Chris' Tiger

[Armortek]

Hi Chris

I am surprised that your pannier floors are 1mm too wide. Sometimes we get metal deformation in small areas at the front and rear, which prevent the face sitting down against the hull side. This can be quickly removed to get the required fit. You dont need to worry about the gentle bowing in the hull plates. This is completely normal. The assembly fasteners will easily pull the plates flat as you build the kit. The front bulkhead is assembled with the flange forward. The 85 degree bend is designed to allow the control modules to fit on the pannier floors in the motion pack.

Hope this helps
Mark

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Mark,
The floors are at least 104 mm wide over their entire lengths, originally more over some of the tabs that did not line up with the cut edge. Their shape make them a little hard to measure exactly. The area where they go is 103 mm when the upper hulls are perfectly aligned with the glacis and rear.

I never got stuck with the other things - they solved themselves eventually, but it is good to know that the leaning forward bulkhead is intentional and for a purpose.

Thanks,
/Chris

[Armortek]

Hi Chris

On the Armortek Tiger 1, the pannier floors are 94mm wide.

Mark

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Oops! Yes, that shoud have read 94 and93 respectively!

/Chris

[Armortek]

Hi Chris

94mm is the correct dimension. If you find that this is too wide on your assembly it may be that you have a problem elsewhere. Check that the lower hull sides are fully up to the front and rear plates and that the sides are vertical. The dimension across the outside of the the lower hull assembly should be 320mm.

Commercial aluminium plate does vary in thickness, so it could just be that you have thicker than nominal plates and a build up of tolerances.

Mark

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Great! I have exactly 320. It turned out to be too tedious to file away the excess of the pannier floors, so I hammered down the bend on the rivet side. I believe the bend was slightly less than 90 degrees. Doing this produced a bend slightly in excess of 90 degrees. That gave me almost the width I was looking for (93 mm).

Realigning the entire chassis without the pannier floors and retightening the bolts produced a very square model. Then reattaching the floors, still with a bit of a squeeze but now much less so, did the trick!

The rear is now perfect:

The front has never looked better and the right hand side is equally perfect:

The glacis now not only sits perfectly in its notch, it's also held down firmly by the floors. Previously there was so much tension that the glacis was pushed up about three mm and was quite springy:

As good as it gets:


Next, I'll revisit the bulge in the deck.

Thanks,
/Chris

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

To take care of the deck bulge, I let the grinder loose on the forward bulkhead. Some adjustment was necessary on the rear as well after I narrowed the pannier floors.

Finally, some really fun milling!

My previous modeling metal was brass and it's much harder. Aluminum is a charm to work with!

Recessing the square bolts as Luca suggested:

It's only possible to recess just a little on these gratings, but it does wonders for the looks!


Cheers,
/Chris

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Predicament - oh no!

The mid hole in the radiator covers on the inboard side is not drilled through the sheet metal, neither the deck nor the engine hatch frame. I now discover the reason: There is not supposed to be a mid hole on that side! Ouch! At least not in any of the drawings I have.



Since both the engine hatch frame and decks don't have the hole, I assume the model was designed correctly. There are also no traces of a recess in the casting, leading me to think that the recess is a simple matter of human error that sneaked in during the finishing of the casting?


Don't know yet how to handle the situation, but it appears that I have two options:
1) To drill for the bolt and put one there. That would fool anyone except possibly Roland and Kent Easy way out!
2) To plug the recess with chemical metal and paint with silver paint, as I want metal finish on my Tiger. Don't know if I can pull that off without the mend screaming "look here" to any viewer and thereby attracting attention to any imperfection. I *might* have to learn to master that technique anyway.

Difficult decision, but really, the kind that makes the project a fun project and not a tedious job!

I'll sleep on it!

Cheers,
/Chris

[Adrian Harris]

Option 3 - swap that part with someone who will be painting their Tiger and hence will not care about the filled hole being a different material

Adrian.

[Rocky Sembritzky]

Chris,

I am glad you pointed that out before I milled mine. A little JB Weld should fill the holes nicely.

Rocky

[Roland Mann]

Christofer you have to fill the hole ! I will check it ! And please no more mistakes. Das wird von der Waprüf kontrolliert !

Roland

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

@Rocky and Adrian:
I'm not sure I get this, are you suggesting that I'm the only one on the planet who got parts with this error? I would assume that to be a CNC thing and that they would all be alike?

@Roland:
I was afraid of that. I was thinking along the lines of putting the extra bolt there for now, and postpone major surgery in such visible places until I master the craft. After all, the fill can be carried out later. Hopefully the Waprüf inspection can be postponed until then?

In depressing times like this, I like to sit and play with the engine hatch for a while. Wow, what a piece! Laser (?) cut, totally without any burrs, requiring no finishing, very good looking and ah, the weight! It has almost the right "clunk" when closing! That piece alone can save any day!

Cheers,
/Chris

[Paul Morris]

Chris.
Why not tap the hole, and fit a bolt fron underneath and simply powerfile the bolt flush with the suraface, end of drama.
Cheers Paul.

[yves mouton]

Hi Chris,

I have used milliput to close the hole on the left and the right side.
this is a two componnet product that you have to mix

best regards

[Dave Hill]

until Christoffer pointed out this matter i wasnt aware of a miss
drill in the casting.
On looking; yes i would say ALL would be so drilled for this production run.
I will use milliput as suggested by Yves to fill in the holes.