I emailed Backyard Armor about their 1/8 Master Series Tanks in regards to their specs stating that their kit included an MSC. I asked them if they could custom install an ESC instead of an MSC. This was their response:

"The Master Series tanks are "Ready-to-Run" and are completely assembled, painted and include a 6-channel radio control, ESC, gearboxes, motors, batteries and battery charger. The pricing for the Elite Armor Master Series Tanks is $4800.00 USD (plus freight costs for sea or air shipping)."

Here are the pictures they sent me:

[] cant see the pictures hope there up next time i pop on

Unfortunately, that costs more than my car is worth. If I bought one of those, I would lose my wife, car, house...........

Come on Texas Lotto!

still cant see pics....

kurtmeyer:

Maybe you're missing some type of plug-in for your browser. I'll load them a different way.

If you can't see the images chances are it's set in your preferences to not show images. This is an option that users on slower connections can use to speed up downloading the page. To check/change this setting go to the top of this page and click on "settings" in the yellow toolbar. Scroll down the page to the "My Preferences" section and look for the "Speed Options" section. Make sure that "Don't Show Image in posts" is NOT checked.

Hope this helps

Ken

nice of them to answer your question by giving you information you didnt ask for. I guess their answer is NO

All except two (Challenger) pictures are of my M1A2. It came with a Vantec RDFR 23 ESC. MSC is Mechanical/Servo Control (servo to drive a rheostat)?

vollenc:

Are you say that you have one of these monsters? If you are, how does is run? Is it well built? Does it need alot of maintainence? Is it fast?

Do you have finished, painted pictures?

I have the M1 Abrams and although they may have changed to ESCs recently in the past they used mechanical speed controls. I equiped min with a Vantec ESC and it makes it much more drivable and reliable. The turret mechanics are a bit questionable and I have had to rework them a bit, I am very interested in that one pic showing some small flat motor driving the turret rotation rather than the cordless drill geartrain driving a 90deg gearhead that came in mine. I might have to give them a call.

To answer your questions, and my general thoughts...

Is it fast, not really, but two 250 Lb men can be pushed aside with little effort, it has insane tourqe.
Is it well built and does it need maintenance.... I can honestly say that as far as the end product goes, you are not getting your money's worth if it were a mass produced product. That is to say if the parts were flying off an automated line. What you are paying for is a fabricator's hourly labor, shop overhead, small quantity raw material and component ordering, and low production volume. In that respect, you are paying what it costs to make something like that. As far as quality goes; the main chassis and driveline is very solid, as is the top and turret. The barrel itself could support your weight. The bearings and roadwheels are definatly up to the job and even the small detail features like the grenade launchers and antenna mounts are made so tough they could be used as towing points. That is the good. The negatives are the track and turret mechanicals. The track is made from a very questionable alloy, too heavy and brittle to be pewter but not much tougher. The links are cast and then holes are drilled for the pins. Cracks develop along almost all the pin holes almost immediatly and some of the edges break apart. Had the links been machined instead of cast this wouldn't have been a problem. That said, my tracks have not broken or been thrown by any defects but I would rather all three links ina row be solid rather than one solid, one cracked and one missing. As heavy as the tank is, and the treads are 44Lbs each if I recall, breaking down the track and servicing it is a chore. As I said earlier, the turret's major components and pivot points are very tough. However the motors and drivetrains opperating them are weak and unreliable and almost seem like a last min. hack not on par with the rest of the tank. The barrel elevation is run by a small motor with a reduction gear, driving a brass ujoint like a tamiya driveshaft, turning a bevel gear, that mates with another gear that raises the barrel. There are no limit switches and the mechanism moves too fast. The turret rotation is run by what looks like a cordless drill drivetrain and a 90 deg gearhead, the mechanism also moves too fast and is not precise in it's stopping point.

All things considered it does have real shortcomings that can be dealt with but those things should have been dealt with in production. If you can put those things aside, or fix them, then by all means you will enjoy the tank.

Riff-Raff,

Sorry for the slow reply. I wrote a big long story and it got flushed in the spell check. Oh well. It’s a cool model overall, but as the scale increases so does the maintenance. My goal is to get it as close to operating like my Tamiya Leopard as possible. When I work on it, and study it, I definitely see every penny in materials, machining and assembly/labor. If they made more than a few a year the price would come down of course. To answer your questions: It is solidly built sheet aluminum with no discernable twist or flex. Low and high speed is very nice. It performs slow speed like the Leopard.
Top speed is around 10mph which sounds lame, but is fast for a 180lb model, and is slightly above scale top speed. I’ve included some photos. The work in progress is my mod for a proper turret ring bearing.

subarubrat,

Nice paint and detail on your model.

Vollenc:

I looks like you have the more recent model with the ESC. Everything looks clean. What do you think about the construction of the tracks? I would be nice if they used track like this from Rolling Thunder Technologies with real rubber tracks.



These track are also 1/8 scale. I wonder if they would fit on Backyard Armor's M1A1 Abrams?

Subarubrat stated "The track is made from a very questionable alloy, too heavy and brittle to be pewter but not much tougher. The links are cast and then holes are drilled for the pins. Cracks develop along almost all the pin holes almost immediatly and some of the edges break apart. Had the links been machined instead of cast this wouldn't have been a problem."

Have anything else been upgraded besides the MSC to ESC?

10mph is a good speed for something that size. I think the HL tank are rated for 12mph.