Restoring an old Tamiya Leopard A4

[Meter Rat]

At the request of Alpha, whom asked me to do write up of my Leopard A4.
I have never recorded anything like this before as I did not think anyone would be interested. I have done quite a bit of work prior to stating this, and I will leave the bodged upper run for the tracks in place for now.
This tank has been sitting in the loft for 25-30years. Bought as a birthday present by my wife. During use various bits fell off, got lost, or just failed. During lock down I decided to do something with it.
First thing was to get it running. The gear box and motor were cleaned, lubricated, and put back in. The clutches were made good and shims fitted as they very worn and on the first run the thing would not turn. New radio gear was installed and a base made for the battery. Two of the shock absorbers were also made good. We now had a working, rolling chassis. The rear panel was next, with replacement parts made of plastic and brass, and holes filled in and sanded.
The turret was next to receive attention with new brass wire hand rails and cages around the smoke launchers and periscope., with a new mantel made from kitchen paper and varnish. The hull had various bit glued back o I needed some missing bits and a site was found in Germany. Rctank.de. Some beautiful case brass parts arrived, in the form of new mirrors, horn and the gun lock came in two days. Along with replica decals. These were not cheap, about £65. I could spend a lot more.
I have started to clean paint and remove the old decals, along with the tools.
This is where we are at now.
Future plans may include new running gear, wheels, upper rollers. I do not see the the point of doing any more, as to build it into a fully functional model would, for me spoil it.

[Alpha]

Meter Rat Thank you for posting! I hope you continue to update this thread as you proceed with your other plans for new running gear, wheels, etc. This Tamiya model is older than some of the people on this forum! It will be a great day when it's back in service.

[UltraVargen]

Thanks for posting this, and good job starting this restoration. Looking forward to the progress!

[Meter Rat]

Dragged this old crate out of obscurity. Again. 52BE0243-
Now I have more experience , I feel confident enough to have a go at upgrading it with new hardware, and modern electronics and getting it “full option”. First job was to partly disassemble the lower hull, and work out what was missing, or damaged. Turns out not a lot. It is just worn out and very dirty.
After a lot of searching on the twinternet parts have been found. Total cost is more than the original model, and more expensive than an all metal Taigen Leopard. Gulp.

So I used the good boy points, I gained over Friday and Saturday, by carting the financial controller, and her friend to and from one of the local music festivals, I struck quickly and placed an order for parts from Germany. I managed to forget to order new shock absorbers and fitting kit. Oh well I can make do with the existing ones, even though one is damaged and two are missing. Once the thing is able to run, using a HL6.0 TX and RX I can work on the turret. I think the RX I have, has a faulty elevation circuit. I seem to remember magic smoke coming from it. But it will do for mock ups and testing, and will probably be replaced by a HL TK7.1 so I can get a combined elevation and recoil system.
Luckily I have a lot of the original tools, stashed in a box. A few of the missing parts have already been replaced by metal replacements.

The worst part will be waiting for the new parts to arrive.

[RichJohnson]

How hoh oh boy,

I a big fan of the Tamiya leoprard 1s.
ive got a lot of them some new in box and the rest old junkers. I’ve worked out a complete modernization process I do on them. I convert the wheels and return rollers to ball bearings, instal modern tank tranys in them, have new 3d printed spring working shock absorbers working traverse elevation and recoil and IR battle in my tanks.
ivw got a long running thread on rcuniverse about the builds and upgrade process. I love bringing these old things into the modern world.

So here are some pics of my recently completed Belgian Leopard 1 BE.
I also make scale L7 recoiling barrels for the Leopard tanks, that’s my gun barrel in it.

I also have lots of videos on YouTube. These things run so smooth after my rebuilds.
if you have questions ask away

[Meter Rat]

Thank you Rich Johnson. I found your thread on RC universe, by accident, and have read a lot of it, which gave me the inspiration to drag the old crate out of storage. Can’t believe that it has been four years since it was packed up, while we built a house. One question if I may? How do you gain access to the turret?

[RichJohnson]

The round turret, the bottom unscrews.
my welded turret leopards, like yours, i have done tow things, the first one I was able to just make the turret top sit on it, full option on the inside and I can pop the top off any That’s the one I made the modern sloped armor “Lexus” armor package onto.
the Australian welded turret I glued plastic blocks to the inside of the turret and then drilled from the bottom into the locks and tapped the holes, so it’s much like a henglong turret.
i can get you more pics when I return from vacation.

[Meter Rat]

[Meter Rat]

Small update on this. Thanks to rich Johnson for the motivation. A steady trickle of parts have arrived from Germany. Still working on the idea of using twin motors on the, old clutch gear box. Most of the paint removed from the lower hull, and the start of suspension removal. Phosphor bronze bushes were fitted to the wheels, in preference to ball races, due to the plastic degradation over the years, and the wheels braking up. Next job is to drill out the suspension arms and tap them 4mm.

[Rubicon99]

Small update on this. Thanks to rich Johnson for the motivation. A steady trickle of parts have arrived from Germany. Still working on the idea of using twin motors on the, old clutch gear box. Most of the paint removed from the lower hull, and the start of suspension removal. Phosphor bronze bushes were fitted to the wheels, in preference to ball races, due to the plastic degradation over the years, and the wheels braking up. Next job is to drill out the suspension arms and tap them 4mm.

Have you seen Rich's custom designed "functional" shocks he makes for the Leopard 1. Really nice "internal dual spring" design that on the exterior resemble the factory Tamiya shocks.

[RichJohnson]

Oh hey Rubicon, yeah I think your one of the only few that got to see them in person so far. I have posted them on the facebook leopard 1 group but I am waiting on my design guy at JVM to finish the mounting screw tab for me before I really go live with them.

So for the rest of you, leopard 1s seem to often be missing or have broken shocks. The metal ones are crazy expensive, and I found when I built my tank up it needed more supspension, the stock tortion bars were not enough so I originally rigged up the stock tamiya shocks with a spring and it worked very well but was still a bit fragile so I had the guys at JVM totally redesign me a working shock with dual springs. Its quite an amazing part. After about 4 design changes and actualy jumping my leopard while test driving it every time to get them to break at the fail points, we came up with a great working shock that works and doesnt break under my normal use, which is hard driving over rough terrain.

With the recommendation of the guy that runs JVM we went with a dual spring desing (my original sprung tamiya shocks only had one and it caused some ya and instability at angles. With the dual spring design, it is stronger and runs straight in and out perfectly and I only had to use a sprung shock on the front and rear wheels leaving the others free floating without springs. This helps keep track tension, ground pressure and absorbs the bumps better. I am amazed at how my leopard seems to just float across the ground compared to other rc tanks.

Eventually here I will be selling the shock sets, I have a big pile of them I ordered from JVM but I wanted to offer the screw bushing and the lower mounting cup as well since older tamiyas seem to loose many of these parts.

I will post some photos when I get time.

As for you chassis upgrade, I would suggest you use taigen tranys over the tamiya ones, they are way more robust, have better gear ratios and I can walk you through how to install them and probably even make you my adapter plate.

[Meter Rat]

Thank you. Rubicon99, and rich Johnson. I would be interested in the shocks. Shipped to the UK, and used up here in the Scottish weather should be a good test. Gear boxes, I have a spare pair of Taigen units if required. I will stay with the new one from RCTankDe for now, as I do not battle and get more pleasure out of building, than running.

The hull is now completely empty, and as I will be quiet at work a stat will be made on drilling and tapping out the swing arms , to attach the wheels. Hopefully by weekend the rest of the running gear will be here from Germany and a rolling chassis will be built and moving under its own power.

[Durahl]

If you feel like it you could add a Tamiya 56020 Leopard 2A6 ( or 56040 M1A2 Abrams ) Turret Ring for much smoother operation.
I've done so on my Tamiya 36208 Gepard 1A2 ( Video of it ) and were so pleased with it I've started using them on wherever possible.

[Meter Rat]

If you feel like it you could add a Tamiya 56020 Leopard 2A6 ( or 56040 M1A2 Abrams ) Turret Ring for much smoother operation.
I've done so on my Tamiya 36208 Gepard 1A2 ( Video of it ) and were so pleased with it I've started using them on wherever possible.

Thank you for the information. I will investigate further when I am in a position to work on the upper hull.

[RichJohnson]

If you feel like it you could add a Tamiya 56020 Leopard 2A6 ( or 56040 M1A2 Abrams ) Turret Ring for much smoother operation.
I've done so on my Tamiya 36208 Gepard 1A2 ( Video of it ) and were so pleased with it I've started using them on wherever possible.

The problem with using the 2a6 ring is it’s so big and you have to hack up the turret and hull to make it work from every install I have seen.
Der Emma Laden makes a nice kit to do it but lots of hacking.

i have used standard henglong small turret ring gears under my round turret and the old non functional a4 turret.
The static leoaprd a4 actually came ready to be made rc and used the Tamiya pershing / panther ring gear and rollers.

[Durahl]

RichJohnson Well yea while the L2A6 Turret Ring isn't exactly a drop in replacement it's also not the end of the world in terms of how much effort you have to put into it and with the Leopard / Gepards being that rare I see it as a good opportunity to go the extra 1.609km...

Temporarily tack the L2A6 Turret Ring to the Hull / Turret part, score along its Perimeter into the Models Plastic to leave a nice cutting guide, remove the Ring and start hacking away with whatever tool you prefer ( Dremel, Jewelers Hacksaw, Hamster, etc... I won't judge 😏 ), glue the Turret Ring into place perhaps with some backing Supports ( I've used thin Superglue in combination with micro sized Glass Beads to fill the resulting gaps ).

Alternatively one could certainly also make an easier to fit variant based on the L2A6 one:

Though in the end you'd still have to cut away parts of the Hull / Turret to make it fit so... Might as well just get the L2A6 one 🤣

[RichJohnson]

Yeah I’ve seen several people do that and followed how they do and like I said der emma laden even makes a retro fit kit for that unit but it’s so much easier to just add a brace under the a4 turret and use the henglong rotation gear. It was even easier to use it on the bottom of the round turret kit.
while the leo2 ring is a really nice engineering upgrade I just don’t see the benefit of the install, and now the leo2 ring parts are all supposedly discontinued as is the rotation motor unit according to the derr Emma laden website that sells that kit.

[Durahl]

Hard to imagine the parts being discontinued for as long as at least one Model making use of it ( Leopard 2A6, M1A2 Abrams and JGSDF Type 10 ) are still being sold since they all use the same Turret Ring including the Gearbox Motor - The latter of which you don't have to use:

On the Gepard 1A2 the Turret Motor I bought was supposed to be used with a weird mechanism mounting the Turret to the Output Shaft severely limiting the amount of turns the Turret could make before the Wiring would wrap itself around it become an issue. I've solved this issue by whipping up a Gearbox ( providing the same 1:1 Gearing Ratio ) that would remain with the Turret Ring if the upper Hull were to be detached from the lower one but keying back onto the Motor Shaft when reassembling making it possible to install a 4x Slip Ring for both Power and Data ( pretty sure it's some kind of CAN-Bus System connecting the Turret Daughter Board to the Chassis Mainboard ).


On the E-100 - not requiring a fast Turret - I went with a 360° Servo instead using a custom Gear attached to the Servo Horn.

So yea... Not exactly a huge hindrance and in the case of 3D Printing the entire Turret Ring ( if it really no longer can be found in stock ) one could perhaps also use a different ( larger ) tooth profile like perhaps a GT2 one making it possible to drive the Turret Ring via a closed GT2 Belt like they're often found on 3D Printers to relocate the Turret Driving Mechanism to somewhere else 😁

[Meter Rat]

Thank you both for the ideas. I am no where near ready to work on the upper hull and turret yet. I work on the British Army Engineers method. Or rather their acronym of REME. Rough Engineering Made Easy. So I will look at the simplest way of doing things. Still working on the lower hull and waiting on parts. Looked at the Der Emma Laden site. This gives me another source of parts I did not know about. And another source of expense. They show the turret kit is still available, and there are other sites in Germany showing the turret ring in stock.

[Panzermechaniker]

I have always thought the early Leopard was a great looking tank. Looking forward to seeing all rebuilt. I'm enjoying tearing my own tanks down and rebuilding them a lot these days