TOPIC:

stingray-63 wrote:

Your sherman did overlord.... honnestly, I'm not sure that rebuild it as out of box is The good idea. For me, you have 2 solutions.  First one, you keep it as this for spares and you search a better restoration base.
and the second one, make a scratch building and play in the garden. 
for the spares, I don't know if you'll find for gearbox except find a complet one.
I don't know but maybe the king tiger  has the same gearbox.

Flo I think you n mm aubergine right, I might have to try for a runner, but not a full restoration to original spec. Let’s see where this one takes us.
 

I can't wait to see what you'll make. I'm sure it will be cool. 
I think that the early tanks haven't msc. If you want, I have some micro Switch on off. I used them for turning signal lights on my Vaillant.

Following this one - should be interesting.  

I hope all goes well. 

The tear down begins.
 
I think this is everything off the lower hull.
The rubber tyres didn’t survive too well, but they must be getting close to 50 years old ??
 

I did manage to save 7.
 
I’ll give these a gentle clean and a glycerin bath and try to preserve them.

 And sorting through everything else.
 
This is what’s left of the clutch system.
 
Metal tracks, complete!!!! These things really add to the weight.

 
Plastic bits.
And here are the random bits that don’t belong to the kit. A random selection of motors and some hand crafted bits, made from metal, as if this thing wasn’t heavy enough as it was.
 

Someone attempted to make their own tyres, I don’t think successfully, but then hey I thought I was getting some useful spares when I bought this so nice touch. Not !!!

Sorry one final comment, this has to be the grubbiest thing I’ve ever bought. Every time I touch it my fingers are just black. Boy does it need cleaning.

mirrorman wrote:

Following this one - should be interesting.  

I hope all goes well. 

Cheers Mirrorman.
This is going to be a slow one. I’ve ordered a couple bits and the delivery time is approximately 18 weeks. Which is fine with me. I’m cleaning everything up, but most importantly I will attempt to get the gear box worked out. Definitely fingers crossed for that.
 

I've always found the Tamiya tanks interesting. - but a bit costly

Closest I've come to that is the Tamiya Kublel Wagen - which seems to be in the same scale .. I think. 


 

The kubel is the truck scale 1/14. But a pure pleasure . A big scale static with rc abilities. I have one and loved build it.

Flo' the Kübel is 1:16 scale, says so on the box.

And yes tanks are 1:16 as well.

I've got a couple of build threads that might be useful to you.  I didn't build the original 56001 Sherman, but I built the 56013 re-release NiB and wrote an article about it which includes a lot of the history and differences between the original and the re-re.  Lots of photos of how everything goes together, many of which will directly apply to your build.  It's a huge article so there is a lot of information there.  The re-re uses a different gearbox, but.....

Essentially the same gearbox was used on the Flakpanzer Gepard and I built one of those NiB and wrote a thread about it here .  There are pictures of the completed gearbox that should be helpful to you in understanding how it goes together.  You can also get larger versions of the photos if you need to zoom in from the page on my web site .  I'm also happy to take more photos or answer specific questions if you have them.

The original 56001 didn't have a speed controller at all, not even a mechanical one.  Motors were controlled with micro-switches so just on or off so those MSC's were added later.  Steering was proportional if using a servo with the clutch system.