Neil's early Tiger 1 (2023)

[neil graham]

I have been away for a few days, so not much progress.

Untightened the suspension arms so I could paint underneath them.....I should have done this before I set the 30 degree angle, but forgot.

Arms up!!!

I did two coats of the dunkelgelb on this narrow strip under the arms, I don't want to do the rest of the side armour plates until I have the drive casings on....and I can't get them on until my 2021 option packs arrive with the missing CP2033 drive mounts.... hopefully only a few more days until that arrives.

Arms down, ready for painting.

So, in the meantime I have moved on and I have attempted to 'lightly chamfer' the sprocket rings teeth. I found this a little scary as my files ate the aluminium easily.....so hopefully this is 'lightly'

Enough chamfer?

Oh, and my batteries and link arrived, though in separate packages..... now just the balancer & charger to come.

Hmmm, electrons

Now I need to think about a controller! It never ends.

[Tim Carr]

Just bought a pair of those batteries in 30mah.

Got the following monitor.
https://uk.eco-worthy.com/collections/l ... -batteries

Bought their charger also.

Paid less than $200 USd for everything shipped to me.
Charged one battery yesterday.

More in another thread.

You may have been away for a few days, but you are doing great on your build. Way to Go!

Later Tim

[neil graham]

Very excited, my option packs showed up today. Big thank you to Tom over in WA

This box has been all around Australia!

Spent the last few days crawling over the forum topics and interwebs about RC.....in the end it was confirmation on page 1 of the motion pack instructions about what was used in testing...and it was one of the two systems I was considering. So I just bought it

FRSKY TARANIS X9D PLUS 2019
FRSKY RX8R
FrSky FAS100 ADV (this will be for battery monitoring over radio....no idea how yet, but saw this in the forums)

[Adrian Harris]

One thing to note is the FAS100 has XT90 connections, so you'll need to get a pair of male and female XT90 connectors and insert them into the supply from the battery, as I think the stock connections are XT60.

Adrian.

[neil graham]

Things have mostly arrived....and I had the best/worst time trying to figure out how to work the damn Taranis!

Anyway, I have scratched & etched the basic option packs parts and the sprockets, will prime tomorrow.

Etched

Spent most of the day figuring out how RC worked and battling the Taranis.....

Making both sticks fully sprung!

But..... its alive!!
[/media]

Not programmed yet for 1 stick driving, failsafes or anything like that, but that looks relatively simple to do

[neil graham]

All the idler & sprocket bits are now primed, and I have begun to install them.

Shiny!

Motor mounts went on first

This is just primer

Now the mounts are on I decided to give the internals of my tank a coat of 'German Red Brown' paint, which basically looks just like the red oxide primer. I decided to use the 0.8mm needle on my airbrush and I was shocked at how much paint it spat out, but it was perfect for the task at hand, I did the entire interior of the lower hull in less than 2 minutes.

That's now paint, not primer

I decided to lubricate the gears with a dry PTFE spray and once that was dry to install the drive casings to the hull. Just using two bolts on each so that I could test that they still spun easily, the left side was fine but the right side clearly couldn't freely spin. I took it off and noticed that the very centre of the gear had a small nodule of steel....so I filed that off, but it made no difference. If I loosened the bolts just a little the gear would spin but the casing would wobble. So, off it came again and I started the process of filing & sanding the brass plug down, testing, repeat....and after eventually taking off about 1mm it now spins nicely.

filed the centre nodule down, then sanded

That's wood clogging the file, not the brass or dunkelgelb :-)

Both sides now spin freely and do the same 3-4 full rotations if I spin them as hard as I can...... but the left sides bearings are much noisier. Should I be worried??

[neil graham]

Now that the drive casings are on, its time to paint the sides. I changed my airbrush back to my 0.5mm needle, and it was clearly the wrong choice simply as it took ages, so much so that it was starting to spit paint snot. I will definitely be going back to the 0.8mm firehose for the second coat.

edit: I should note that the 0.5mm needle was perfect for the detail around the drive casing.....

Started bolting the gear rings to the sprockets, did the outside ring first.

Starting the inside rings, I wasn't able to use my nylocs as the bolts weren't long enough. I tried one and over tightened it trying to get enough of the bolt into the nylon insert, but it wasn't to be. There is not enough length of bolt for my mind even for the standard nuts supplied and besides, I hate using thread locker on such tiny bolts. So, will wait until tomorrow to see if my specialist fastener place has M2.5 x 10mm bolts.

Maybe this is stupid?
Is there a reason the bolts are so short? I cant see it interfering with the tracks...but maybe I am blind. Opinions/criticisms welcome

[Adrian Harris]

Looks like the instructions have changed, as the sprocket rings on the Tiger 131 kit used M3x10 button head bolts.

The sprockets on the actual Tiger 131 tank are held in place with the bolts on the inside and the nuts on the outside, with very little spare thread showing:

Adrian.

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Regarding lubrication of the final gears:
PTFE has nowhere near the required pressure specifications. You need an extreme pressure (EP) type lubricant on those gears. I have been using a standard MoS2/graphite car grease successfully for ten years on my T1, which runs a lot. When I disassembled and cleaned everything, I followed the Armortek instructions (of my 2010 issue) and sprayed with PTFE lubricant instead. A few months later I had to get new gear sets. I have similar experience with another model.

//

[neil graham]

Are PM's down for everyone, or just me?

[Tim Carr]

Down for me also.
Working 2 days ago.
But, they said we might have PM problems with new upgrade.

I would double check about what Grease others are using.

Later Tim

[neil graham]

Its good to be back

[Tim Carr]

Yes, it is.

Later Tim

[neil graham]

I got my longer bolts and finished off the sprockets. These phillips head screws are on the 'inside' of the sprockets so should not be visible....but I feel much better about being able to use the nylocs.

Locked!

Only button heads they had....

Painting the main drive sprockets as well as idlers & arms. Will put these on after giving them (and the main hull) their coats of matt varnish.

Sprockets & idlers getting ready to go on

In between paint drying, I battled these small hinge brackets. None fit of course, though that was partly due to me giving them a coat of primer first. Sanded (and then filed) until they all fit

Getting these to fit was a battle

Also tinkering with a few other things. The FrSky battery sensor power adapters arrived, now that is all working and my Taranis displays the battery voltage on screen

Battery telemetry sensor (and adapters), works a treat

Oh, and I painted something not dunkelgelb or red brown!!

I finally got to use a paint colour other than red & yellow

[neil graham]

First coat done, took ages... but its looking very 'tanky'