Metal upgrade for a TongDe M60A1 to improve reliability

[keilau]

The recommendation to replace the road wheel nylon rings with ball bearings is one of the most beneficial upgrade to improve the M60 driving quality. Not a cheap upgrade, but one of the best money value upgrade for TD tanks.

The TD external parts have many fine details molded to scale, making them difficult to see in any lighting. The next 2 steps will be a light wash before a final Vallejo desert yellow paint by airbrush.

I just finished a oil wash using Burnt Umber. My wash is much more gentle than the Tongde shading.

I did more research on the final color because the Vallejo desert yellow looks quite a bit darker than the TD paint on the M60.

https://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/3/t/128141.aspx

Hans von Hammer wrote the following post 13 years ago:
Closest is XF-59/TS-3 Desert Yellow, but I think it's a couple shades too dark for Desert Sand... Works better for AFrika Korps... If you lighten the XF-59 with white to match Testor's Model Master Modern Desert Sand, I think you'd be close, IMHO.

I have a spray can of Humbrol Sand63 which is, for all practical purpose, same shade and color as Vallejo desert yellow. I tried different yellow based paints from my inventory and found that the Tamiya XF60 Dark Yellow is an almost identical match to TD paint job. The question remains is how good is the Tongde paint color to represent modern US tank in desert mission color? Shall I mix Vallejo Desert Yellow with flat white to simulate the Tongde paint color?

[keilau]

I have 6 leftover ball bearings from my road wheel metal upgrade. I used 2 to replace the nylon rings on the gun elevation pivot shaft. The bearings are a perfect pressure fit to the shaft and stay in place. It gives good assembly guide to the gun assembly making reassemble the torrent slightly easier.

On a HL tank, the mantle and upper torrent have an interlock system to hold them together. It makes assembling the torrent a 2 hands operation. On the Tongde M60, there is only a locating tab for the mantle. The user must hold 3 pieces together during the torrent assembly, somewhat less convenient. This observation is not meant to be a criticism of the TD design. I hope it will help my fellow tanker interested in an upgrade.

[keilau]

The modification of the TD M60A1 barrel is very similar to the modification of the HL T-34/85 barrel that I did earlier. I spent 3 days to do the T34 barrel, but only 20 minutes to complete the M60 mod. I have a new rotary tool which cuts much better than the portable Dremel that was on its last leg. The new tool costed much less than buying replacement Dremel battery.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWQYSJXP?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_detail s

The M60 barrel is much thicker than the T34 barrel. I can drill enough depth of the barrel in one session. The barrel got warm, but not hot enough to cause the drill bit to bind.

Assembling the torrent should be easy. I will be careful not to get the fume extractor upside down again.

[keilau]

Painting and weathering are my weakest areas in modeling. Thank @Rubicon99 for giving me the excuses to put it off and go back to finishing the torrent upgrade. I will modify the TD barrel to allow simple recoil that comes with the M60. I already drill open the mantle. I plan to add a thin wall copper tube to the TD barrel to allow smooth recoil. I enjoy doing the mod instead of buying a correct dimension aftermarket barrel.

The M60 mantle is a 2 pieces assembly. After I drill out the recoil hole, I probably installed the inner piece upside down. The barrel fume extractor is upside down and I failed to notice it. Posting at this forum is not showing off. It allows me to get help and correct mistakes.

[keilau]

Not sure if you are aware but the barrel fume extractor is upside down.

No, I do not realize that. Thank you for your help. I can see what you mean now, but do not understand how it could have happened. The barrel has a D-shaped section at the root to match the D-shaped openning on the mantle. I will open the turrent to find a way to turn the barrel 180 degrees.

[Rubicon99]

The recommendation to replace the road wheel nylon rings with ball bearings is one of the most beneficial upgrade to improve the M60 driving quality. Not a cheap upgrade, but one of the best money value upgrade for TD tanks.

I drove the M60 in the basement to verify the proper working of all mechanical parts for a few days before I install the external appendant parts. The pictorial instruction in the TD manual is not great, but should be sufficient for the regular plastic modeler. Take the time to trial fit. I used plastic welder for tight fitting parts. Some parts, most of the reactive armour panel included, have loose fit that CA glue is better. If you run into difficulty, the Tamiya 1/35 scale US Marine M60A1 with Reactive Amor (Miniature Military Series No. 157) assembly manual is very helpful.

The TD manual has one mistake in the towing cable assembly. The manual showed the cable ends to be loose instead of attached to the cable hooks.

The TD external parts have many fine details molded to scale, making them difficult to see in any lighting. The next 2 steps will be a light wash before a final Vallejo desert yellow paint by airbrush. The pictures below are not painted yet.

Not sure if you are aware but the barrel fume extractor is upside down.

[keilau]

It took me 4 more days to get the M60 in full function condition again. When I first re-assembled the M60 after the metal swing arm and road wheel bearing upgrade, the gun elevation and some lights were not working. All due to loose or broken connections. Tongde use guage 26 wires on some connections which are very easy to break off. Heng Long did the same thing in early years, but changed to guage 22 wires mostly on later models.

Break off connection to the gun elevation motor was easy to spot. Hidden breaks in wiring to LED lights were more difficult to detect and repair. The next step is to dress up the small parts and some touchup painting.

The recommendation to replace the road wheel nylon rings with ball bearings is one of the most beneficial upgrade to improve the M60 driving quality. Not a cheap upgrade, but one of the best money value upgrade for TD tanks.

I drove the M60 in the basement to verify the proper working of all mechanical parts for a few days before I install the external appendant parts. The pictorial instruction in the TD manual is not great, but should be sufficient for the regular plastic modeler. Take the time to trial fit. I used plastic welder for tight fitting parts. Some parts, most of the reactive armour panel included, have loose fit that CA glue is better. If you run into difficulty, the Tamiya 1/35 scale US Marine M60A1 with Reactive Amor (Miniature Military Series No. 157) assembly manual is very helpful.

The TD manual has one mistake in the towing cable assembly. The manual showed the cable ends to be loose instead of attached to the cable hooks.

The TD external parts have many fine details molded to scale, making them difficult to see in any lighting. The next 2 steps will be a light wash before a final Vallejo desert yellow paint by airbrush. The pictures below are not painted yet.

[keilau]

They are a tight fit, but mine were no worse the a number of Taigen/Torro sprockets I have purchased. Or trying to fit HL sprockets onto Taigen drive shafts.

The key to making them fit the easy way is not to rework the D slot in the sprockets it is to sand down the axle shafts. Simple run the gearboxes and hold a piece of sand paper or other sanding implement around the axle. As it spins it sands/files down the axle. Maybe 5-10 minutes work per side. I learned this technique from RichJohnson and it has saved me a huge amount of work over time.

I prefer to grid down the D-shaped well on the sprocket which is made of soft nickel alloy. I do not touch the gearbox axle shaft because it was precision grounded during manufacturing and electro-plated to prevent rust. Yes, the process takes a while even with high quality rotary tool, but it is worth it.

I have 8 or 9 metal sprockets over the years. The D-shaped gearbox axle shaft dimension is fairly well standardized. The TD sprocket is the first one I encountered this fitting problem.

[Rubicon99]

My major complaint about the Tongde metal sprocket is its cast quality. It will not sit close enough with the tank chassis. I spent many hours to grid out the D-shape axle well to fit the metal gear box axle. Without the re-work, the metal sprocket will be sitting too far outboard and cause the track to misalign. BTW, the TD plastic sprocket is a perfect fit to the axle. The TD metal gearbox axle is the correct length,

They are a tight fit, but mine were no worse the a number of Taigen/Torro sprockets I have purchased. Or trying to fit HL sprockets onto Taigen drive shafts.

The key to making them fit the easy way is not to rework the D slot in the sprockets it is to sand down the axle shafts. Simple run the gearboxes and hold a piece of sand paper or other sanding implement around the axle. As it spins it sands/files down the axle. Maybe 5-10 minutes work per side. I learned this technique from RichJohnson and it has saved me a huge amount of work over time.

[keilau]

I have to disagree with your evaluation of the metal TD sprocket. Sure it is not overly accurate. But it is highly functional and does not have the tendency like the multi part sprockets to become unscrewed and separate into two or three pieces causing a entire list of track issues to occur. You have to keep in mind the TD M60 was built as a TOY not a hobby grade tank. It was intended for a young market.

My major complaint about the Tongde metal sprocket is its cast quality. It will not sit close enough with the tank chassis. I spent many hours to grid out the D-shape axle well to fit the metal gear box axle. Without the re-work, the metal sprocket will be sitting too far outboard and cause the track to misalign. BTW, the TD plastic sprocket is a perfect fit to the axle. The TD metal gearbox axle is the correct length,

[Rubicon99]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. What do you mean by "backspacing"? Will that be easier to custom made a sprocket to work with the Abrams track on the M60?

The TD one piece metal sprocket is a very poor design compared to the 4-pieces job that Mato do for other tanks. Hopefully, if there are enough sales of the M60, it may get Mato or Torro to get into the after market parts.

This issue is how the sprockets and tracks align with the hull. To use a HL Abrams sprocket the drive shaft need to be longer. This is something even DKLM had trouble with on their M60 and had to supply a "axle extension" piece that pushed the sprockets outboard further. It works kind of 🥴. TD saw this when then looked at the DKLM M60 and decided it would be more reliable, durable and cost effective to simply make their sprockets wider. RichJohnson with his DKLM M60 had longer drive shaft made 💰💰💰and his DKLM M60 runs very well but he will even tell you that his TD M60 overall runs better.

I have had axle extension spacers made (small internal section piece added to the end of the axle) for the TD in and attempt to use a Abrams sprocket. The results were the cosmetics looked more horribly from the rear of the tank as the sprockets looked like they were going to fall off. The functionality was so so as the sprockets now had less metal internal contact area attaching them to the sprockets. This caused them to wobble when and loads were placed on them such as driving and turning in grass or soft dirt. The track I used was the best available which is Tamiya Abrams track. It's light weight, double pinned and super strong. Anything heavier would have worsened the wobbling issues.

I have to disagree with your evaluation of the metal TD sprocket. Sure it is not overly accurate. But it is highly functional and does not have the tendency like the multi part sprockets to become unscrewed and separate into two or three pieces causing a entire list of track issues to occur. You have to keep in mind the TD M60 was built as a TOY not a hobby grade tank. It was intended for a young market.

[keilau]

Yes I tried the M26 sprocket and the Abrams, Challenger, Leopard T90/72, Centurion and a few others. The backspacing on all is wrong and the tracks do not line up with the road wheels or return rollers.

Thank you for taking the time to write this. What do you mean by "backspacing"? Will that be easier to custom made a sprocket to work with the Abrams track on the M60?

The TD one piece metal sprocket is a very poor design compared to the 4-pieces job that Mato do for other tanks. Hopefully, if there are enough sales of the M60, it may get Mato or Torro to get into the after market parts.

[Rubicon99]

Did anyone try to put a Pershing RC tank sprocket on the Tongde M60? Properly scaled 1:16 T-84 tracks of high quality is easily available for the Pershing and Sherman. Additional links will be needed, but it is a small number compared to the 800 links that Rich did.

I understand that the M60 is a heavier tank than the Pershing. The M60 sprocket may be larger in diameter?? I will investigate that in the next few days unless somebody already did and found it not working.

When I upgrade the TD M60 metal sprocket, I spent several days to grid and smooth out the motor axle well to make the tracks line up straight. (The TD plastic sprocket has no problem.)

Yes I tried the M26 sprocket and the Abrams, Challenger, Leopard T90/72, Centurion and a few others. The backspacing on all is wrong and the tracks do not line up with the road wheels or return rollers.

The problem with making new TD M60 tracks and why then will not be cheap: For "dual pin" 3D printed tracks each individual link section has 7 components, multiple that by something like 90-95 links per side on the M60 and it's a lot of total pieces. Plus then there are having ample spare links for when the track is damaged or breaks.

To put the number of parts in perspective for those reading this. These are the Tamiya Leopard 1 dual pin tracks track components minus the track pins. Keep in mind the Leopard 1 has much shorter track lengths then the TD M60. Show in the photo taken from JVM3Ds IG are 1400 pieces for the Leopard 1 tracks.

[keilau]

Did anyone try to put a Pershing RC tank sprocket on the Tongde M60? Properly scaled 1:16 T-84 tracks of high quality is easily available for the Pershing and Sherman. Additional links will be needed, but it is a small number compared to the 800 links that Rich did.

I understand that the M60 is a heavier tank than the Pershing. The M60 sprocket may be larger in diameter?? I will investigate that in the next few days unless somebody already did and found it not working.

When I upgrade the TD M60 metal sprocket, I spent several days to grid and smooth out the motor axle well to make the tracks line up straight. (The TD plastic sprocket has no problem.)

[RichJohnson]

Oh the nightmare of a week of building up those T84 tracks I had them make for me for my Leopard 1 tanks. But yeah they are awesome tracks though. I had asked those guys if they were going to make m60 high grade dual pin tracks and they told me if they get around to it. Which meant if Rubicon and I bugged them enough lol. I wonder how much better the M60 would run with real dual pin track sets considdering how well they run now with the stock plastic tracks on a metal version tank. We really drive ours hard in tankland and in the desert training center and so far like Rubicon said no ill effects on the track. Yeah eventually it will wear and probably snap a pin retainer but they are holding up way better than the tamiya sheridan track did, people were snapping them left and right because the tank over powered its light track. And tamiya tigers and panthers break tracks too because they have that open pin design. The TD m60 track really was built quite robust in its design. Its not the best scale looking track I will say that but its close. If we do get JVM to produce some M60 track components that would be cool but costly but I know from experience it will enhance the scale appearance of the tank alot and probably run even better.

[Rubicon99]

It took me 4 more days to get the M60 in full function condition again. When I first re-assembled the M60 after the metal swing arm and road wheel bearing upgrade, the gun elevation and some lights were not working. All due to loose or broken connections. Tongde use guage 26 wires on some connections which are very easy to break off. Heng Long did the same thing in early years, but changed to guage 22 wires mostly on later models.

Break off connection to the gun elevation motor was easy to spot. Hidden breaks in wiring to LED lights were more difficult to detect and repair. The next step is to dress up the small parts and some touchup painting.

I am not fond of the quality of the TD plastic track and don't like the TD metal track either. Did anyone try other track option by borrowing from a Heng Long or a Tamiya tank?

I have tried all available "modern" track options from HL, Mato and Tamiya. Only TD track work with TD sprockets due in large part to the added width of the TD sprockets.

Between the plastic and metal TD M60 tracks (both octagonal and shevron patterns) I prefer the plastic ones as they are of at least equal in strength to Tamiya "plastic" tracks and far lighter in weight to the TD metal tracks which are by comparison to all brands of metal tracks crazy heavy.

Myself and others out here on the west coast ( about 8 M60 tanks) all now run the plastic tracks pretty hard and we have not experienced any negative issues with them. In fact I don't know if any of us have even broken a track yet, it will eventually happen but then even Tamiya "plastic" tracks break. So by all accounts TDs are actually pretty decent, but it would still be nice to have a "dual pin" track option, which may be sooner then we think. JVM3Dconcepts has some designed based on their excellent 3D printed T84 tracks resized to fit the TD M60 sprockets. Unfortunately they will not be cheap and will require 100% assembly from about 1600 pieces (~800 per side).

[keilau]

It took me 4 more days to get the M60 in full function condition again. When I first re-assembled the M60 after the metal swing arm and road wheel bearing upgrade, the gun elevation and some lights were not working. All due to loose or broken connections. Tongde use guage 26 wires on some connections which are very easy to break off. Heng Long did the same thing in early years, but changed to guage 22 wires mostly on later models.

Break off connection to the gun elevation motor was easy to spot. Hidden breaks in wiring to LED lights were more difficult to detect and repair. The next step is to dress up the small parts and some touchup painting.

I am not fond of the quality of the TD plastic track and don't like the TD metal track either. Did anyone try other track option by borrowing from a Heng Long or a Tamiya tank? The main concern is matching the pitch of the track to the sprocket.

[keilau]

Finish all 12 swing arms/road wheels metal upgrade with twin ball bearings for the road wheels. Gearboxes back in place. I have not re-assemble the whole tank yet. I took this opportunity to paint the metal sprockets and idler wheels. The tank is sitting on the 12 road wheels. When I push down on it and roll it back and forth, I never feel it so even and so smooth. I feel that I finally approaching the full potential of the TD M60.

The real test is how it drives when I have the tank fully assembled. Stay tuned.

[keilau]

I installed the first 4 road wheels, but not without some struggle. The first 3 went into position with a breeze.

In the original plastic swing arm, the axle pin was held in place with 2 tiny set screws. I used high quality jeweler's screw drive and got the 7 set screws off easily. But the 8th set screw will not come off. (Apparently, the set screw stripped the thread on the plastic arm.) Finally, I decided to destroy the plastic arm to get it off. After clipping off some outside plastic, I used a gridding stick on a rotary tool to finish the job. I worked carefully to avoid damaging the road wheel.


I have 8 more road wheels to install.

On this 3rd day of the swing arm upgrade, I installed 6 more road wheels for a total of 10. The last 2 are under the gearbox so I wait for tomorrow. I had 4 more stripped set screws today, 25% of the set screw were ruined, probably during installation. Now I can remove the stuck set screws in a matter of 10 minutes.

It is basic engineering principle to match similar nut and bolt material. Using small metal set screw on plastic is a very bad idea.

[Rubicon99]

I did not get the metal version from dklmrc.com because I was put off by the $200 shipping. Ironically, I have paid more than $200 in shipping for the TD M60 and parts. I have no regret because I really want ball bearings on the wheels.

Do you mind to show me the design of your "down travel" stopper? Thank you in advance.

I made a simple brass ring that slips over the hull extension as shown. It is held in place with epoxy resin (not yet addded in this photo).

Note: the open section on the bottom of the brass ring actually goes at the top. This was a photo taken of the opposite side ring as a basic illustration.

Adding the travel stop ring prevents this from happening. If I had backed up any further I would have broken a few internal parts.