chilipiper

Hot on the heels of my King Tiger build (see attached pics), I finally started my Tamiya Tiger 1 build. I got my Tiger from Stellamodels for a very reasonable price (even including shipping, it was less than I could find anywhere in the states). Their service was outstanding, with my Tiger showing up 4 days after I placed the order.

Anyway.. I began my build with the suspension. Based upon my experience with my King Tiger, I decided to chuck the stock system and use the Wecohe suspension again. I like the compliance that their system gives compared to the stock system. Its also adjustable, so I can compensate for the inevitable weight increase that this model will see compared to stock. I also stiffened the chassis by bonding eight 1/8 thick aluminum strips to the bottom of the chassis, between the suspension rails (sorry, I didn’t get decent pictures of these).

I also took the opportunity to install Daryl Turners idler upgrade kit, since I plan to upgrade to metal tracks.

googlydoogly

Looking good so far!

hdbeast

Your King Tiger looks great, I can see many upgrades on it, and you did a fine job of painting it. Please do a detailed picture build of your Tiger I, We would love to watch the progress.


Gary

chilipiper

Thanks.. your King Tiger is pretty awesome too.

I'm planning to do a full story as I build this puppy, with lots of pictures.

chilipiper

From my earlier King Tiger build I found that I needed to figure out fairly early on which particular tank I wanted to model. After pondering the question a bit, I decided that I was going to model Tiger 332 from sPzAbt.503. There’s a lot of high quality pics of this tank (and others too) to be found in the book Der Panzerkampfwagen Tiger an Der Front Bildband und Tiger Fibel im Bild, so there’s plenty of information available to accurately detail this puppy.

chilipiper

Outer Hull Construction
I next began work on the outer hull. I decided to install some goodies to improve the durability and appearance of the tank. I purchased metal sprocket guides from Tankzone. I chose these sprocket guides over the others that are available, such as the Wecohe ones, as they represent the correct hull shape of an early tiger (which this kit represents). The metal sprocket guides were bonded to the outer hull using epoxy adhesive, as well as being bolted on like the standard Tamiya ones. I also installed idler support bearings in the outer hull to provide additional support for the idler wheel. These were simply a press fit into the existing openings.

At this point, I added a bunch of weld beads along the outer hull and sprocket guides. This is probably the most time consuming bit of detail that I do to my tanks, but I like the effect it creates, so I just park my butt in front of the TV and do it. I create the weld beads by applying an epoxy adhesive (Hysol EA 9394 is what I use – I have tried this technique with Milliput with some success, but find Milliput to be a pain to work with), allowing the adhesive to partially set up and then tooling the appropriate weld texture into the adhesive. A good guide to this technique can be found [link=http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=220&page=3]here[/link].

I scratch built a track holder for the front of the tank that was a better match for the one on Tiger 332. There is also another part to the track holder that is higher up on the hull, but judging from the photos I’ve seen of the real tank, it might be a bit fragile, so I will add it later.

I also decided to install a brass drive shaft support bushing, like I did on my King Tiger. I was hoping to be able to hide them using the stock drive covers, so I purchased the Shumo Sherman drive shaft support bearings, since they seemed to have a smaller outer diameter. Figuring that I would have to do a bunch of filing and dremelling to get them to fit, I was very surprised that they fit almost perfectly in the driveshaft opening with next to no work on my part. I bonded those into place using an epoxy adhesive.

astroboycp

It's always nice to see building photos.

Ern

Looking good Chili... love the weld bead work. Very nice! Tamiya has a nice price tag attached to them, but you gotta love the quality of the product. Maybe one day...

chilipiper

Thanks... But I'm just getting started on this build. You know you have your work cut out for you when you open the box and you see about a bazillion teeny tiny little pieces..

njmlondon

Loving your work chillipiper! I am just about to start my own Tiger I and will be using the same sort of upgrades as you so will watch this thread with great interest.

chilipiper

Thanks for the kind words.. I plan on doing a bunch of upgrades to the Tiger as I go. I also plan on using it as a sort of laboratory to try out new (to me anyway) modelling techniques.

chilipiper

My next step was building the front plates of the upper hull. There were a couple of challenges in building this assembly; first there was some significant battle damage to this plate of Tiger 332 that needed to be done in scale on the model and second, the fit up of these parts to the upper hull wasn’t the best (there was some warpage of the parts) and to get proper looking weld beads between the upper hull sides and the front plate the parts needed to be properly positioned.

Experiment number 1…
The battle damage was done the hard way, using various hand tools, such as scrapers, knife blades, picks, etc. to get the shell impacts to look just right. I made a small build up of putty on top of the front plate over the hit above the driver’s visor, to simulate the deformation of the plate that can be seen on the real tank. Of course, I added more weld beads…

To position the driver’s plate correctly against the upper hull, I scratched come friction clips out of some scrap ABS I had on the shelf. The part glued to the front plate has a reverse angle on it to pull it tight to the upper hull.

After completing the mods and installing this assembly on the outer hull, I installed the inner hull into the outer hull, then added the idler arms and the individual swing arms and adjusted the suspension. I noticed when test fitting the swing arms that there was a small amount of play between the swing arm and the hull fittings, which sounded like it would cause a rattle when the tank was running. I wrapped each swing arm with a single wrap (about 1/8- 3/16 inch wide) of teflon plumber’s tape around the swing arm where it fits into the hull fittings. This helps reduce friction and takes up some of the slack between the 2 pieces. Adjusting the suspension is fairly tedious. Wecohe provides a template for setting the angle of the swing arms (and they’re easy enough to set but there’s lots of them), but my experience on the King tiger was that that angle was inadequate for a heavily loaded tank and must be increased somewhat. I will likely be revisiting this step later in the build, once I get the tank on it’s wheels and tracks (with gearboxes, battery, etc), to get it closer to the running weight..

chilipiper

Gearbox Installation…
Just a short update.. I removed the motors and broke in both of the gear boxes for about 30 minutes in each direction (using some old motors I found, along with some nice gritty toothpaste) . I also broke in the motors, also running each one for about 30 minutes in each direction at 3V. Once the gear boxes and motors had been run in, I cleaned everything up and installed Schumo reduction gears on each gearbox and reinstalled the motors.

When I was doing this, I noticed a small problem on the right gearbox; the frame of the reduction gear made contact with one of the gears in the Tamiya gearbox. Fortunately, the problem was easily fixed with a few swipes of the file. I had used this type of gear reductions in my King Tiger and didn’t have an interference problem ( or at least I didn’t notice it). If I use these again, I will have to keep an eye out for this problem. The left gear box was fine… no interference. When all was said and done, the gearboxes seemed to run a bit smoother, at a more appropriate (slower) speed.

Anyway, after everything was assembled, I lubed the gear boxes with a little teflon spray, followed by a generous application of the Tamiya ceramic grease. I made some gearbox covers from some aluminum tape I found in the garage and bolted these puppies into the hull. The Wecohe suspension, the sherman bushings and bonded aluminum pieces in the hull made installation a little difficult, but a bit of wiggling and the gearboxes slipped in ok.

googlydoogly

very nice attention to detail! Did you manage to snag the Aber PE set?

Prometheum5

Looks great so far... really nice to see some buildup pics of this kit. I just ordered one myself and am waiting for it to arrive... the only detail thing I'll likely buy is the metal gun-barrel... otherwise I'd like to make myself any details it needs. The Aber detail set seems like a really horrible idea for a runner tank, as every time the thing hits a bump some PE part is gonna *ping!* off into oblivion.[:@]

chilipiper

Yes I did. It looks like it adds an incredible amount of detail, but it sure looks intimidating. We'll see how good my patience is when I try to deal with all these little fiddly bits using my sausage fingers and bad eyesight!

chilipiper

I got the turned aluminum barrel at the same time I bought the kit; I got both from Stellamodels.com. It looks very nice... we'll see how it goes together... I will probably epoxy most, if not all of the PE stuff on, in an attempt to prevent the dreaded *ping* sound.

Panther F

Nice work. I hope that isn't green locktite you're using. Not very safe around plastic! The Tamiya thread lock works best, even metal on metal.

Just a thought.

TigerI

I'm getting ready to start my Tamiya Tiger I. Whose gear reduction boxes did you use and where did you purchase them.

chilipiper

Panther F

Nope... No Loctite here.. just the blue stuff from Tamiya that comes in the kit. I learned the hard way on my King Tiger that Loctite 242 eats styrene; I watched part of the recoil mechanism disintegrate before my eyes a couple of minutes after I had applied a drop of the Loctite to secure a screw. Took a while to rebuild from that little oops.. I'm slowly learning to test things like this on sprue, extra parts, etc. before it goes on the model. Nothing beats the school of hard knocks..

chilipiper

T4Mania,
I am using the Schumo gearbox reductions; I got them [link=http://www.axels-modellbau-shop.de/katalog/en/116-Military/Tiger-I-Tamiya-Heng-Long/Reduction-Gear-Set-for-Tiger-I-and-King-Tiger-NEW-VERSION::255.html]here.[/link]

Orange Blast

How does the recoil respond after these are installed? Anotherwards does it affect the speed of the recoil; barrel and chassis recoil.

Thanks, keep up the detailed pics !

chilipiper

Orange Blast,
The gearbox reductions have no effect on the recoil peed of the barrel; that is a completely separate mechanism from the gearboxes. As far as the apparent recoil of the chassis goes, I would say the scale of the chassis recoil is reduced proportionally to the amount of speed reduction. I can only comment at this time on the effect on my King Tiger ( and only partially so; my King Tiger had the gear reductions from day 1). From the videos I saw on the Tamiya web site, I thought the amount of chassis recoil was a tad overdone (it takes a lot to move 70 tons). With the gear reduction, the effect is much reduced and in my opinion, looks more realistic.

Not to worry... more pictures will be coming as the build progresses...

TigerI

Thanks Chili, just ordered them.

chilipiper

Cool.. I think you'll like them. They're pretty easy to install and from what I saw on my KT, they they slow the tank down to approximately scale speed. They come with a couple of extra pinions with different numbers of teeth, so you can fine tune the speed reduction if you want; I just kept the originals on, mostly because I didn't have a good way to pull the pinion gears and swap them. (OK... I just didn't feel like doing it... but it's a good excuse to go buy a new tool...)

Just keep an eye out for the interference that I experienced.