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I spent most of the weekend dealing with the turret. The original owner had partially assembled it. I set it on the hull and the right front corner was resting solidly on the front deck. If rotated it would have gouged the deck pretty good what will all that weight.

So looking it over I saw that the right turret side was hanging down below the bottom of the forward turret floor. Also, something just didnt look right.
Neither turret side follows the floor accurately. On the left side their is a gap between the side and the floor when the front and back is secured to the end plates. On the right side the floor interferes with the side being able to pull up tight to the end plates.

After full disassembly I bolted the two sides together, outside surface to outside surface. I did this at the front using the four holes at the front of the side, and the two slotted holes part way back. the top and front edges all lined up nicely, but the bottom of the right side was 8MM lower than the left side.



I scribed a line in the right side where it needed to come off. The I unbolted the two halfs and rebolted them using the holes in the back. Same problem but only about 4MM to low this time. Again scribd a line in the right side.



I measured the angle of the cut and set the saber saw to that angle. I bought some pricey Swiss made blades and started in on the side. The thickness of that part made the work incredibly slow going (hours). Then some slow work with the green flapper wheel and files got it to were things were nice and straight.

Then back to why one side doesn't touch the base and the other side interferes with the base. After a bunch of measuring I concluded that the base (floor) is symmetrical. While hard to tell I finally figured a way to measure the bends in the sides. Conclusion, the left side is bent too much and the right side is bent too little and not in the right place.

I had to resort to blocks and jumping on the side is an effort to lessen the bend in one and tighten in the other. But they are thick and short so it took a lot to do very little. Things got closer. Close enough that by selectively tightening the mounting hardware around the bottom of the sides I could get a good fit at the front and the back plates. It was confirmed (at least to me) that it was good enough because the roof sections all bolted together dropped right into place. Yay.

There were other problems with this but more easily managed. The notches in the lower area of the sides is in two different places, not symmetrical. The floor doesn't match this discrepancy so there is fiddly, sawing and filing to get it together.

In my kit the major problem seem to be the right side of the turret. Maybe it is just mine, but look there first if you run into difficulties.

I took pictures, and will update the turrest sections once I get the pics sized and hosted.

All the modules arrived today. Shipped from Armortek Monday and delivered to my house in California Wednesday noon. Im impressed.

Time to give this thread some love...

New Place Holders:

Motion Module

All modules arrived safe and sound. Simultaneously I received an email from AT. It advised to not connect or use the Power distribution module and that a replacement would soon be on its way. I thought this was quite good of them. Very nice quality stuff and more included than I would have thought. Two thumbs up!

While Motion Module includes turret traverse and gun elevation, I will give each of those individual posts.

Recoil Module

Stay tuned.

Sound Module

First thing is hunting for different speakers. There is nothing wrong with those supplied, However a pair of 3 X 9" will fit my layout better.

Smoke Module

The first step is file, smooth, debur and clean all the goodies before painting. They go together beautifully.





Modified installation pictures soon.

Turret traverse

Some re-imagining here. The drive would not mount up as delivered. So relocated the drive unit away from the hull side. Worked on the motor drive, and figured the voltage to give the rotation the scale speed of the full size. A lot of fussing with the turret bearing and the mounting of it in the deck plates. Now, just as smooth as glass. Also teflon dry lubricant throughout.

Gun Elevation

...

FPV PROJECT

I decided I want FPV in my KT, just for the fun of it if nothing else. I decided on three cameras. One in the drivers periscope, one hidden in the commander (who will have animation allowing me to look all around) and one hidden in the jack block on the rear. The cameras I sourced are tiny at 5MM square. There is a three way video switcher driven by a three position switch on the transmitter. Then a selectable power 5.8Ghz transmitter. A Black Pearl 7" monitor mounted to the transmitter rounds out the video suite. Of course putting one in the drivers periscope made it mandatory that the periscope pan right and left. That of course requires some modifications to the hull...

A nice thing about the FrSky with openTX system is that I can set the slew rates for the periscope to reasonable speeds.

Interior and convoy lights

Starting on cadding up some light fixtures for the interior. Only have a single grainy black and white photo to go on, but should come out close enough. And seriously with the tank closed you wont see them, but they will work. Convoy light will work too. Using the linear LEDS one finds in the fake "Edison" bulbs, so popular today. Some clear acrylic tubing and the parts that I will 3D print.

Stay tuned.

Working on the rear hull portion today.

Here is a comparison of the cast aluminum exhaust armor and a cast plastic one that was in my kit.



The plastic one has better detail in my view so I decided to prep them all up.



Then fit check with inertia crank.





I am searching for some scale hardware for attaching the exhaust armor to the hull. Judging form period pictures, the supplied hardware is undersized.

Well...

I set the KT aside back in September of last year as I had other full size projects requiring my attention. So I am back at it again. I had purchased a set of Liam's idler wheel tensioning arms. I had forgotten what needed to be done to install them, but a quick read through the forum answered that question. A change in the idler wheel retaining bolt from 5MM to 6MM. And removing a small amount of material off of the tensioner arms.

So reading others who have installed these arms, they have eliminated a pair of track segments? I tried something while fooling with them. I reversed them, putting the left one on the right side, and obviously, the right one on the left side. I wont know if im successful until I get the Tank on its tracks, but...

With the tracks hanging and the adjusters at full slack I have the original number of track segments (prototypical?) and the tracks are touching the top of road wheels 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 (counting from the front), but not 1, 2 and 9. The torsion arms where all set at 35 degrees. I am pretty sure there is enough adjustment to return it to this condition with full weight on the tracks, at least I hope so. Whether or not there will be adjustment left on top of that for track wear remains to be seen.

Hello Mark, Tom Michigan..........I use the Bose Double cube speakers in my KingTiger...3"X 3" very small and work super great....Mark I have a question in regards to your gum evaluation motor that came with the armortek kit......I would like to up grade mind due to the fact it is under powered. Being you and I are from the states maybe you and could help each other out once you see what I mean about the motor that came with the kit...I have been looking around for a replacement but have not found a match.........Thanks Tom Wittstock

Hello Tom.

Yes, that is on my radar. I think improvements can be made on the elevation mechanism. That and the recoil binds up after sitting, havent really dug into that yet.

Well getting going again. Road wheels all in color now.

Got an email from Monique that AT could fulfill my request for a Bailey Bridge which I asked about a while ago. So that is on order. i figure that will be as nice a place as any to display the KT on.

Also ordered the new drive system. That will address one of the only two things I wish were better, in this case, low speed response and control. Dial max speed into a prototypical 25.8 mph. And have much higher torque coming off a stand still.

Looking forward to delivery of some big heavy boxes!