Easy Eight No22

[David Hartwell]

Then made the upper rear panel brackets.

Fitted below the rear luggage rack, more on that later on, then checked the grills in the upper position.

This bit I couldn't do so sent them to the company I use and had the hashed out area machined down.

Really pleased with the result.

Lots of prepping and painting.

And that is it for this week, hope you are enjoying the journey. Have a good w/end all. Dave.

[Aaron Taylor]

Wow that thing is already looking heavy looking forward to this build thread!!

[David Hartwell]

Thank you for the comment Aaron, glad to hear you are enjoying the read.

Back to the Diff Casing. Out with the hacksaw to remove the ends.

Filed square and level to the gear casing flange. The side of the front mudguards will be there, more on them later on.

Infill piece.

2 countersunk fixings fitted.

Counterbored fixing holes and a little bevel filed. The piece fitted below in that picture is to small, replaced it with a slightly wider one.

Piece fitted for the mudguard side to sit on and to prevent there being a hole at the top of the right angle mudguard support that bridges the gap. Hope that makes sense but as I said I will cover that later.

Then the Glacis went away, along with the angle it sits at for the top cut out, to have all the hashed areas machined out.

1/8x 1/4 pieces.

Countersunk fixings added.

More on the other bits on the Glacis to follow.

[Dale jordan]

Nice detail David are you using Andy's hobbie's easy eight for Reference , if not which books ? Dale

[David Hartwell]

Thank you for the comment Dale. In answer to your question, I don't have any books on the subject. I looked at as many reference photos and videos of the real thing and then worked it out through trial and error. I have a 1/35th model and it is really detailed so I have taken some measurements off of that and scaled them up. That was really useful for the bits I added under the floor. Regards Dave.

Moving on.

I didn't want the fixings showing on the light and horn guards.So I made a jig with holes matching the existing ones and the ones I have added on the Glacis. Then I cut the support bracket through the fixing hole and switched the legs to the opposite side.

Then spot welded the joint to do away with the rivets.

Mig plugged some m4 countersunk screws, then filed flat.

Then one at a time replaced the fixing screws on the jig with the countersunk screws, tack welding each one as I went.

On the horn guard I spot welded a piece on to give me two more fixing points.

Made another jig and spot welded all the fixing points.

As with the light guards mig welded to the csk screws and filed level with the foot.

Fitted like so with nuts on the back.

Then fixed lifting eyes with csk screws.

Nuts on the back.

I put the guards back on the jigs to fill and prep the guards. Ready for fitting.

All filled prepped and painted. It would be an understatement to say that filling tested my patience.

[David Hartwell]

Working across the Glacis. I have added the the travel stop pointy bits to the gun cradle feet.

Marked out.

3mm slots machined.

Think the plate needs a tiny bit of trimming at this point.I added a countersunk fixing behind the pin hole, threaded on the inner side of the leg to clamp the three pieces together.

Then filed the added piece to match the existing curve.

I used a cap head fixing through the pin hole whilst filing.

Then I filed off the tips of the pointy bits to match the brackets.

Checking the angle it sits at .

I marked the landing blocks to match the feet.

Then filed the sides off.

Then filed a gentle curve to the bracket to get rid of the sharp corners at the front.

Apart from filling and painting that's them done.

[David Battson]

Hi David,
Really enjoying your Easy Eight build. Lots of well thought through and very nicely engineered solutions to your detail upgrades. Keep up the good work.
David

[David Hartwell]

Thank you for your comment David, glad you are enjoying it. What I am trying to do is enhance the parts supplied rather than start from scratch. I am not trying to achieve scaled detail parts like some of the fabulous builds on here. There is still plenty of poetic licence in what I am up to, which some may like and some may not. That is life. Dave.

So the last of the bits on the glacis, for now. I wanted to get a smoother operation of the m/c gun.

Decided to fit a spherical bearing.

The hole was bored out and the hole down the bottom was enlarged to allow the spherical bit of the bearing to poke through.

That was as far in, without going through the front, as I could get it. For what this is doing I am happy once it is loctited in that it will be ok.

Then I decide to file the hump bit and try to make it like the smaller ones I have seen on photos. I couldn't quite get what I wanted as I would have gone through the casting if I had kept going.

Sunk in to the glacis like many others have done.

I added the little dimple to the sticky out bit of the casting. I have seen that hole on lots of photos but no idea what is in it.

Then made the hoop bit out of 3 mm diameter bar and used little pop rivet heads to represent the little things round it.

Used the rest of the pop rivet shafts to make some fixing points.

That's what it looks like with the m/c gun fitted.

I shall show you what I did to the M/c gun tomorrow.

[David Hartwell]

Front m/c gun.

Flatted a little bit of the front face of the m/c gun mantlet so I had enough room to fit some m2 grub screws.

I wanted less of the barrel sticking out the front.

The 8mm diameter section was machined of further, four holes worth . That will allow more to go through the bearing.

A little slot machined across the end. The replica end bit is destined for the turret further on.

Then a very thin walled sleeve/spacer was made to go between the mantlet and the bearing. Just long enough to prevent the mantlet binding on the casting.

I then placed a spare bearing I had between the spacer and the inner sleeve and drilled a clearance hole through both parts for a counter sunk fixing. I didn't want to use loctite on that part.

Then drilled the top hole large enough for the head of the fixing to go through.

You can see the head of the fixing down the barrel. Checked to make sure the led and cable would still go past it , plenty of room.

Connected up and tested.Nice and smooth movement.

The new length sticking out the front.

Well that's about it, for now, at the front. Hope there was something of interest in there. Now where to next.

[David Hartwell]

Back to the idler wheels.

I posted that photo earlier on and said I would explain further on. What I have tried to do is make the fixings a little more representative of the real thing. The curved section of the tension plate I filed the flat angles on. Then I used a knurled female thumb nut with the centre drilled out to act as a washer and look something like a splined shaft. Then the retaining nut was a thread adaptor, with the threaded end cut off. Hopefully representing the hexagonal shaft.

With the wheels I started off by inserting helicoils for the fake wheel studs. The holes were really a little to large for the tap but I have loctited the helicoils in as well. I wouldn't have done this if it was a structural fixing but ok for what its doing. The fake wheel studs are m3 thread.

Then I drilled and tapped a new set of m2.5 holes for fixing the hub cap, instead of using the original m3 ones.

I noticed the pins were shorter than the depth of the hole in each of the rims. I know its highly unlikely but the pin could end up disappearing in one hole when the two halves go together. I fitted longer pins just shorter than the combined measurement of the two depths.

Next I drilled ,tapped and counter bored for the cap head bolts, to bolt the two halves together.

I ordered another pair of hub caps and bored the centre out as a clearance hole for the idler shaft. Also added a radius to the edge of the front hub cap.

The fake wheel hub alignment pins were done as so. I drilled an m3 tapping hole through the rim then tapped the outer sides to fit an m3 flat point grub screw. I put the allen key through the hole and wound them in backwards until just proud but not showing the thread.

The new disc is going in the back to hide the bearing, also the fake wheel nuts are very close to the idler shaft. probably fine but I wanted a bit more clearance.

First the hole the disc goes in was taken 2.5 mmm further down. Then 2.5mm was taken off the whole back surface to give some clearance. Once the bearing was fitted the new disc was fitted with csk screws.

Painted the inner surfaces then loctited and bolted together.

Then filled to hide the fixings, painted and tyres fitted.

The dome washers under the fake wheel studs were made by drilling the heads of m4 dome head fixings.

[David Hartwell]

Onto the road wheels.

Exactly the same as I did on the idler wheels at the front.

Had one of those, that will be a good idea moments, only to get to the end and think was that really worth doing. The amount of time it took for any benefit adding those circlips to retain the bearings probably wasn't worth it.

On the back I tapped the holes, m4 and fitted grub screws to represent the ends of the studs.

Then fitted m2.5 grub screws to blank the two little holes off.

Prepping, painting and final cleaning before tyre bonding.

Filled, flatted and painted the fake wheel studs and washers, 212 of them, on the product line.

Never again.

Radius applied to the front edge of the hub cap and replaced the rivets with some small fixings. I would have rather had the 5 bolt pattern, rather than the six, but I couldn't justify the cost of having 24 new ones made. So I shall stick with the ones supplied.

[David Hartwell]

Thought I would make an attempt at improving the oil reservoirs. Started by slimming them down except for the square bit.

Marking the filing lines as I go.

Filing and removing the back section of the ring .

Before and after.

The fill plug is an RC car wheel stud.

Five more to go.

Lots of prepping to get rid of the filing marks, then paint.

That's them done.

[David Hartwell]

So last time we got to the completed oil reservoirs. Then I started looking at what could be done with the shock absorbers and decided not a lot. They're really only acting as travel limits. At this point the sensible voice in my head was saying don't do this but we carry on regardless. So I decided to make working dampers.

I managed to find cylinders the same diameter as the ones supplied, with the stroke I was looking for. Then after much measuring and head scratching sent a set of drawings and had the basic components made.

No turning back now.

Drilling, tapping etc.

Slotted the pins.

Lots of filing to the ends and cut the slots for clamping the pins.

How the original oil reservoir will look.

Just to get to that point took a hell of a lot of time. They are the same centre line measurement between pins as the original ones supplied. I built up one of the bogies and nothing clashes or with the little return rollers.

Test fitted them to the hull.

You can push the hull down and it nicely returns to level.

I had to slim the top of the swing arms very slightly. They have been nicely smoothed when I prepped them to get rid of the little step. Well there you have it, still room for improvement here and there but hopefully getting there. Will they ultimately work, who knows. I need to finish the whole thing before I will know.

[David Hartwell]

Hopefully making the mudguard brackets a little more realistic. Two are going to become one.

Cut the tags off.

Filed angles to the ends.

Made a jig up and tacked them together.

Cleaned up tacks.

Then cut half of one of the long bits off. Filed angles and added it to the opposite end.

Then the ends were filed to get the slope and after that the holes drilled.

So the set supplied with the kit became one side. Then I purchased another set and repeated the process.

Square nut behind the support.

Lots of cleaning up and prep work required before these are painted.

[David Hartwell]

Decided to make some fixing plates for the spare track links rather than hang them on the little brackets. I wasn't sure exactly what they were supposed to look like but they can easily be changed if I find out.

Countersunk screws from the inside.

I found quite a few photos of the track links that way up so went with it rather than the way they are in the build manual.

Sorry for jumping back up the other end but I forgot to mention the grill when I was showing you the other bits under there. I basically went round with angle to start off with.

Then cut a 2mm plate to fit. I really wanted it all the way to the back but I had boxed myself into a corner by adding the fixing blocks in the corners. I wasn't changing them so stepped the plate over them.

Marking out the cut out.

That's the components with the 3mm strip to step it over the blocks.

Assembled.

Fitted.

With the grills lowered you can't really see the step.

Must admit looks very industrial in there.

Nobody will ever know what's hidden in there. Think I have covered everything under the back except for the exhausts and they are on the winter projects list.