TOPIC:

nice collection.
I would like to find a lot of pilots to paint them

great job!
i like the matt green paint
keep it up

I've made a little bit of progress on the M38s...


Wheels got painted a few weeks back ...






There were a few problems dismantling the LWB chassis - I had to drill out the irreplaceable countersunk aluminium screws on the reduction gearbox holder :





In theory it's possible to ultrasonically clean things in a container placed in the tank, for instance if you don't want to use a large volume of a cleaning solution ... in practice it works better if you don't mix bronze parts with any other metals, unless you want them copper plated








Rubber on the LWB looked a bit tired (boom boom!) so is getting a soak in glycerince ...





Bits all cleaned ... supposedly the front bulkhead on the SWB is different from the LWB, but I couldn't see any differences ... not that it really helps, I don't have a spare & replacements seem to be even rarer than M38 bumpers.




The plan is to use the most original / best / least broken bits on the SWB, and the seconds on the LWB - so my original purpose of improving the LWB has gone out the window as on average it won't be any better than when I started - but I should have fairly nice SWB for less than they usually go for



To that end, I've started by assembling the bodies (which are no different between the SWB and LWB) - SWB body got the best bits, a set of unused good repro decals & boxart spare wheel cover & jerrycan colours; LWB got the seconds, reused decals (with double sided tape), spare wheel cover & jerrycan colours according to the manual ... and I also managed to break Willys left arm in several places during fitting







Having sorted all the bits into best & second best boxes, next thing to do is make some front wheel spacers, motor mount spacers & hopefully a rear spring top cup type bit for the LWB.

Well done JR, you never disappoint with your efforts

Machined a few bits - front wheel spacers were pretty easy, motor spacers very small but still reasonably straightforward ... rear spring top mounts aren't a particular good match to the originals, but as long as they hold the spring in I'm not that bothered as only a tiny bit of the bottom is even remotely visible:

just remembered...
Replacement parts for those Wild Willy motor spacers can be found inside the SRB dampers. See image below.
That is for those without a lathe



Nice work Jonny!

-Lars

That lathe has come in handy looks great

Did you make those parts with the new belts?

waterbok wrote:

Did you make those parts with the new belts?

They're the same hard, undersized junk that came with my Unimat, so I didn't see the point trying them



On the other hand - I got some of the smallest ones (63mm ID) from the o-ring listing I'd spotted earlier & they seem a world apart (far superior flexibility) ... I ran one for 10 minutes (without load) to warm it up & tried to get them to slip & couldn't, so it's quite promising

I had a go with doing something about the broken front bulkhead on the SWB by building one from layers of 3mm styrene sheet .... I simplified the design quite a bit (no ribbing, straight lines on the outside) and added a bit of strengthening (mostly provision for screwing the whole lot together through the bumper spring mounts).

It does leave me in a quandry though, I'll use the intact bulkhead from the LWB on the SWB (I thought there were supposed to be some differences, but they look identical to me), but I'm not sure whether it's better to have a correct (but broken) bulkhead on the LWB, or a functional but incorrect one