So today I continued along with the kitty, this time doing a little work on the rear light assembly. I used a similar process to this on my M41G and it worked fantastically.
Here's is a close up of the rear light assembly on a spanish Leopard 2E, and it pretty much shows what I want to achieve. That being the outer light assembly having functional tail lights (not going to bother with the indicators), and the four inner and lower mounts where the stock lights are placed being replaced with reflectors. Im not sure on the real tank if those last four are actually lights or simply reflectors...either way, in most photos they don't appear to be lit and just look to be reflective lenses so that is good enough for me.
First I drilled and filed out the light molding on the rear bulkhead just large enough to accomodate a 3mm LED. I then filled the gap behind the indicator with milliput. I also filled the area behind the red portion of the assembly with a thinner layer of milliput, leaving a hole just large enough to fit the LED through. This will hold the LED securly in place. The thinner layer of milliput here leaves the space above the LED empty and allows the light to bounce around and illuminate the whole of the red portion.
Also I filled the holes for the stock lighting with milliput to provide a surface to mount some red reflective material to later in the build.
Now, on to the lenses...Always on the lookout for things I can use on my tanks, I have a habit of scouring busy road interections for the remains of broken car tail lights. Where I live everyone drives terribly so there is never a shortage of the stuff.
I cut some of these transparent plastic chips down to size using the dremel, glued a red and an orange piece together for each light, and then shaped and pollished it with fine sandpaper. I'll be able to glue these into place over the LED later and with a little paint around the edge it should do a fine job of replicating the full scale lights. Here are the lenses sitting in place on the rear bulkead...
For the reflectors, in the past I have used pieces red foil confetti cut down to size and glued into place with good results, I'll probably do the same here.
Cheers, Jan