StuG III 014 - A Team Effort

[Darren_Hagarty]

Road Wheels
We now have 11 of the 12 Road Wheel sets mounted on the suspension arms. To get the last one on we'll have to remove the front drive sprocket as we bypassed the suspension arms originally. To get the caps on the road wheels we needed to grind them down a bit to remove the last line of thread so they'd sit down nicely.

The Road Wheels seem to spin OK again a reminder the return rollers aren't quite right yet.

[Darren_Hagarty]

Track Path
With the Road Wheels mounted, the sprocket, Idler and Road Wheels seem to line up reasonably. Hopefully this means the tracks will stay on-line when we get to them. The next step is to set the angle of the suspension arms between 30-40 degrees tightening the suspension assembly at that stage. We just googled protractor and printed out a copy of one and glued it onto a piece of cardboard to help set the suspension angle.
We also replaced the suspension washers with our own as we were having trouble getting them to seat OK so we just went for a flat washer.
We greased the suspension shafts and fixed ends that were in the suspension bar cavities. The exposed suspension shaft, fixed ends and torsion bars were oiled as per Mark's suggestion.

[Darren_Hagarty]

Set Suspension Angle
This needs to be 30-40 degrees.
It took a fair bit of fiddling but hopefully its OK now.
We found two road wheels were not spinning freely. One because the hub cap was clamping the internal retaining screw so we swapped the hub cap.The second was due to the retaining screw needed a loosen. The quarter turn back was done but a minor change in that setting makes a huge difference to the free spinning ability of the wheel. Adrian's comments previously highlight what's happening in this case.
We're sure this will be the issue with the return rollers being tight to spin.
The base plate now needs some trimming as the suspension fitting looks to have tightened the bottom of the hull and brought the sides closer together. So there's about 2 mm that will need to be trimmed off the bottom hull plate.

[Adrian Harris]

I wouldn't trim the baseplate if I were you.

Try testing the gap with the upper hull parts as well - it may be that you need to ease the suspension parts apart in order to keep the hull sides square to each other.

It sounds to me as though they are now bowing inwards

Adrian.

[Derek Attree]

Hi Darren
Normal to fit the floor before the suspension this keeps the hull
lined up.
When I built my Stug III / Pz III kit I had no issues with the hull
but I fitted the floor first..
Do not trim the floor it sets the hull size.
Hope this helps

Derek

[Darren_Hagarty]

Thanks Derek and Adrian,
I'll try loosening the bolts up, it's a less radical solution.
The guide does say to remove the floor when setting the suspension
And I must say it was easier doing in that way.

I'll see how I go tonight.

Just for inspiration did you want to post a photo of your completed Stugs?

[Darren_Hagarty]

Base Plate On
As per suggestions we loosened off the torsion bars (undoing our previous settings) completely. we also needed to tap the hull plates a little to squeeze the base plate back on. We then reset the suspension arm angles to about 36 Degrees. We had one that wouldn't tighten so we inverted the hull and found some grub screws had come loose. we tightened all the grub screws we could get at but about a third we couldn't get to as they were pointing the nearby fixed end and the Allen key wouldn't fit in. Based on trying to set the suspension angle with and without the baseplate on it seems less trouble to do it with base plate on however there's no guarantee you'll be able to check tightness of some grub screws.

The road wheels seemed to roll OK as a set which is a good sign. We also noticed the tank sits a little high at the rear when the other sub assemblies are added. Since all the road wheels were set at a similar angle we're guessing the cause is the weight distribution and that when the battery gets loaded (under the rear deck) that it might sit down a bit more evenly. The reference books I've read indicate that the Stug's were a bit nose heavy.

We also found that with the fighting compartment and rear deck on that the fastening holes looked to be lining up which is a good sign.

Next steps to be done.
Troubleshoot stiff rollers
Fit shocks and bump stops

[Lawrence Godson]

Great build so far Steen,
If you find that the model is still a bit too nose heavy after adding all the components you might try adding springs to the inside of the front shocks. I had the same issue on my Panzer III. I was able to find a size spring that would just fit at my local hardware store and I cut down the length to get the correct adjustment. The springs need to be pretty stiff to overcome the weight.

[Darren_Hagarty]

Bump Stops
Thanks for the tip Lawrence. Did you use any lube, light oil etc. when installing the spring in the front shock? I take it from your experience that it has not caused any stress on the shock outer? I also found that the nose is down a few mm even with the fighting compartment and rear deck off. I suppose this is due to the extra weight of the front drive sprocket, drive flanges and front deck.
I will have a look at the local hardware store for suitable springs.

The bump stops went on OK. The front and back ones (positions one and six) are mounted vertically however the rest (positions two to five)are mounted at an angle, orientated slightly to the rear. The middle bump stops could have done with slightly longer fasteners. 3 by 12 mm cap instead of 3 by 10 mm cap. The end bump stops used 3 by 12 mm cap. The end bump stop was probably a mm or so thicker however I think 3 by 12 mm would have been better for all of them.

[Lawrence Godson]

Hello Darren,

No, I did not lubricate. The spring was not a tight fit so hoped that it would not cause any undue wear. It probably would not hurt to add something but I would guess that anything more than a little light oil would end up eventually getting pushed out between the two halves of the shock and cause a bit of a mess. I guess I'll check for wear the next time I'm fiddling with it.

[Darren_Hagarty]

Shocks
The front and rear suspension arms are cross drilled to allow connection to a shock absorber. We found the pivot pins were quite hard to screw into the suspension arms. In hindsight We'd recommend screwing the pivot pin in before you mount the suspension arms so you have free access to it rather than working around other parts. We also wound the pivot pins in once to clean out the thread and then second time we added the loctite.
The pin needs to end parallel to the suspension arm.
The last pin was so tight that it ended up breaking off due to the force being applied. The thread on that arm seemed to be a problem as we'd also tried another pin and it was just as tight. We're going to see if we can drill out the pin and re-cut the thread and get a new pin locally as a first step.
Apart from the pivot pins the rest of the suspension went together OK. We also tried what Lawrence suggested and added a spring to the one front shock we installed. It certainly seemed to have an extra damping effect however possibly a bigger spring would have more effect. We cut the spring in the photo in half.

[Lawrence Godson]

Glad it seems like it might work. You might need to wait until all the weight is in to see how much spring pressure is correct to get the just slightly nose heavy effect for the Stug.

[Darren_Hagarty]

Lower Front Deck
This needed two hatches and the drivers visor deflector.
The support plate for the hatches was already 'notched' which was good. We still needed to round off the square bottoms of the hinges so that the hatches would close OK. (See photo with punch pointing to where we filed). We'd recommend installing the hatches right at the start of the build when you are putting the hull together as its very hard to do with the lower front deck installed.

[Darren_Hagarty]

Rear Accessories
This involved the exhausts, rear boss, tow clevis, tow hitch and rear grill.
We found the exhaust boxes hard to fit as the fasteners wouldn't pull the exhaust box flush with the rear plate. We needed to use two 3 inch G clamps to get them to sit flush. The fasteners also had to cut their own thread which was heavy going as it had about 8 mm of plate to cut through we were worried about breaking the fasteners but luckily they held. It was hard to tell from the guide which way the tow hitch went so hopefully the coin toss was right.
Note the large holes on the inside of the rear plate going into the exhaust boxes is where the smoker unit will need to connect. (If you ordered that accessory)

[Darren_Hagarty]

Where Too Next
We haven't been able to find a replacement eye bolt for the front shock so may have to get one from Gil, we've been to every hardware store in town.

Here's a few questions for the experts about what to do next.

We have mudguards to do however if they fit to the fighting compartment then there doesn't seem any point fitting them until we do the motors and electrics.
With the tracks is there any reason not to prime the pins? We don't plan to paint the tracks they look OK as they are.
The guide says to have the track pins on the inside, we assume that means next to the hull?
We don't see any point in doing the remaining accessories yet for the same reason as the mudguard.