This is an all metal Mato Tiger 1 that I'm converting to RC. The Mato metal tiger comes with gearboxes but no electronics. I'm going to do this conversion in stages - first the drive train then later the turret and gun. I'm using brushless motors not because I want greater speed, but I do want more torque for what will be a very heavy tank in the end. Unlike my Kyosho Blizzard conversion which had 17 turn motors, this tank has 22 turn motors, sort of in the rock crawler range in terms of maximum rpm. I'm using the same kind of 60 Amp ESCs that I used on the Blizzard, as well as the Turnigy 9X TX/RX. I need to remote the antenna to the outside of the tank as it is metal and that would probably interfere with signal reception. I've got 60 cm 2.4 GHz antennas ordered (57 cm of coax and 3 cm of antenna.) The real challenge will be soldering the new antenna to the receiver PCB - the wires are very small (not sure I can actually do it.)

When I first got the tank I noted that the wheels and suspension were sticky, so I dissembled everything and lubed and retightened it all. I had to modify the pinion gears on the gearboxes to 3.17 mm (1/8 inch) bore, which I did with files and a reamer. It's almost impossible to get perfect results this way, and indeed mine are slightly eccentric. They seem to work ok though, but maybe with a little more gear noise.

The only mod to the hull I made was removing 4 standoffs from the floor. I removed the circular coverplate from the rear (not sure what this is for anyway.) I made a combination battery box - electronics platform out of PVC. I decided to try use two large 3S lipo battery packs in parallel, not to get more current, but to extend my run between charges. These 22 turn motors can draw about 20 amps max, or more than 200 Watts at 3S voltage, so you'll need some serious battery power. The 65C rating of the batteries is totally overkill but they were not larger in size or that much more expensive, so I got them. I'll have 7,700 mAhr - have to wait to see how far that gets me.

Next I'll get the tracks back on and do some testing. I hope the speed is close to scale. I had the same motors in another Heng Long Tiger 1, with steel stock gear ratio gearboxes, and it was way too fast.