Rescued Abrams build

[Handy Lance]

Lowered the smoke unit to clear my lower chassis brace. The additional attachment point on the smoke fluid tank came in handy. My 7.1 showed up in the mail along with more scale goodies!! Got some weathering ahead captain!

Thanks for watching

[Meter Rat]

Love this build. If I may? I will be nicking some ideas from you, when I rebuild my Abrams. However would you please make your pictures bigger. My ageing eyes are struggling to see what you are doing.

[Handy Lance]

Love this build. If I may? I will be nicking some ideas from you, when I rebuild my Abrams. However would you please make your pictures bigger. My ageing eyes are struggling to see what you are doing.

Ha cool
yeah go for it! I’m posting to share, and keep myself motivated as I do ALOT of stuff. You should be able to click on the picture to open it and make it bigger. If not I’ll try to upload larger.

Here is the last shot before I prime the chassis .
Black is 1/8 (welded to tops of wheel screw arches and sides of chassis) abs, white is 1/16. I can not describe the difference in strength , yeah more weight, but down low.
cutouts are for air flow around the 7.1. I will be doing a push pull fan system to keep this nice and cool. I have found that is key to electronics longevity.

side rails are attached with E6000 a rigid bond will fail between abs and aluminum in this application, so I went with E6000, cross rails will be screwed in aka removable.

[Handy Lance]

Primed chassis and polished removable cross braces.

Hope you had a good weekend too!

[Handy Lance]

One front apron done. So much better!!!
clamped in tight so no glue binds to fail. They are strong. Used old aprons as clamps. Screws are tiny screws for RC crawler rim rings. Locked up RC has lots to choose from. Another cool feature, they are steel so rust will naturally develop on the ends.

Final mockup of chassis.

First Hull details!!! It will have so much to look at! New fuel filler handles. Almost had doors open, but effort to detail equation didn’t add up. New handles will paint so much better and leave shadows the molded ones wouldn’t have.

cheers

[Handy Lance]

aluminum kid plate and stainless steel Hot Racing tow anchors in. Aluminum should scratch up perfectly😂 super protective. Anchors aren’t quite scale, but some grinding will help. They are threaded into the skid and plastic epoxy behind so they can actually pull stuff out.
Some more super cool Spec ops stuff, handles instead of the molded nubs we are given👍🏻

cheers everyone

[Handy Lance]

I found some 6mm plugs that work perfect for the remaining screw holes. Will help keep gunk out.

Using the Trumpeter kit parts to scale out the RC tank is fun. Made some super cool tow cables with some stainless steel multi strand and the tow cable ends from the model kit. Looks so much better and will weather after paint nicely.

I’m getting the 2 tanks to an equal completion. It takes twice as long.

working on trumpeter headlight conversion for the Heng long , fairly involved stuff

stay tuned!

[Handy Lance]

Painting wheels. Whew tedious as Hell! I had to make a wheel helper for the spray booth (it holds an entire tanks set of wheels) . That’s my custom made lexan spray booth with a down draft table🥰 8 inch inline fan into a 24 inch carbon filter. I needed to spray indoors year round.

I was able to neatly fit the Trumpeter back end on. It will be more difficult to put the HL backend on the Static tank🤣I will be running smoke through it like others have👍🏻diffused on start up only .

[Handy Lance]

Oh man it’s behind is lookin good 👍🏻 I basically used the HL back as a frame to mount all the Static parts. I used thick CA with acceleration spray to attach polystyrene to the abs. Fills gaps and sands ok.
nerve wracking but I feel like the end product may be worth every drop of blood

[Handy Lance]

I got the backend, looking really good! Lots of great details instead of some simple moldings
don’t worry about the shiny. It’ll get a coat of matte finish. The difference is laughable. I put the oem backend on the kit😂😂

I hacked up some trumpeter photo etched details. We will see😮💨

[Handy Lance]

Anti slip coating will add a really nice texture to the smooth HL factory finish.

light sand
mask
thinned gloss acrylic
tap to tinkle home made sieved additive on top
let dry for 3-5 minutes
turn model on side and tap off excess (gently )
let dry
Top coat with thinned gloss
let dry
lightly sand to remove high particles and uniform texture
prime
paint

12 steps

12 panels
😂🤣😂🤣

[Handy Lance]

Got one side tow cable mounted. Once primed and painted it’s going to be so cool. Although tiny looking, Cable anchors will “grow” with finishing. Contrasting with the black cable perfectly. Cable will benefit from being removable, another great scale feature lacking in both the Trumpeter kit and Heng Long tank.
I had to put a metal barrel on the trumpeter 7.62 MG
music wire with heat shrink for flash suppressor, pin drilled into kit gun. It’s strong now, the kit barrel was going to break for sure during any use.

🍻

[Handy Lance]

Double post
Sooooooo…
workbench👍🏻

[tank_me]

I assume you have this for placement of the anti-slip coating?

[Handy Lance]

I assume you have this for placement of the anti-slip coating?

more or less👍🏻
copying the Trumpeter kit

[Handy Lance]

More kit pieces fitted on the HL turret👍🏻

I have to make the doors open!

[Handy Lance]

Hinged the barrel elevation shroud. It is going to work so great. Imbedded magnet holds it down and lets it slide, left it raw so you could see the trimmed down du-bro hinges. Another cool detail left out of both HL RC and Trumpeter kit.
There’s a slightly larger magnet under turret to allow the small magnet to slide without losing contact.

[Handy Lance]

My tension system is top notch. I put so much test strain on it, the old ones would have just ripped out. Not a mm of movement. Some red loctite and no loosening tensioner on my watch.

Storage/armor baskets primed and ready to paint. Spent a bit of time fitting acrylic windows into cupola and drivers hatch.

A hilarious bonus, I’m headed to prime my wheels and whined as I picked up the bag full of raw metal wheels with immovable rubber tires. I laughed and noticed as I was disassembling the tank I had cut myself masks for all the wheels!!!! Past Lance was a good dude😂

I'm loving this build.

cheers!!!

[Handy Lance]

Mocking up scale details getting ready for final paint.

[Handy Lance]

I couldn’t resist one more photo😂
some of these scale details I found are pretty fun

trash bags I made
MREs Spec ops
ruck sack EBay