Steves Panther A

[Derek Attree]

Hi Steve
Your doing a great job on the Panther A brings back memories
of doing my Panther G back in the day I still regret selling her some times.

Kent Great photos thanks for posting.

Regards

Derek

[Stephen White]

Hi, Steve, just echoing what Simon and Derek are saying, great to see another build thread on the Forum, especially as interesting as yours. One day, your model will sit alongside its original.... now there's a photo! I'd like to do that with my Cent but Australia is a long way.....

Keep it coming.

Stephen

[Steve Norris]

Derek, Stephen
Thanks for the replies, Armortek have done a good job with the Panther and it's one of my favourite kits.
Stephen, it's a good point you made about getting it with the original, you never know one day it may happen.
Regards
Steve

[Steve Norris]

Not much to report today.
I have spent the last 2 days putting the tracks together and this evening getting the black crap of my hands
I have also finished the Zim on the bins and these are now ready for some paint.

New lids and mounting frame added

Regards
Steve

[Steve Norris]

Bit more done

Bins mounted and idlers dropped into place to see how it looks

Regards
Steve

[Paul Wills]

Hi Steve,

I hope you are well mate, I love tuning in to see your build progress. its been a while since I last looked in and its coming alone nicely.

One question, how did you achieve the flame cut overlapped joints?

Paul.

[Steve Norris]

Hi Paul
Hope you are well, it's a long time since we had a North West tank meet.
The flame cut effect was achieved using a small drum shaped grinding bit in my Dremmel and just dragging it across the area you want the flame cut multiple times. Some ares had to be filled before I could do the effect and for this I used Araldite steel adhesive.
Regards
Steve

[Steve Norris]

A simple mod for Panther builders that may prevent a suspension jam.

As supplied the suspension torsion pivot is shown on the left, remove the top flange as shown on the right on one of the sixteen pivots.

The modified pivot now fits into the left front position and allows a far greater degree of rotation hopefully avoiding a jam against the bottom ot the EMD fitting.

Regards
Steve

ps. not sure why the second photo is upside down, it's OK if you click on it

[Steve Norris]

Tracks on for the first time

Looks OK

The ride height looks good, a bit high but a lot of weight to add yet

Another view of the ride height

On thing I did notice when adding the wheels was that they had a wobble on the axle, Yves also noted the same problem. Hopefully an easy fix will be to add a thin shim washer behind each wheel which should take up the unwanted end float on the axles.

More to follow

Regards
Steve

[yves mouton]

Hello Steve,

Nice work you done on the panther.
Ps: i bolt my inner wheels together, for the outer wheels i try to use a shim like you say.
Best regards Yves

[Steve Norris]

Armoured schnorkel cover next

Open

Closed

The intake schnorkel will be added later hopefully

Regards
Steve

[Phil Woollard]

Hi Steve, have I missed something regarding the lovely exhaust brackets? They look the business ...regards Phil.

[Steve Norris]

Here you go Phil, trial fit of exhausts and brackets.

May not use the supplied tubes as they have an overly thick wall thickness

Regards
Steve

[Phil Woollard]

Looks good Steve, the kit exhausts are a little heavy, I have to make longer ones for the Bergepanther so I will not use them for that build.Regards Phil.

[Kent Wiik]

Hi Steve,

Nice progress well done.

You can keep the kit pipes just take the thickness down with a Dremel or make a new ends as I did with
the excellent aftermarket exhaust pipes with cast guards Bob M once made.



Not that hard to make, here is how I did it:
(scroll down to last 1/4 of the page)

http://www.armortek.co.uk/Forum3b/viewt ... &start=120

Kind regards
Kent