Panther #20

[Mark Weiss]

Since I reached a milestone today, so I'd thought I'd share it with this wonderful forum. My name is Mark and I live in Carlsbad, Ca. This is my first Armortek project, my experience comes from 1/5 scale on road racing and 1:20.3 narrow guage railroading. I was overwhelmed when I received my Panther shipment, and thought I had bit off more than I can chew. But with a lot of patience and about 350 hours of work the Panther moved under its own power today.

Thank you all who contribute to this forum, it is a treasure-trove of knowledge that has been invaluable in getting me this far. I'm not much for social networking, but with all the Panther G updates lately I thought I would add mine.

In case you are wondering about the Olive Drab coloring on my Panther, I am attempting to model "Cuckoo", so we''ll see how it goes. I have done a little weathering, as with most of my railroad scratch builds, I paint and weather as I build.

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[Vince Cutajar]

Very neat internal layout.

Vince

[Mark Weiss]

Thanks, lots of room in a Panther allows for options.

[Gary Rafferty]

Thanks, lots of room in a Panther allows for options.

Hi Mark

Fantastic install, and looks like it runs superb.

Cheers
Gary

[Malcolm.Plumb]

Lovely job
Love the very tidy installation

[Phil Woollard]

Nice work Mark, you drove it well and in scale, not like a racing tank like some do! The Panther is probably the best running 1/6 model you can buy, well in my opinion anyway.
It scales well, it runs well, it looks good, moves very much like the real thing, it's not to big and heavy, it's not too small, the track and track function is by far the best of the range and the maintenance is minimal ......"probably the best model Armortek produce" and therefore probably the best kit to start with! Just a shame about the road wheel rim mishap as it was a near perfect kit but easily rectified!

[Mark Weiss]

Thank you, I dealt with the road wheels by pushing the tires out to the outer edge to look scale, and ground the shoulders of the wheel hubs where I thought the next wheel would foul on them as the suspension moved. The inner wheels seemed a bit too wide for my liking and some would touch the next wheel if they were moving in opposite directions. Unfortunately I had already assembled everything when I noticed the possible fouling issue. So I ground the shoulders of the hubs and repainted. Not the optimal solution, If I would have noticed it earlier I would have machined them, but I was just trying to move on. On the initial run over small obstacles I didn't see any wheel fouling. Live and learn...

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[DaveMacri]

Thank you, I dealt with the road wheels by pushing the tires out to the outer edge to look scale, and ground the shoulders of the wheel hubs where I thought the next wheel would foul on them as the suspension moved. The inner wheels seemed a bit too wide for my liking and some would touch the next wheel if they were moving in opposite directions. Unfortunately I had already assembled everything when I noticed the possible fouling issue. So I ground the shoulders of the hubs and repainted. Not the optimal solution, If I would have noticed it earlier I would have machined them, but I was just trying to move on. On the initial run over small obstacles I didn't see any wheel fouling. Live and learn...

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I had the same issue when I built my Panther, the inner wheels were rubbing on the outers and spinning obviously the other way. I resolved it with spacers/washers on the outer sets to move just a tad and eliminate the rub. Runs perfect now and has about 3 hours time with no issues.
Agree with Phil it has now become my best runner compared to there other ones I have.

[Phil Woollard]

Umm I see, the move the tyres out fix has caused a far bigger problem, that's a shame. Now you need to run her through the mud to cover it all up.

[DaveMacri]

Phil,pm sent

[Mark Weiss]

Cuckoo color.jpg (107.96 KiB) Viewed 1693 times

In this colorized photo of Cuckoo it appears to me that some of the Zimmerit is missing from the glacis in the top middle section. As I am modeling my Panther as Cuckoo, I wonder what some of you think? Am I seeing this correctly?

[Mark Weiss]

I haven't posted any updates to #20, but I thought I would as I was just working on the weathering, but health concerns will interrupt me for awhile. I tried my hand at modeling Cuckoo as best I could trying to replicate some of her traits from the photos we have available. So no extra tracks on the right side, missing equipment, etc. She runs flawlessly, and I look forward to finishing her weathering and taking her out to play after I recover. I have to have my second open heart surgery in three years tomorrow, so when the weather cools off I and I feel better I will hopefully post a video of her out and about.

[Phil Woollard]

Your doing great work Mark

[Robert E Morey]

That looks excellent - Panther is my fav. Really nice. I like your plastic channel for the wiring - very tidy.

Best of luck with the procedure - I hope all goes well and your back on your wheels soon.
Bob

[Mark Weiss]

I wanted to try and enhance the recoil, as I felt it was underwhelming. This is what I came up with using Paul Sparkes as my inspiration. I'm pretty happy with the results. I used a 25mm cylinder and it triggers off the TX as I couldn't seem to get the the recoil module or the sound module to cooperate with the relay controlling the solenoid. My next trick will hopefully to add smoke...

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