Well this has been a long road for me as I tend to work things backwards compared to most here on this forum. As many of you have read and seen in person over the last few years I have been working up my Heng Long Abrams trying to find both the extreme limits and best balances of performance potential in the area of top end speed, off road capabilities and durability before committing to it fully as a "heavy" main battle IR tank. I was able to achieve some remarkable improvements in all areas and have ended up with an outstanding performer, fun tank to play around with and put on a demo shows. Even so, sometimes too good hurts rather than enhances and in this case was proving true. Unfortunately an outstanding performer and show stoping demos does not always equal a good IR battle tank especially for an overall worn out and abused tank such as my "test bed" HL Abrams.

So what to do? Build a another completely new HL Abrams and incorporating most of the advancements and improvements developed over the last few years of testing and field proofing or take the simple route and go with the highly recommended Tamyia Abrams. End cost would be similar and with some friendly "egging on" by other members here and by the guys and gals at the IR battle fields I play at, I deicide I would give the Tamyia Abrams a go and see just how well it compares.

I did not want to bore everyone with a build thread on it so it is coming to you built and ready to start testing and fighting. I resisted the urge to modify a few things that I suspected might need addressing and built it mostly stock with the exception that I added the DLKM metal upgrade gear set to the transmission. I also made it so the battery lines could be accessed for charging by removing the commanders hatch thereby greatly reducing the need to constantly be taking the top half of the turret on and off which over time would no double cause loose fitment issues. Paint scheme I chose to go with as you can see is a departure from the prolific tan almost everyone seems to do, instead I went with a "NATOish" camo scheme, which will dirty up rather quickly and nicely. As such I did not do my usual weathering as it would be covered in dirt and dust, that is with the exception of a simple chalk dusting to bring out some of the plastic detail highlights (those these do not show up well in the photos).


Tamyia Abrams on right, Heng Long Abrams on left.


TESTING:

I did run the new Tamyia Abrams over most of my test course and with its rubber padded tracks, as expect, it did well enough though a few issue were notes and will be addressed shortly. First it suffer from the same issues stock HL Abrams have with low ground clearance, but because the Tamyia has a number of bolt heads sticking out from the bottom of its lower hull it gets stuck a little easier as these tend to catch on terrain features. Another issue the Tamyia Abrams has is in its weight balance in two areas, front to back and in turret weight. Front to back is biased to the rear by an estimated 65% when the turret in facing forward. With the battery weight in the turret caution while on off camber terrain (25deg. or more) is needed especially if one rotates the turret to ensure the barrel does not impact the ground or while turing the turret to engage a target. The weight transfer of the rotating turret causes the center of gravity to be thrown off substantially and almost caused a few "roll overs". Something not experienced with HL Abrams or other HL modern tanks. In fact the Tamyia Abrams became more unstable than my Tamyia M51 on the same off camber obstacle. This center of gravity change becomes even more unpredictable on off camber terrain when the "gun barrel / target lock" auto stabilization system is active. Is this a big deal? To some no, to me and my style of aggressive driving and hard charging combat fighting YES (lol those that have seen me fight my tanks know what I mean).

Enough on weight balance for now I will be addressing it shortly so check back, now on to speed an cross country performance. While many would consider the top end factory dash speed fast, I do not. Scale it come in at best around 40 mph. I would like it just a bit faster, around the high 40s or low 50s. Right now my HL Abrams and Leopard 2 with 390 motors at 9.6v run circles around the Tamyia Abrams. There are a few solutions for bumping up the speed a little and I will be experimenting with these in due course. The suspension on the Tamyia Abrams makes for a rather "bouncy" ride while at top speed over even light cross country terrain and I believe this is because it is too stiff for overall weight of the tank and the excessive rear weight bias. Sadly it makes for a toy like looking ride. Granted the HL Abrams, Leopard 2 also have this toy like "bounce" when all stock plastic, but with the addition of metal road wheels, suspensions, metal/rubber track and resetting the springs they smooth out nicely. I believe the "bounce" will work itself out as I change were weight is carried in the tank.

Now for IR fighting as a heavy "cold war/modern" tank and the advantages I can see over my modified HL Abrams. The Tamyia Abrams is super SMOOTH in all mechanical functions. It has an excellent run time maintaining a longer peak performance envelop and for the life of me I can not yet get it to throw a track. It is a slightly easier tank to maneuver with excellent low and high speed control. This makes up for some of its shortfalls and makes for a tank that takes less thought to drive hard over most battle fields and thus more attention can be focused on fighting the tank vs driving the tank. I look forward to tweaking the Tamyia Abrams a bit here and there to enhance its potential as fighting tank. It may never match my modified HL Abrams as a show/demo/basher tank in some respects, but then things do change and time will tell.

Check back soon and see what is taking place with this tank. Hope you enjoy and please feel free to add your constructive input.


Tamyia Abrams on “off camber” obstacle.


Tamyia Abrams on “brake over” obstacle.


Tamyia Abrams on “brake over” obstacle.

Interesting write up, both tanks look good, well done.

I use a Sand Scorcher for rock crawling work, give it a try, more fun than using a tank!

Tamiya Abrams.

Godzilla knock down proof.

HL Abrams.

After a read again of your post: Until either one of your Abrams can take down Godzilla you really are not there yet, but a good start though!

Well I finally got some IR battles under the Tamiya Abrams belt so to speak and have what I feel is a good understanding of its stock performance in both tight terrain (city fighting) and open country. Over all it fights well enough, but as I stated in above posts is too slow for a heavy modern tank and the advantages of which to be exploited in battles. Thus I have moved forward with a motor upgrade from the stock Tamiya 27 turn to a Tamiya 23 turn.

Top end performance is improved slightly (scale top speed is now a solidly in the 40ish mph range), but the biggest improvement has been in low speed handling. The 27 turn motor had a bit too much torque for the overall weight of the tank, the 23 turn motor has less torque and thus makes slow crawling over all terrain types smoother as the throttle inputs are more forgiving. I feel the slightly enhanced speed and feel of throttle response should improve the overall battling experience with the Tamiya Abrams, but it might still need a bit more speed to truly be an outstanding heavy MBT especially in open country IR battling. For this I will look toward higher voltage which I did test already and was IMPRESSED, but one step at a time. I will for now be fighting the Tamiya Abrams with just the new 23 turn motor at 7.2 volts for the next few battles and building a baseline for its performance.

I have not yet added any forward hull weights to fix the imbalance between the front and rear of the tank or to address the "bouncing" caused by the overly heavy torsion bars. This will come in the next phase of enhancements.


Keeping simple with a new yet basic Tamiya 23 turn motor.


Motor installed.


Recent IR open country battle held in San Diego.

With the upper turret cover removed I placed an 8.4v NiMh 5000 pack loosely in the slot for the 7.2 pack. Powered it up and drove it around for about 20 minutes at a wide open throttle. This was done prior to swapping out motors in the above post. FAST would be an understatement. 55mph+ scale speeds. The issue is this higher speed coupled with the already stiff bouncy suspension made for a very poor cross country ride. To run the Abrams at 8.4volts or higher (for speed) will also require attention to tuning the suspension or adding a lot of added weight to compensate for the stiff torsion bar preloads. Otherwise the tank wants to get “air born” on every dip or small rock it hits.

Yes all good ideas. Tuning the suspension has many ways of accomplishing a given performance goal. I like my tanks well balanced (optimum speed, suspension performance and front to back weight distribution) for smooth operations in rough terrain at all speeds. To do this effectively takes the right mix and finding such is the fun part and what sets individual tanks apart from one another.

As the old gunfighter saying goes “Fast is smooth, smooth is fast”.