Noting Steve and Daniel's experiences, it's a job I've been dreading. I had planned to park her up for the rest of the season, and tackle it over the winter. But yesterday, in a flash of madness, I decided to get her up on the workbench and have a go.
Track removal on a Mark IV is relatively straightforward, in theory. Slacken off the tensioning bolts to the front drive sprockets, allowing the drive assembly to drop down inside the front horns. It helps if you take off the front track inserts EK0239 and EK0240, to get in a screwdriver to pull down the tracks even further. Then unbolt a few of the track plates covering the track chain joining links, pop off the clips, remove the joining links and the tracks just lift off. Simples ! In practice, of course ... the real problem (I'm assuming you've adopted Steve's fundamental suggestion of painting the joining links so they stand out, otherwise you'll never find them) is undoing all those little M3 bolts on the track plates (the outer four per plate). On all the plates I took out (you'll probably need to undo four) three came out relatively easily and the fourth was a complete pain. But, 3 hours later, the left track was off ! Time to look at 2 years of wear and tear.
There is, of course, a lot of crud. But surprisingly little wear:
- Final drive, looking forward
- Bottom Rollers
- Top roller, with 'bird's nest'
- Track run - top
- Track chains and undersides of track plates
- Front drive sprockets
So, I'm pleased I've started it, and it wasn't quite as scary as I'd imagined. "There is nothing to fear but fear itself" as several wise men are accredited with. And I can't see any damage or problems building for the future. So a good clean up looks to be all that's necessary (along with tightening that drive chain, of course). Then the other track, rinse and repeat.
But, while I'm going to all this effort, there are more things to do. I've also taken off the sponsons, as I've got a new set with corrected viewing port layout and a revised system for spinning the drums. Then I can fit the 'wiggly gun pack' - will that make Liesel the first Female to use it ? And there are some details I want to add that I didn't do originally, like the extra front armour, the shield over the rear exhaust louvres, and extra detail to the roof (I recently picked up an old postcard of Liesel with good top detail). So plenty to do. I may have it all done for the Open Day, but my real target is 1 June 2018, when I'm minded to take her over to the Fort de la Pompelle, near Reims, for her centenary.
All the best,
Chris
) and a row of rivets around the top plate. But, from a modelling perspective, the drums now swing smoothly. This required an awful lot of refinement, with several disassemblies to file another piece down just a little bit more .... even some of the glued rivets needed to be cut down as they were jamming against the drum. Then I fitted Adrian Harris's new Lewis Guns, which look superb (and, of course, there's a lot more of them than on Steve Stuart's Male !).
), but the LED's are a bit more of a problem as they use d-sub connectors - Adrian and Steve are working on that one.
).
.
, in that I'd fitted some of the machine gun con rods the wrong way round. I bodged my way round this by using longer (M3*16) bolts between the con rod and the servo arm, which hasn’t created a problem (yet).