Started the Takom kit , it’s light and just going to use brass tube for bearings .

New Elmod board fits

First job the return rollers


Brass insets and tube fitted instead of the plastic



Rollers done

Brass insets and tube fitted instead of the plastic

Off to a great start!

Nice solution for the bearings!!!

Road wheels ,same technique as the rollers keeping it a simple build

The wheels next to fix. Tube is almost perfect as I am not drilling out a large hole in the hub, or the hull support .

Made the idler adjustable axle just copied the plastic one.

Brass tube and a strip bent over them for the idler


Idler wheel and idler axle cleaned up and ready to fit.

Nice engineering! Wish I had your soldering skills.

Thanks for look in, a few more mods to the static kit. Idlers fixed, road wheels , sprockets were a problem as the hull is tight at the front due to the angles. Used a Tamiya plastic kit gearbox sat further back.

Idlers fitted

Road wheels on, was able to make idlers adjustable as the idler assembly and hull has 3 layers of plastic. Ran a tap through and a hex game done

Sprockets and front road wheel, cut out the plastic spring and found a spring for suspension


Tamiya plastic twin gearbox

No room for a direct drive, fitted a gear between sprockets and gearbox

Looks like a cool project. Where did you get your gears from? Those look perfect for a project I had in mind

Hi Have a look here on the Technobot site https://www.technobotsonline.com/pla...del-gears.html

It’s in the UK ,must be a US place selling the plastic gears.

US link: https://www.robotshop.com/en/tamiya-...r-gearbox.html

Made up the tracks, could not find metal pins the correct size Managed to find a coil of piano wire , still has a slight curve but manage to thread it through the track. Need to buy some thick superglue as all I have is the extra thin stuff, would end up gluing the tracks as the stuff runs .

Cut wire for tracks

Suspension check the a test run . Elmod Fusion X board and large battery and speaker to check gearbox , will look for a small 7.4 Lopo and a speaker that fits upper hull. Video not ready will upload next.

Wheel are working for suspension travel

Fusion X is a good fit, as they say less is more😎

Test run for Panzer 1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_776LOXD0A

That's working really well.

Ronnie, that is a really nice conversion and runs well.

Thanks, but I have known and been using those gearboxes for years, What I was looking for are the white nylon gears he attached to the tamiya gearbox and connected to the final drives. I always had a hard time finding gears or projects as the pitch and ration aspect were always things that threw me off

Back again to try and sort out the turret rotation, the Takom plastic likes to bind , the ABS on the Tamiya or Taigen slide against one another easily. Using gearwheels on the servo did not perform well, ended up using a direct drive for turret.

Here is a link to a liquid Graphite product called NEOLUBE 2 primarily used in model railroading, but I have used it to lubricate the turret on my Tamiya Sherman as well as the gearbox output shaft on my Tamiya King Tiger where it goes through an aluminum support bushing on the side of the hull.

It works great and is easy to apply. Basically it is Graphite suspended in Isopropyl alcohol, you just paint it on wherever or whatever you want to lubricate, once the alcohol evaporates you have a thin layer of graphite on whatever surface you chose.
While it is somewhat expensive one bottle will likely last many years, unless you are like me and find additional uses for it.
Alternately if you have access to a 3D printer you could print a slipsheet out of PLA or ABS to go between the turret and the hull the PLA and as you mentioned ABS are both very slippery.
Steve

Excellent conversion

Hi Thanks for the info about reducing friction on the turret. The direct drive is working for now , should try something with a slippery surface . Brass tube for the MGs may change to Aber ones if hollow or i am brave enough to drill for fibre optics. Managed to fit everything in the hull, using a 2c lipo as its quite light. A short test video of turret and MGs firing, next up is finding an extra small servo that fits in the turret for elevation

Ronnie,
I have the ABER machine gun barrels for the Panzer I, they are not hollow and are a very small diameter, However the perforated sleeve that surrounds the barrel would add some detail and hide whatever brass tubing you might use to allow fiber optics to pass through, you would just need to flare the end of the tubing.
If you are interested there are metal tracks available for the 1/16th Panzer I


I have purchased these they come with brass pins, they are somewhat soft, not sure how long they will last, longer than the plastic or resin tracks anyways.
Steve

Thanks that’s saved me from buying the Aber mg’s and making a mess of drilling out. I will try to flare out the mg’s as you suggest.