Fitting Olafs late steel tracks

[David Brady]

Hi,

I have been busy fitting Olaf's upgrade steel tracks to my king tiger, they are an exact 3D copy of the original item. I hope some of you find the pictures interesting

Kind Regards
David

[Robert E Morey]

David,
Those tracks look awesome. It looks like your had to make new sprocket rings to fit them on. Fantastic one of kind addition.
Best regards,
Bob

[David Brady]

Hi,
Sprocket rings were supplied by Olaf, I think these tracks were tested on a few KT before they were implemented on production models towards the end of the war
Regards
David

[Roger Sleep]

Hi dave
New tracks are looking good, revived your old ones yesterday many thanks for sorting that out for me can't wait to get my tank finished will use your tracks on it and keep the new ones for spare,
All the best have a good holiday
Regards Roger

[David Brady]

Hi Roger
Save your new set for display to prevent the chevron detail wearing off, use my old tracks for running about.
Regards
David

[simon_manning]

happy christmas dave, olafs tracks look amazing, a lot of effort by olaf to reproduce these, i wish i had thought more about buying a set when they were available, a bit of a rarity and nice extra to have, regards simon.

[Per Sonnervik]

Firstly, A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone on this Forum.

Secondly, I agree that Olaf Piekenbrink’s late tracks look extremely good and I’ve bought them myself. Though from an accurate modeller’s point of view they have one major flaw – the c-c distance between the track pins is not accurate. The original track designation is Kgs 73/800/152 and the 152 mm is the c-c distance of these tracks in full scale. In our scale this is 25,3 but on Olof’s track links this is 26,2 – quite a difference and will have an effect when making the sprocket ring.

To work out the sprocket ring there is one crucial measurement that needs to be calculated for the ring to work with the track links – the pitch diameter. The original sprocket ring has the following pitch diameter:
18 * 25,3 = 455,4 (circumference) / 3,14… (pi) = 144,95 –> appr. 145.

On Olof´s track links the pitch diameter is appr. 150 which means that the sprocket ring need to be 5 mm larger in diameter than it should be in 1/6 scale, which is quite a lot.

Besides from not looking quite right in scale (the sprocket ring) it also some affects in the practical world: the gap between the track links and sponson´s overhang (at the front) is reduced to appr. only 4 mm with Olof’s sprocket ring which some modeller’s in Sweden found to be a problem – jamming the track links against this spot especially when reversing.

It would be interesting to hear if anybody else using these track links have had this problem.

Per

[David Brady]

Hi Per
Thanks for the detailed explanation, I new the sprocket rings were slightly over sized, how will you overcome this? I have not noticed any running issues I have 86 links per side
Regards
David

[Paul Morris]

Hi David and all.
Looking good ...... tank looks familiar
Cheers Paul.

[David Brady]

Hi,
Thanks for the comments, Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all

[Per Sonnervik]

Hi David,

I got a sprocket ring drawing from Olaf and this shows the pitch diameter of his procket ring is 152 mm, see below;




which means the pitch diameter is 7 mm overscaled!!


As I scratchbuilt a new Tiger II hull based on original drawings plus made the sprocket ring also based on original drawing but with a changed pitch diameter of 150 mm I have now I gap to the sponson of appr. 8,5 mm so I don´t think I´ll have a problem with the tracklinks hitting this spot.

My sprocket ring drawing looks like this;



and on the model it looks like this;



Per

[David Brady]

Hi Per,

Simply outstanding! Now how do I obtain a set of these?
Regards
David

[simon_manning]

interesting topic, per did you use the original armortek sprockets and then make new rings to suite olafs tracks, is that how i read it? regards simon.

[Per Sonnervik]

Hi David and Simon,

The sprocket rings were custom made by me to fit a heavily modified Armortek drive wheel and I only made four of them. Hopefully I´ll be able to update my Jagdtiger build in a couple of days and show what was done. It´s not rocket science and anyone with a reasonable large lathe and a mill can do the same.

Per

[Kent Wiik]

Thanks guys for posting this interesting topic.
Those links from Olaf is a wort of art, congrat those of you who has them.

Per, that is one good looking sprocket, well done!
Notice you have lock bars made of steel like the real thing, nice touch.
Don't forgett the bends...
Look forward for more about your amazing build(s).

Kind regards
Kent