Abrams project

[ccarley]

I've got my work cut out for me, but this will have to wait until after our 4th of July camping trip.



I've already started some upgrades on my Abrams but it's time for more. Really, this started because I can't stand the whine of the ESC when it's driving the single 550 motor anymore, so I'm hoping that the Clark board, with it's hyper-sonic ESCs, won't make that noise. I know, just turn up the volume :) and I'll be happy to with the Clark in there. I've got the LegoDEI receiver with the cross "hat", I had only ordered the cross but they came with standard tops and the cross tops in the box. And, that's the HL barrel recoil/elevation unit. Just looking at it, I don't see that it will just bolt in but we'll see.

That is "just" the TK50 board, I couldn't see spending the much larger amount on the bigger board with a GBS unit. I will pull out my volt meter and see if I could maybe use the Heng Long SWB board with this; it's a maybe, and I don't necessarily need it... but it could be cool. I do want to switch to the metal traverse ring and the high speed traverse motor in addition to these bits.

Once I start tearing into it I'll get the glass finished for the rest of the view ports as well. But, do I need to paint the tank? I did notice after the last run (Father's Day) that I'm missing some bits off the back, so I'll need to see about ordering those as well (or do I need some East Coast Armory bits?).

Clay

[ccarley]

Some other parts that arrived:
DKLMRC sprockets, the set with the mud holes and "scalloped" outer ring. Nice set, not expensive!
DKLMRC Duke IED antenna
Heng Long metal bustle rack with extended portion

I found some "Krylon Fusion" satin Khaki paint is close to the original Heng Long color, just a touch lighter. The bustle rack is going to need some mounts made up as it's designed to "bolt" on it appears; looks like I should be able to make a mount out of plastic that slides through the top and bottom slots on the rear of the turret, and then drill it out and locate some tiny fasteners for that as well. The nice thing though is it's straight, nothing is "bent" on it like the original Heng Long plastic unit. My daughter and I had previously printed up some 1/16 jerry cans, and they actually fit the locations next to the extended portion of the rack which is cool. I know I can order some other items for the rack but was hoping to find some files for things like a cooler and/or a water container.

If I add metal tracks and road wheels etc, this is going to end up being a heavy tank. The 21 turn 550 motor so far has plenty of torque though; in the sand that gearbox is really really awesome (every time you would expect it to be stuck, it just threw sand and kept going pulling out of holes etc) and even off-road it currently doesn't slow down for steep grades (ard to walk up). Top speed is a walking pace though currently. I'll definitely be soldering the motor leads to the TK50. I like the sounds that the metal tracks produce but do I need metal? Not necessarily. I was actually thinking that painting a set of plastic tracks with sand or dirt color would end up weathering well, with the pads then turning black when the paint wears off there.

Anyway, options, just thinking out loud about some things.
Clay

[tank_me]

Gotta project ahead of you there. My Abrams is heavy as hell...it is what it is. Just be extremely careful soldering the leads to the TK50 board as the solder pads are really close together. If you end up bridging the solder pads together accidentally, you will cause damage to the board. Inspect them carefully before putting any power to the board. With the power off you can also use a voltmeter in resistance (ohm) mode to make sure you haven't shorted the pads together.

[ccarley]

Thanks tank_me,
That's exactly what I ended up doing last night! I now have 14ga wire soldered to the motor outputs and the battery input on the board. Man I have some old leaded solder, easy to use, but the stuff on the board really was much harder (must be better for you with no lead I'm sure).

So far so good, the board is alive and I was able to get the receiver bound to the radio and the radio setup properly. I now also see a Visitron speaker will be needed; although that HL speaker in the box sounded great with the 7.0 board, once the turbine is running off the Clark you can't hear any of the other sounds. I gotta say though, the audio of the engine sounds is very awesome. I tested the recoil unit and need to reverse the servo output, and I forgot that the elevation output needs to be corrected to work with a servo as well so that did not appear to work correctly at the time.

I'm glad that the Abrams has such a large hull though too, plenty of room for all the accessories inside and I still have quite a stack of weights in the front.

Clay

[tank_me]

Good to hear you got it running. I did have to crank up the temp on my soldering station to about 400 when I was soldering the motor leads to my Clark TK80 board on my Abrams. Those large pads take a lot of heat to get them flowing.

[ccarley]

So much for waiting until after our camp trip for 4th of July. I came up with a wire map and dug in last night... I won't get to the recoil/elevation servos before camping, nor will I have my LegoDEI apple installed (my daughter misplaced the bed clips to the 3d printer and I can't print the base).

The wire map is really helping; rather than referencing the Clark instructions and cross referencing the Heng Long instructions or vice/versa. I'm keeping the slip ring (or attempting to) so it's not as easy as just tracing the wires to what they are connected to. Anyway, on to the good news: the Clark ESCs do not have any humming emanating from the motors. I can't tell you how awesome that is since the TK7.0 board, once in the dual current mode, had an incredible hum from either motor. Which is weird because with the original gearboxes, there was no perceptible hum from the motors really; if there was, it wasn't noticeable.

I was also looking briefly for a muzzle flash LED. I don't really want to go with the barrel smoke/flash kit, the smoke is cool but if you are not firing a lot, the smoker just produces so much smoke so quickly it starts coming out the barrel anyway. And, again, I'd like to keep a slip ring because I'm not good at keeping track of how many times the turret spins in what direction! More to do, plenty of time; we have the WWII tanks to battle while camping for the 4th.

Clay

[tank_me]

For most of my Clark installs where the unit will fit down the barrel, I use the Taigen High Intensity Flash units. You do need to have a Clark (Sony) remote and a battle apple (or battle reciever circuit) in order to program the board to trigger it, but you will also need that remote to program the board to use servo elevation. You did say you are using a LegoDEI so the apple part is covered. Programming the board is a little strange for the Taigen flasher, but Stanley from RC Tank Legion has a video of how to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yam654wo2hg

https://www.taigentanks.com/products/high-intensity-flasher?_pos=1&_psq=high&_ss=e&_v=1.0

And BTW, a note about slip rings. Some have had issues with them and using the IR battle features. It seems that the mechanical action of the slip ring may create some electrical noise in certain installs that interferes with the IR LED. I've never had the issue, but I've decided that I don't need slip rings.

Derek

[ccarley]

Thanks for the info Derek!

This is the only tank I've got with a slip ring, and so far it's not had any issues with the original IR setup or the HL LegoDEI unit, but there is a difference with the Clark/Tamiya unit so we'll see.

I was working more on wiring this evening and it seems that there's not really any rhyme or reason to the colors on the LED wires, or maybe I should have paid attention before cutting the connectors off to solder the wires up. I have tail lights, no headlights or machine gun led yet. I noticed that sometimes the turret won't traverse left, but it always will traverse right; not sure what's up there but it seems the more it's used, the more it's working. That's the first oddity I've experienced with the Clark; the unit I've got in the M26 has not acted weird at all.

Clay

Oh yes and I got this photo today...