Vintage Tamiya Sherman 105mm howitzer restoration.

[oldwolf]

I have an old Tamiya 105 mm howitzer Sherman tank. It has the old clutch style gearbox. The one with two motors to provide Power but uses a servo driven clutch system to control the tracks. It is a funky but rather neat set up. The problem is, the gears are a mix of brass and zinc. The tracks, interestingly enough, are made of steel for the most part.

I bought it new, 35 to 40 years ago. It is mostly intact, and I would like to restore it but I am leery of the gearbox. It never had a rotating turret and of course no gun elevation, infrared, or anything like that.

Does anyone know if Tamiya ever produced a steel geared gearbox of the same design? Also, does anyone know how well the old zinc and brass gearbox is held up? Also, how well did the old clutches hold up?

Probably I am best off replacing with modern steel gearboxes. Naturally it would need all modern electronics.

Does anyone know of any restorations that have been done on this type of tank?

[RichJohnson]

They are pretty robust. You can remove the clutch mechanism and just power the motors with a normal tank control board. Then rig up a henglong turret rotation unit to it. I alphabets also converted the bogies over to bearings as well.
if you really want a new tranny, I reccomend the ETO Armor Sherman tranny. It’s about 300 bucks shipped but you will never ever break it.