spotted, it is indeed the front speaker. For the rear speaker, I've made a tray which I've secured to the hull bottom. The speed controller has to come out to get at the mounting screw but that is very quick to do. I've tested it with motors at full pelt and there is no EMC interference.









For the smoker, I don't intend to use the kit routing. I find the shorter the piping the better, so I'm going to run the pipe from the smoker up to the T piece and then exit the hull through new holes direct into the exhaust boxes and then out through the fishtails.

Just the Rx and the Recoil Unit to go. I've started to make a similar tray and will secure it to the hull side, next to the Auxiliary Module. That's it then and onto the engine decks. Paul Scott has spent the weekend photographing his stock of decks - thanks Paul. The decks are, as expected, more complicated than at first sight. Both the radiator decks and the transmission decks are interlocked to protect the engine compartment from grenade attack (which also made them a pain to raise for maintenance). Here is a sample of Paul's great photos:












Regards

Stephen

[Kevin Hunter]

Thanks Stephen.
Given your other numerous mods, I should have guessed you'd change the smoke tubing to suit your internal layout.
Can't wait to see what you do with those deck hatches!
Cheers
Kevin

[Stephen White]

Completing the motion pack installation. Recoil unit hard mounted to the hull side with its own mounting tray and finally, the Rx fixed to the transverse bulkhead with - oh well, I cracked, Velcro:



Final installation layouts:





Now back to detailing, with the engine decks. With Paul Scott's marvellous photo references to work from, I've made a start with the transmission decks. These have prominent welds on the top surface:





So, I took this opportunity to explore the use of Cx5 thermoplastic clay instead of Milliput.Cx5 can be a solid, soft clay or liquid, depending on temperature. I've found a novel use for a one-man fondue pot - to heat small quantities of Cx5 (In front of it is the extruder which came with a huge selection of shape formers and is metal so it can be heated to release the Cx5 when needed):



After milling out two channels on the bare decks, next step is to heat some clay and extrude some 2mm sausages:



Then it's just a question of laying a strip of Cx5 into the channel and using a low powered heat gun, melt the clay into shape in the channel. With Milliput, the working time is very limited and I always found myself rushing, generally with too much material or, if too little, finding it not sticking. With Cx5, the clay flows into the weld channel and can then be shaped as many times as needed to get a regular flow of the right depth, finally using the weld tool as usual to create the flow patterns.







When it solidifies, the clay is easily worked with a craft knife or in this case a sharp straight edge:



I'm really pleased with the result and as I learn more about how Cx5 behaves, can see a lot of uses for it. For me, the whole exercise is so much more relaxed and controllable than Milliput.



Regards

Stephen

[martin pitcairn]

Stephen, another fantastic build in process, just wondered where did you get your CX 5 from? it looks really useful, please continue to let us know how you are getting on with it .

Thanks
Martin

[Stephen White]

Martin hi. I'm learning all the time with Cx5 but as you can guess, I'm seeing it as a replacement for Milliput iin many applications. It was only launched this year and is currently only available direct from the manufacturer here:

http://store.adambeaneindustries.com

They're pretty good and I got mine quite quickly and with no additional charges.

All the best.

Stephen

[Kevin Hunter]

I suspect your use of CX5 is going to generate a lot of interest on here Stephen.
By the way, your "extruder" looks like an old fashioned icing syringe. Did it come with the CX5, or have you raided the kitchen drawers......?
Regards
Kevin

[Stephen White]

Truth to tell, Kevin, we have a lady in the village who is an expert cake decorator and she happened to be at the village micro-brewery (also known as the "Sunday dog walking club") when tanks were being discussed a couple of weeks ago.

That said, if anyone is thinking of using Cx5, they do a very good, downloadable DVD of how to use it (and it showed the extruder too).

I'd better keep quiet now or I'll sound like a salesman.

All the best.

Stephen

[Stephen White]

A wading kit was provided for Centurion, a legacy of lessons learnt at the end of the Second World War. Although there is a film on Pathe of the kit being tested at the Leyland factory, I don't believe it was ever used in anger. The fittings for the kit were however included at the factory, which the Illustrated Parts List rather curiously refers to as "Wading Weldware". That explains a lot of otherwise obscure and useless additions to the engine decks, all of which add to the discomfort of kipping on the back decks. I've started to fit the "weldware".

Paul Scott provided some excellent dimensioned photos, from which I could see that the transmission deck hinges are oversize and need to be reduced if the wading dams are to be in the correct place. These photos explain:





Reducing the hinges removes one of the two mounting bolts but one and a pin to prevent rotation should be sufficient:



The engine and transmission deck hinges interlock with the mounting bosses. Lining up the pins and fitting the hinges took most part of a day. Then to fabricate the wading kit mounts and apply them to the decks:





The dams are fitted with a couple of brass spigots to provide a solid mounting:









Next the resilient rail mountings at the other end.

Regards

Stephen

[Stephen White]

Made a start on the mountings for the resilient rails (aka gun depression rails). On the real ones, the tops overlap the sides and back, so I decided to fabricate from brass:









Now they need the internal dividers.

Regards

Stephen

[Derek Attree]

Hi Stephen
Great detail this is going even further than your PzIII

Derek