Received a non S&S Pershing the other day and so far everything is working well. Have about an hour total run time on it and performance on low pile carpet as well as concrete has been good. Have yet to throw a track even while trying to do so. I plan on running it outside this weekend as weather permits.

I did the following before use;

Tighten all external screws.
Removed excess flashing from sprockets and wheels.
Checked tread pins (have yet to CA glue them) and track alignment.
Performed a motor break in by running at low (if you could call it that) speed for about 20 minutes w/tank on a 4x4 block of wood.
Placed some foam in the BB loading bin and a bit of black plastic bag material over the muzzle so as to keep dirt out of unit.
Lubed road and idler wheels along with the suspension system with Hornady One Shot cleaner-degreaser-dry lube.

I plan on doing the following;

Place some sort of cover over the gear boxes so as to help keep dirt out.
Tighten all internal screws.
Paint and detail tank with reference to full size tank pics and info as found on various links provided by RCU forum members.
Increase barrel length to proper scale.
Replace sprocket screws with allen head fasteners (w/steel flat washers) and apply blue Loc Tite to threads.
Consider coating circuit board(s) with moisture barrier designed for this application.
Consider making hull water resistant as per info. found on this forum.
Consider adding a turret mounted mini red dot sight to tank. (my son and I plan on having air soft battles which I aim to win)
Add a PC CPU cooling fan as shown by a member of this forum.
Add weight to front of tank.

Thanks to all the members of this forum for the great info and many tips concerning this hobby!

PS, I will post out door performance w/pics asap. This will include air soft gun test results as well.

May I recommend replacing the circuit board with the smoke and sound set? You'll have superior low speed control and it will be more reliable to boot. Even if you don't want the smoke or sound, the driveability upgrade is well worth it.

hi ,
wow , you do take breaking seriously [sm=thumbup.gif],
anyway ,
have both version(2sound and 2 no sound), and i can say that the non smoke and sound version circuit board last ,not like the s&s version that burns easy(i burned one as soon as i went outside in the mud).

the bad side is that the gears are not well aligned and the controller is cheaper,2 speed only.
you should shim the gears with small washer,so they wont strip.

you do not need to install a fan on the non smoke and sound since the motors(black cap) are smaller and they drain much less electricity from the board.
if you have the white caped motor ,you will have to fan cool.
hope this will save you some work.

make your pins from the track rust , they wont come out anymore.
deep them in a corrosive solution 24H,then let them dry.
never had problems with my tracks and they are worn.

Thanks for the advice guys. Points well taken. I've got some sea salt around here somewhere.....that should rust the pins in. S&S board upgrade is a very good idea since the 2 speed board means 2 fast and way 2 fast. Ya, I tend to get carried away with the motor break in stuff. (I'm into EP park fliers and they often need all the help they can get) The Pershing was going to be my "learn how to mod" tank, but now I kinda like it. I have a Panther on the way and I might just make it my "Frankentank". I guess I could try to make a sorta scale Jagdtiger or even a Panther II out of it.

My alarm went off when you said you used this so-called Hornady One Shot cleaner-degreaser-dry lube. I'm not too keen on that idea as it's a safe bet it isn't safe for plastics. I've used a similar item on my guns and they take away all trace of petroleum products. Suffice to say that plastic is a petroleum product too.

If you notice your plastic wheels and other moving parts turning very brittle and crumbling right before your eyes then you'll know why.

Take care now,
-Harq

harquebus is right ,
should not use petroleum base greases on plastics,it dry`s them out .
shock fluid(hydrolic) is worst , it is too strong ,burn like oil brake.
i would use tamiya ceramic grease ,oil of olay ,facial(skin) greases...

More advice well taken. This product is non petroleum based and safe for plastics as per maker (I tested it on commander figure and batt cover). However, I think I'll go back to using compressed air for cleaning. I have a "meadow" as well as a "dry creek" in part of my back yard that can be very dusty during dry weather. This dust has caused problems with weed eatrs and mowers in the past which is why I'm looking for a dry lube of some type.
What air soft bbs do you guys recommend for this tank? I hear that the bbs that come with the tank are not the best and am hesitant to use them.
Thanks for the help and advice!

read this post about bb`s:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_46...tm.htm#4635041

I tried out the HL Pershing air soft gun the other day and it works OK. It does about 100 fps by my estimate and is reasonably accurate. It will penatrate 2 sheets of newsprint with ease at about 2 feet. The Pershing barrel wall thickness seems to be very thin while the HL "Panther" seems to be pretty thick. I sorted thru the orange bbs that came with the tank and found only about 25% of them to be OK for use so, I will be switching to Flying Color brand bbs for sure. Have a HL "Panther" that I will be using as a paintball test platform as it looks to have a better barrel then the Pershing.
The Pershing does OK in the dirt as long as you don't let any rocks jam the tracks. Climbing ability is not as good as the Panther so, I plan on adding some weight to the front of the tank. I still have not had any problems with the tracks coming off which is more then I can say for the HL Panther. Would like to slow the speed down some and am wondering if a 4.8 or 6v battery could be used and still operate the Rx, etc?

I'm curious about this cooling fan mod you talked about in the first post. Did you wire the fan to the speaker wires? Where did you mount it?

JJM, I have not done the fan mod yet. I got the idea from wozwasnt and his "tiger internal mods" post currently on pg 3. Woz has some good photos of his dual fan mod. I'm pretty sure you could wire the fans to the motor terminals so that they would run when ever the tank is in motion. However, the fans would run forward and backward (unless you used a couple of diodes). The fans would still cool things down regardless of the direction of airflow IMO.
I tried out some paintballs today and found that the gun will break the balls on a sheet of plywood from at least 5 ft. These were "ExtremeSpots" brand that are NOT designed for the AEGs as found on HL and other RC tanks. I'm told that "Flying Color" brand now makes 6mm paintbals that ARE designed for AEGs. The paintballs that I used measure out at about .228" compared to .234" for the HL supplied orange bbs. Accuracy is not very good with these paintballs and they seem to break best at about 70+ deg. temps (two out of three balls broke with very good "splatter"). Will post more test results later.