MAUS45

"C" hoos and tool racks look great!!!

Tanque

Just an update but no real progress here. I've been 'off the air' for a while due to some other challenges but hopefully I can finish
up the remaining detail work on this Panther. With the changing times this will very likely be the last glow or ICE powered model
tank I work on. I'm grateful for all these and still love the extra layer of complexity ICE power imbued these models with. I cut my
teeth on them 45 years ago and never looked back. Now the times have changed. Electric power holds sway and ICE powered models
are less and less welcome just about everywhere. California has taken a step to essentially ban the sale and use of small gasoline engines
for garden and landscape maintenance and even though all my models are methanol fueled I have no doubt that this move will eventually
spill over to these types as well or at least make their operation more onerous.

So I will keep what I have as ICE powered but any further projects will be electric. As I've dipped both feet into 1/6 scale with their relatively large
electric power signatures that is where I'll focus. going forward. I have quite a few 1/10 projects that I will most likely sell off as I will not ever develop
them into finished models.

Jerry

lposter

Its nice to see that California is targetting the major contributors to fossil fuel emissions. Lawnmowers and hedge trimmers...........

p

Tanque

This is on top of the upcoming effective law that California will not longer allow registrations of new non-EV private and fleet vehicles after 2035
I believe it is set. Anyone wanting a new car after that time will need to purchase a pure EV. Neither ICE powered or hybrids will be sold here after that year.
THat is the plan anyway. No one here really believes our antiquated power grid will be able to support these rules but there it is. As it is today there are planned
black and brown outs during peak usage times in the power grid as it already is often over taxed. If everyone is charging their EV buggies at the same time
along with their garden tools and mowers, running the air conditioners and their frappe machines... well you get the picture. Yet atomic power is frowned on,
perhaps all homes here will be required to be coated with solar panels and.have a personal windmill. I've embraced (LiPo) electric tools of all sorts as I've said.
The new batteries available are really good performers for most everything I need. Not cheap but good..

I've changed my view of electric powered models over the years. They are powerful in the extreme, (can be) quiet and maintenance is virtually brain dead. Vs
my ICE powered tanks where I need to watch temps, fuel mixtures, filtering, air cleaners, carb settings, clutch settings/ rpm limits, cooling, lubrication, after run and pre -run
care and on and on. I grew to like it all but they have never been run and forget types of things. You can't get away from doing certain minimal care or they'll bite you by breaking
something that takes some doing to fix.I've not had that concern with electrics even though I still baby mine - a holdover from running the more temperamental types I began with.
I just don't like thrashing and breaking expensive things...

In view of the laws here I know for certain that all other states are eyeing what we do here. Not sure what will become of the big car rental companies- not sure how EV's will work for them nor trucking companies and shippers. Then there are diesel trains....

Jerry

lposter

We have a lot of electric cars here (Norway) and they seem to work fine so long as you don't try and go out of the country with them as its hard to find charging stations.

If everyone has them...... the problems are already becoming visible. Queues at the charging stations , electricity is so expensive these days its nearly cheaper to buy petrol, the ranges are half that they advertise etc

But I think the days of petrol are numbered. At least in Europe. Even the big car makers like VW and BMW say they don't see them in their future.

As you say.....bring on nuclear power!

P

Crius

It seems to me there are a lot of politicians who won't be happy until we're all walking, except them. Electric limos for the politicians, the rest of us take the shoe leather Express. But I'm not sure why everyone is so worried, at the rate we're overpopulating the planet there probably won't be any humans left in a few hundred years. Pandemics, War and famine will take care of humankind. I've never been religious and I don't believe in an afterlife, which is kind of a bummer because I really, really wish there was some way I could come back here in about five hundred years, just to see how everything turned out. I would not be at all surprised to find that mankind had become extinct. Yeah, that's right, ain't I just a little bundle of joy? Bwahahahaha

lposter

It's interesting that the last big change in personal transportation occurred because of the amount of waste horses produced. It was just too much in large cities.

And now petrol cars are going because of the waste they produce!

In 50 years I reckon petrol cars will be like horses. They,ll have their uses, some people will still use them but the vast majority will have gone electric.

P

tankme

Problem is Norway is 30 times smaller than the US. Anything we do with electric cars needs to be multiplied by 30. Means we need 30 times as many charging stations to cover the country. On average I would say most people that commute to a job in a major city spend over 2 hours in their vehicle commuting every day. Unless you live in a big city, there are no local bus routes for people to get to work in probably 80% of our country. Those same areas have no commuter trains. Our infrastructure is built around cars. In rural areas you can't go grocery shopping or get to work without a car. People of lower income typically live in apartments which have no place to charge an electric car as they don't have a garage and end up parking their car outside in uncovered parking lots. Even cheaper electric cars are out of the financial reach lower income families. The US nuclear power industry has been deemed bad so nuclear power in the US is on the decline. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as of November 2019, there were 23 shut down commercial nuclear power reactors at 19 sites in various stages of decommissioning. Only one new reactor was added to the grid since 2016. They make new solar panels that can be used on car driveways, sidewalks, and even highways. Mandating that all new houses have to have solar panels would cut down on the grid pressure. It would also make it cheaper if it was being used so much.

lposter

You are of course correct.

I will be sticking with petrol as I cannot charge a car at home (yet) and spend a lot of time driving to and from mainland Europe where there are a lot less charging stations.

But whether I like it or not ........ petrol is most likely going the way of the horse and within a decade or two, there probably wont be many petrol cars around in most countries.

P

Tanque

Got back to working on the Klingeberger-Maier Panther. Did some work that I'd put off as it's rather tedious. When I first made the wheel hubs I was not fastidious when boring the center section where the hubcap is supposed to be. Consequently I could not get either my own caps nor originals to fit. Rather annoying. So I dismounted all the wheels and bored them to a correct 19.1mm. As I'd made a set of steel caps initially but had turned them in a vain attempt to get them to fit I had to make a new set of 16 and I decided to use aluminium this time. All that remains is to properly mount them on the wheel hubs. The last photo shows the die I use to press them.I would have considered using the original lead parts Maier made but the originals were pretty beat up and besides the bolt pattern isn't correct.

Jerry

Tanque

I breathed a sigh of relief as I finished tapping the last Panther wheel hub this evening; this to allow attaching the hub caps I described in my previous post. 128 0-80 holes threaded on 16 wheel assemblies and I never broke a tap; I did manage to break 2 1.2mm drills but fortunately these were removable and caused no issues. I used a 1.2mm drill for the tap drill as it is .001" larger than the specified # drill for a 0-80 thread. My thinking was that I didn't need a full depth thread for what the purpose is.

Anyway this is the second time I've run the gauntlet for this work- I did it before on my JagdPanther some years ago. It is tedious, stressful and I'm going to try my best never to do this again! At least not with such tiny screws and taps. Sad thing is once it's painted no one will likely ever see it. I chose to use screws to hold these in place as gluing never really works for me and if there's any maintenance to be done this will help that.

Jerry

tankme

I'm with you about using small taps...hate them with a passion. Looks great though.

MAUS45

Those wheels look great!!!

Tanque

Began reassembly of Panther. The painting is the first pass and will go over the model when it is fully reassembled. Putting on the wheel pairs when the swing arms are set and the axles are in place is an exercise in re-installing all 8 pairs on a side at once due to the interleaving. Made more interesting as I had to remove and re-install all the hub caps as I'd painted them in place. When I'd installed the tires (or tyres if you prefer) on the double inner wheels I used my last remaining harder urethane cast tires made 30 years ago to eliminate the need to make new ones. These were so tough I had to take the wheels apart to get the tires back on after painting the wheels. It's done for now. As I mentioned previously the paint I used (Chevron "Perfect"






fuel proof paint - CHE 31 light stone) is older; I removed paint from spray cans to use in my airbrush and unlike the paint I've used from the 1/2 pint cans it appears more a darker mustard yellow where as the 1/2 pint cans where more a sand yellow. Perhaps when I add camo colors it will soften up a bit or when it fully cures it will be more like the other. Either way it's on. I'll be working on the turret/main gun more, making a new muzzle brake and the tool attachment frames separately. After this it's going over the engine and electronics to see what if anything I can improve or upgrade.

RC_BobM

Really cool. Its looking "trick" with the new details. Love it.
Bob

Tanque

I must confess as I work on the Panther, making the final details for it I’m having second thoughts…..
I've spent sooo much time revising this model, many custom parts as you have seen. I've strayed so far from my original intent to just freshen it up a bit
repaint it and move on. As I make the toool stowage racks, functional tool clamps and such it seems a waste to me ..

Second thoughts about retaining the hybrid electronics package. I’ve been seriously considering installing one of my spare three speed transmissions in it and relegating the klingeberger system to my archives….My fear with this Klingeberger system is the gearing- it appears to be far too fast to my taste and there's no provision to change the gear ratios- I prefer slow power to fast rabbit like speed. I'm thinking now's my chance to do something I've always wanted to do: modify a Maier glow engine powered tank to have a much lower final drive ratio than a stock version by making a functional final drive perhaps with planetary gear like the full size machine should have had...

Jerry





I have several Maier three speed units both the manual and the electrically shifted versions. I’ve also considered converting the manual 3 speed to an electric. I believe I have all the parts I need or can make them…..

Decisions decisions….

MAUS45

Wow, the paint looks great and the details are looking good as well.