While I said I feel the Abrams is such a Cliche tank, doesnt mean I didnt want one LOL.
I built this up about two years ago for our modern themed events. Thats about the only time I use it in battles, but I do drive it around quite a bit at home and at our Desert Training Center.
I wanted a very fast tank, so I designed to run on 12volts. I use the old IBU2 tank control board in most of the my tanks. I have stock of them here.
This is an old model not the new 6.0. I only paid 110 dollars for it on ebay. There is no idler wheel adjustment possible so it does have tracking issues especially at higher speed turns. I left the gear boxes alone to start with knowing I would blow the plastic ones up, I had ordered the all metal set and put it in when the plastic ones died right away. However the all metal gear boxes quickly wore out the brass bushings that hold the gear shafts in the sides of the gear boxes. This required me to upgrade to the Ultimate gear boxes which are the red annodized ball bearing gear shaft boxes seen below. Also for a fast tank the 390 long can red motors are necessary. The red motors and red ulitmate gear boxes are available from Toucan hobbies on ebay as well as the metal drive sprocket that I installed.
Now the track issue comes from two problems with the tank. First off, the guide teeth on the track are just a tad too short. DKLM makes nice after market track but their teeth are even shorter which cause more problems. Tamiya abrams track has the highest guide teeth and that is what I used on my m60a3 project and it solved all my problems. However its 250 bucks for a pair of track so I did not do that with this abrams yet. The other major problem is no adjustable idler wheel, which now that they make it I really wish I had it. I just hate to have to buy a whole new tank to get it. A third lesser important issue is the older all plastic suspension arms and plastic wheels. They are marked for certain death with plastic on plastic and eventually will wear out. So with the draw backs in the drive train, I didnt want to put too much money into this build and I didnt take it too seriously as a real model tank for me, more of fast fun tank that I dont care if my kid falls on it when he has me chase him playing Godzilla.
But now,...... I am re-evaluating it all over again. A new pro hull with an adjustable idler and metal wheels with ball bearings would litterally bring this tank from the toy I treat it as, to a front shelf battle tank, and would almost make me feel worth while putting tamiya tracks on it. Its just alot of money to spend on a whole new tank for me when I have one that sort of works good. Ive seen a new 6.0 pro abrams in the green nato cammo, and Rubicon99 and I agree, that tricked out correctly, it will perform better than his Tamiya Abrams.
So on with it as is.... I use servos for my elevation set on a knob on my transmitter. Its just how I like all my tanks, I cant stand elevation gear boxes like henglong and taigen and tamiya use. Its not for me. Then I also install a servo recoil unit. Some tanks I build and engineer my own servo unit but for most of the henglong tnaks, a 3d printed univeral recoil unit is available from Clark models through a dealer, the US dealer is DAK RC in Phoenix, Kenny is awesome to deal with.
For speed I built a 12v battery from C cell not sub-c Nimh batteries. This makes my tank ready to fly if it had wings. It performs ok as long as I do not try to turn too sharp too fast. Now I can adjust this on the IBU I use, but I havent yet... I just drive it till I break it.. its more fun. Rubicon99 can attest to that...
I have less detail on my tank becuase I wanted to portray an early A1 and I love the Merdec cammo scheme, I do it right out of the manuals, and in fact have painted a few other folks tanks using it as well.
And just in case you thought I was BSing ya about how fast she is....This is how you get a tank airborne!
I built this up about two years ago for our modern themed events. Thats about the only time I use it in battles, but I do drive it around quite a bit at home and at our Desert Training Center.
I wanted a very fast tank, so I designed to run on 12volts. I use the old IBU2 tank control board in most of the my tanks. I have stock of them here.
This is an old model not the new 6.0. I only paid 110 dollars for it on ebay. There is no idler wheel adjustment possible so it does have tracking issues especially at higher speed turns. I left the gear boxes alone to start with knowing I would blow the plastic ones up, I had ordered the all metal set and put it in when the plastic ones died right away. However the all metal gear boxes quickly wore out the brass bushings that hold the gear shafts in the sides of the gear boxes. This required me to upgrade to the Ultimate gear boxes which are the red annodized ball bearing gear shaft boxes seen below. Also for a fast tank the 390 long can red motors are necessary. The red motors and red ulitmate gear boxes are available from Toucan hobbies on ebay as well as the metal drive sprocket that I installed.
Now the track issue comes from two problems with the tank. First off, the guide teeth on the track are just a tad too short. DKLM makes nice after market track but their teeth are even shorter which cause more problems. Tamiya abrams track has the highest guide teeth and that is what I used on my m60a3 project and it solved all my problems. However its 250 bucks for a pair of track so I did not do that with this abrams yet. The other major problem is no adjustable idler wheel, which now that they make it I really wish I had it. I just hate to have to buy a whole new tank to get it. A third lesser important issue is the older all plastic suspension arms and plastic wheels. They are marked for certain death with plastic on plastic and eventually will wear out. So with the draw backs in the drive train, I didnt want to put too much money into this build and I didnt take it too seriously as a real model tank for me, more of fast fun tank that I dont care if my kid falls on it when he has me chase him playing Godzilla.
But now,...... I am re-evaluating it all over again. A new pro hull with an adjustable idler and metal wheels with ball bearings would litterally bring this tank from the toy I treat it as, to a front shelf battle tank, and would almost make me feel worth while putting tamiya tracks on it. Its just alot of money to spend on a whole new tank for me when I have one that sort of works good. Ive seen a new 6.0 pro abrams in the green nato cammo, and Rubicon99 and I agree, that tricked out correctly, it will perform better than his Tamiya Abrams.
So on with it as is.... I use servos for my elevation set on a knob on my transmitter. Its just how I like all my tanks, I cant stand elevation gear boxes like henglong and taigen and tamiya use. Its not for me. Then I also install a servo recoil unit. Some tanks I build and engineer my own servo unit but for most of the henglong tnaks, a 3d printed univeral recoil unit is available from Clark models through a dealer, the US dealer is DAK RC in Phoenix, Kenny is awesome to deal with.
For speed I built a 12v battery from C cell not sub-c Nimh batteries. This makes my tank ready to fly if it had wings. It performs ok as long as I do not try to turn too sharp too fast. Now I can adjust this on the IBU I use, but I havent yet... I just drive it till I break it.. its more fun. Rubicon99 can attest to that...
I have less detail on my tank becuase I wanted to portray an early A1 and I love the Merdec cammo scheme, I do it right out of the manuals, and in fact have painted a few other folks tanks using it as well.
And just in case you thought I was BSing ya about how fast she is....This is how you get a tank airborne!
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