Armortek

The forum seems to be running smoothly now after yesterday's hiccup after the migration to another service provider. I was getting withdrawal symptoms.

Well, this week was passed mostly painting (spraying) the hull exterior. First a coat of etch primer:
Then a coat of red primer:
And finally a basecoat in the required areas:
In between the drying time of the various coatings I managed to fit the 3mm bolts, nuts and locking tabs in all road wheels (still have some finger tips numb) and also finished all the studs for the sprocket drive cases.
Some of the studs are intentionally longer than the others as I want these to protrude on the other side and act as studs for the Casing Fillets (CE2602).

I also painted the shock absorber mounts and the bump stops so that I can fit them when I turn the hull around.
Vince

This evening, with my wife's help, the hull was turned over. Next big job is to fit the swing arms and torsion bars and adjust the angle. The assembly manual says to adjust the swing arm angle to 30 degrees.

Reading through previous Tiger 1 builds it seems that many people set a larger angle to cater for the suspension settling in. I think that there was somebody who also suggested to set the first 6 axles at 35 degrees and the last two to 40 degrees to cater for the weight of the batteries at the back.

What do the Tiger builders think? I anticipate that once finished my Tiger will have an easy sedentary life. Just like me.

Vince

Amazing work. I would love to have a set of those. They look like fun to make. I am a novice at soldering. I tried various blow torches and finaly started blasting at my scratch made turret lids with a map torch. I eventually broke down and bought an American Beauty resistance soldering system. BIG difference.

Vince, the settling effect was a characteristic of a previous design. I’m pretty sure now that with double locking of the torsion bars in the current design, it isn’t necessary to exceed the angle recommended in the instructions. Your Tiger is coming together now at a pace. Stephen

Greg, I think it took me a week to fabricate them. Each one is made of four brass parts and one solid rubber part.

Stephen, you are most probably correct, but at the moment I am thinking of playing it safe and maybe set them at 32 or 33 degrees. Decisions, decisions!

Vince

After turning the hull the right way round, the first thing I did was try again the front spare track holder with some tracks.
I think it looks OK, so I will use it.

As the next big job is the fitting of the swing arms, I carefully put in the hull each swing arm above it's respective brass bush and checked them twice.
After this I wanted to do something easy. So I attached the shock absorber mounts.
The shock absorber mounts for a late Tiger are a bit different from the mounts of previous variants. I also fitted the bump stops with castle nuts.
Vince

Vince

Just stunning work! I am very jealous of your skills, suppose you don't have any spare shock absorber mounts or bumps stops?

Kind Regards Allan

Thanks Allan for the compliment.

If you know a friendly model engineer you might try convincing him to make you a set. If you have a look in the following thread I showed a 2D plan of the bump stops with most of the dimensions.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6908

I don't have plans for the shock absorber mounts as it was only a pencil sketch. If you need it I can always make a quick 2D plan for them.

Also, there people who make after-market parts. Have a look here:

https://www.armortek.co.uk/partner-services/

Any progress on your build?

Vince

Vince

Thanks for the respopnse. I am waiting for my threslok to arrive, so have only test fitted the main body. I noticed that you etched primed when your had the main body done, and that prior to that your etched prmed the brackets, so did you not bother to etch prine the back plate and front plate prior to your main build.

I know that ther are two schools of thought one being priming individual parts prior to final build, what was your reason for doing it the way you have. I am asking this becuase I do not know which way to do mine when the time comes. One last question how did you manage to prise open the turret, so that you can fit the mantlet, because I have no clue how to achieve this as I have no strenght to prise it open so that it can fit.

Regards Allan

I know that there are two schools of thought about when to etch prime but I do not know which is the correct one (if there is a correct one).

I etch primed the hull once it was built up mostly for convenience and also out of habit and personal preference. If you etch prime the panels prior to the final build there is a chance that the hull will not come together as nicely as it did without the paint. In fact there was a panel (the upper front panel) which I decided that it was better to etch prime and red prime before the final build and during the final build did not fit anymore. I ended up removing both primer coats on one edge of that panel so that it slot it again.

My main reason for etch priming the tank is for paint adherence. Normal paint will not stick properly to aluminium without a coat of etch prime. If one does not etch prime aluminium, paint will actually start peeling off. In fact, if the hull was made of mild steel instead of aluminium, I would have used red oxide primer only.

Regarding the turret, it is still in the box so have not thought about it yet. I guess I will start scratching my head about doing what you mentioned when I come to that stage.

Vince

Gentlemen

As ever, there is no right or wrong but this Knowledge Base Topic attempts to cover the issues:

http://www.armortek.co.uk/Forum3b/viewt ... =34&t=5802

Regards

Stephen

The digital angle finder I bought from Lidl last month is too big to be used to set the swing arm angle, so instead I made a simple jig and set the angle of the jig with the Lidl tool.
If you notice, I am aiming to get an angle of 33 degrees (Armortek recommends 30 degrees).

So, started by removing the fixed end of the suspension and adding the star washer.
Re-attached the fixed end but left it loose enough to rotate. In the photo below one can see the difference between a fully tightened fixed end (lower) and a loose fixed end (upper).
Inserted the appropriate torsion bar in the fixed end. It might need a couple of light taps to fully insert it. Inserted the swing arm shaft in the appropriate hole and made sure it went in all the way until one feels it touching the brass bush in the suspension bar.
I have to admit that before inserting the swing arm in the hull, I gave it a light coat of light oil for rust protection (not recommended by Armortek).

Screwed in (but just enough) the locking bolts on both sides of the torsion bar. Set the angle of the swing arm with the jig and supported the swing arm axle.
Went to the other side of the hull to fully tighten the fixed end bolt. Checked to see if the swing arm angle is still correct after removing the axle supports. This did not always work as planned as sometimes when tightening, a twist in the torsion bar is introduced which becomes apparent when the supports are removed. In this case some minor adjustments will be required. When happy with the angle than all torsion bar lock bolts are fully tightened and also the lock bolt of the fixed end.

After doing three swing arms, the penny dropped and I realised that I never fitted the locking grub screws in the swing arms . I never fitted these grub screws because I wanted something shorter (4 x 4mm) but never got around to get them. So I am putting the fixing of the swing arms on hold until I get these grub screws.

Vince

It is cheating if you have the proper tools

Hi Vince and Allan,

Regarding the bump stops (Vince, yours look awesome) many moons ago, back in 2011, Steve Winstone made them.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3298

Maybe he can make a new batch if asked now with this new Late Tiger 1 release from Armortek.
IMHO every Tiger 1 out there is worth a set of them

Kind regards
Kent

I already asked Steve about the bump stops but he said that he doesn't make them anymore and that's the reason why I ended up making them myself.

Vince