Gus, that's why I haven't painted my mato PIII. It looks pretty cool in natural metal finish and I got to thinkin' that once you paint it it's pretty much indistinguishable from a plastic tank. Don't get me wrong, I prefer painting them, but for just this one I decided to leave the paint off. Can you tell what's wrong with this picture?
Philip, you're right that I'll have to glue that wheel so then I'll get you a length, but with my cheap calipers it measures .156 at the bearing surface so my guess would be that the blueprint says 4mm. The gear box thing is being taken care of. He's given me a tracking number for the replacements and has asked for one for the 3:1s going back. We still haven't talked about how he's going to pay for that but he's asked for a link to this thread so he can see the review so now he'll know I don't plan to pay for the return postage. I imagine he could give me a partial refund through paypal to cover postage, or maybe he might want to sell them to me at cost. I can't really use them as they are, but I have a four shaft box that has a brass gear for the fourth shaft, so I could just replace the zinc gears with the black steel and I could even swap axles to get a steel gear there, and then I'd basically have a four shaft black steel gearbox for a good price. I'm going to give him the link to the thread so now (if he reads this far) he'll know all my secrets concerning the gearbox snafu.
So, Carson, what do you think? I'll bring it up in day or two if you don't, but know you should know that I will be taking care of this one way or another and you won't get burned. And these other guys might have lots of questions and business for you so it might be a good idea for you to just open an account here and become a forum member. It's free, and could benefit both your business and our hobby if you have a presence here.