2003 Tiger Rebuild

[Adrian Harris]

In June 2010, the day before Tankfest , I was fortunate enough to purchase an original 2003 Mid Tiger through eBay.

The Tiger was almost completed, but the owner, rather than paint it, had polished all the aluminium to a near mirror finish, and painted the steel work gloss black, resulting a Tiger which looked like this:





The following day it made its début at Tankfest:



It looked a little out of place, gleaming in the sunshine as it did, especially with all the superb paint schemes around it but it still attracted a fair amount of positive comment from the public.

Adrian.

[Adrian Harris]

When I got it home again and started looking around it properly, it became obvious that no threadlock etc had been used, so the swing arms were coming undone and the suspension going out of alignment.

Once I'd stripped down the suspension, it was obvious from the rub marks on the wheels just how far out of true it had become.

Here are the wheels, spacers and axles lined up. They're not much further apart when on the tank!



Having got the tank apart, I decided to bring it right up to date with the same spec suspension as the (then current) Mid Tiger.

Adrian.

[Adrian Harris]

Since then life has been to hell and back but now I'm in a happier place and able to continue with the rebuild.

I've had a set of axles machined from brass, to help limit corrosion in the running gear. I'm going to try and keep the steel content of this Tiger as low as possible, replacing the original steel parts with aluminium parts.

To try and push the project on, I've been trying to work little and often.

Today's task was to close up some of the holes in the lower hull sides. These were originally included for mounting cap-head bolts, which were supposed to act upon the swing arms and prevent the suspension from over-twisting the torsion bars. As this Tiger will have uprated torsion bars, these aren't needed any more, so I decided to fill them in.

First off, I tapped the holes to M6:



Next I cut up some M6 aluminium threaded bar into small slugs:



These were then glued into the holes with JB Weld:



And finally filed and sanded flat:



Interestingly, the camera has picked up the difference in materials and made them look much more depressed than they actually are. Once primed and painted, these should be invisible. Not to mention the running gear in front of them

The larger threaded holes are where the bolts should go through to hold the hull sides to the hull floor. Some of these had pulled through, so I will be doing a very similar process with these holes, so that I can use CSK bolts to hold the sides in place.

Adrian.

[John Fitzsimons]

Hi Adrian, Very interesting build. I was thinking of getting one of these Tigers at some stage. It will be great to see how the new suspension works with it. Good to replace the steel.

[Adrian Harris]

Yesterday I received the turret roof and pannier floors back from the cutters.

Both these parts on in the original kit were made from 3mm steel. As I'm trying to reduce the steel content in the Tiger to save weight and reduce the rustablility, I drew up replacement parts to be cut from aluminium.

The pannier floors are quite straightforward replacements. This turret roof is a bit more involved, as the loaders hatch sits in a recess on the roof. This is quite obvious when viewing the roof of the Bovington Tiger, so it was something I decided to build into this restoration.

The turret roof is made from two sheets of aluminium, the lower one is 2mm, the upper 1mm. The idea is that the two will be bonded together to make a single rigid part.

This is Mike Stannard's excellent loaders hatch sitting in its nice new recess:

This is view from the rear of the Bovington Tiger:

And this is a similar view from the rear of my replacement parts:

The upper section is 5mm smaller all around, so that I can include a weld seam which is integral to the the turret lid. The sloped front has the holes for the gun travel lock, as well as another lateral 5mm gap for the front weld seam.

Adrian.

[Adrian Harris]

The more I look at that overhead shot the more I think I need to increase the radius of the edges of the recess

Oh well, at least I can try out the bonding process and milliput welds on this one without worrying too much

Adrian.

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Brilliant, Adrian!

I thought I had seen that loader's hatch recess in photographs, but was not sure. It is not visible in any drawings either, but your photo together with the model makes it quite clear.

Great work!

Cheers,
/Chris

[Adrian Harris]

Thanks Chris

There's a couple of errors in the cutting, so I'm awaiting replacement parts before continuing.

In the mean time I've been getting one with designing new return rollers for my Shermans. I'm adding proper shielded bearings and a mild steel skin, so they will hopefully rust in a prototypical manner.

Adrian.