Questions for t-55 owners
 

Do any of you use anything to stiffen the lower hull or feel the need to? rctank.de has two idlers and some plates you can add but I am not sure if its needed, opinions welcome. I was thinking of getting one of the idlers just for peace of mind personally.



Turret traverse mechanism- other than the cloned recoil mech, all the others that came with this have a less than stellar feel to them, and am I worried about its reliability- have any of you had problems or replaced any of them?


Thanks

No stiffening needed! The recoil and elevation work fine, the traverse is slow but you can use the motor from a henglong air soft unit to speed it up.

If your going to order the idlers, I'd go ahead and grab the hull braces. Especially if your thinking of going the ETO gearboxes route when available. As you know that lower
is pretty thin and has some flex to it. Probably not a deal breaker, but their not that expensive anyways.

My T-55 is pretty much a shelf queen. Stock and have had no issues, but I don't run it much.

Yeah I am definitely planning on getting the ETO boxes. Do you own either of the idlers?


Also thanks for the tip tom, will try that

I've got the idlers from AFV. Haven't installed them, but nice looking machined aluminum with bearings. Also have their track tensioner, which is more just a hull brace and may look into the Henntec (or atleast looks like a Henntec) down the road.

http://www.afv-model.com/4711shop/pr...roducts_id=435

http://www.afv-model.com/4711shop/pr...oducts_id=2767

http://www.rctank.de/HQ-T-55-Hooben-...sioning-System

just realized I have been saying idlers when I meant the tension system for them this entire time

The henntec is the brass one right?

Yup.

Any real reason for henntec over the other one? Obviously it looks nicer but otherwise?

Henntec will give some adjustment on idler wheel with swing postion. The AFV is really just a hull brace, doesn't provide any movement on the idler shaft. This is all just by looking at it.
I haven't had the time to get to this build yet and really get into it as of yet.

I always had issues with the recoil system on mine and I ended up installing a Clark board and going down the servo recoil route. It looks very realistic and works well so I would recommend that if you have any problems. I also had problems with the alignment of the main gun and I put a rubber O ring over the end of the barrel thread so that when it was screwed in the O ring bulged up and gave a better fit. This cut down on barrel wobble and stopped the paint from scratching off when it recoiled.

Other than that and a few cosmetic mods, mine is mostly stock but I plan to hook in and make some more changes when I get some time. The elevation has always been a bit flaky on it so I might change that out for a servo and I really want to do something about the road wheels, they have way too much play. I'm also thinking about swapping out the motors as they have a bad whine at low power that I cant seem to get rid of. The other main issue I have had is lack of internal space but there's not much you can about that. :)

Why is that Dan? :confused:

The T-55 is the one I let get away (thinking it would be available for a long time and NOT have the mold issues it did) so I didn't get it right away. I love that whole Russian look & feel I guess and most likely would be running it the most out of my current fleet. The movie 'The Beast' is to blame.

Anywho... if you're ever looking to sell or a trade is in your immediate future let me know. :o




Jeff

The T-55 is plenty stiff (mostly due to its light weight and compact size), so no additional is needed.

Never needed any upgrade to tensioners, the tracks are quite resilient with no stretching, once set its good for a long time.

The elevation and traverse units are good, better than the stock Tamiya units for Tam models.,

The only real upgrade I would recommend is replacing the gearboxes as the stock T-55 boxes, while they work, over time the stress on the middle gear shaft will cause it to bend at the e-ring slot and thus snap teeth on the gear. It's a bear to repair and the repair may only be temporary. Both left and right gearboxes fail the same way, so before you complete the build, just replace altogether with Tamiya or Waltersons or like quality, even HL boxes do well as replacements.

Additional review here:
http://www.sead.us/T55%20Review.html


Thanks[/QUOTE]

My lower has all kinds of flex in it. It is an early with all the crappy molding and flashing, so maybe that's why? Had to get a replacement upper and some spures as they were just unusable. And this was how the
lower arrived out of the box.

good lord

how can you tell between early and later moldings?

just look at your part sprues. If they have an access amount of flashing, you've got an early. I mean enough flashing to have parts connected to the sprue from the flashing there's so much.

I remember lots of flash but nowhere near that much, that sounds awful

Either way, I think I am going to get one of those tensioner braces just in case, and the eto boxes.