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This is a catch up thread as it was never posted here...
I say it's the tank I never knew I wanted because I was browsing Ebay and a Clark TK-80 board popped up for $175 with free shipping around Apr 2022. Was listed as brand new, but I wasn't sure if it was a programable version or not. I took a chance it was programable, but alas it wasn't. Now I have a nice board and no tank to use it in. No biggie as I thought I could put it in a Russian SU-76i build I've been wanting to do. That's when an all metal Mato PZ III popped up for sale on FB. I mentioned it to Kenny over at DAK and he vouched for the guy so I bought it for $360 shipped about a month later. That explains how it came to be in my possession even though I had no real desire for a PZ III. As it happens it is my first German tank build.
When it came it was all in pieces, but I knew that from the listing. The motors, sprockets, tracks, headlights, and idlers had never been mounted on it. It came with a bent barrel, but a replacement was also in the box. The servo recoil and elevation was preinstalled, but there were no instructions on anything else. I pulled a Taigen rotation unit, volume control, and speaker out of the spares box mounting them in the tank. I had the Hooben power switch from my ZTZ-99A build laying around so it got a new XT60 connector and it got thrown in the PZIII. I wanted enough room to mount my "go to" Li-Ion 2S2P battery packs and surprisingly there is a lot of room in this little tank. It came with some strange brackets which I decided were used to mount the upper to the lower. The only problem was there were no holes to mount the bracket so I drilled some right above the mounts for the idlers and I was in business. I printed myself an apple base I found on Thingiverse, fabricated an apple cable, cut a rectangle hole below the commander's hatch (in the metal which was a PITA BTW), drilled a bigger hole for the emitter tube in the mantlet, installed an IR LED, and the battle system was fully functional. I had some pre-wired SMD LEDs I dropped into the front headlights and used some Testors clear plastic glue to make some lenses for the open slits. Over two evenings all of the other electronics got wired up and tested. This is probably the fastest build minus paint I've ever done.
The rivit counter in me wanted to do a bunch of detail work to it as German tanks seem to have a lot of detail stuff - much more than Russian tanks. For the past two years it stayed unpainted while I decided what to do with it. I took it out to the battlefield and ran it as is. The little rat rod performed well, but did need to have a few things glued (like wheels) and loctited (the adjustable idler) The idler also needed wee bit of grinding as the metal tracks were dragging on it.
Inside shot:
Apple mount:
Tensioner:
Headlights On:
Headlights off. It's hard to get a good pic of the lenses:
Pulled the on/off switch up to the rear hatch. Single thumbscrew holds the upper on.
And that's how it sat until last night....(continued on next post).
I say it's the tank I never knew I wanted because I was browsing Ebay and a Clark TK-80 board popped up for $175 with free shipping around Apr 2022. Was listed as brand new, but I wasn't sure if it was a programable version or not. I took a chance it was programable, but alas it wasn't. Now I have a nice board and no tank to use it in. No biggie as I thought I could put it in a Russian SU-76i build I've been wanting to do. That's when an all metal Mato PZ III popped up for sale on FB. I mentioned it to Kenny over at DAK and he vouched for the guy so I bought it for $360 shipped about a month later. That explains how it came to be in my possession even though I had no real desire for a PZ III. As it happens it is my first German tank build.
When it came it was all in pieces, but I knew that from the listing. The motors, sprockets, tracks, headlights, and idlers had never been mounted on it. It came with a bent barrel, but a replacement was also in the box. The servo recoil and elevation was preinstalled, but there were no instructions on anything else. I pulled a Taigen rotation unit, volume control, and speaker out of the spares box mounting them in the tank. I had the Hooben power switch from my ZTZ-99A build laying around so it got a new XT60 connector and it got thrown in the PZIII. I wanted enough room to mount my "go to" Li-Ion 2S2P battery packs and surprisingly there is a lot of room in this little tank. It came with some strange brackets which I decided were used to mount the upper to the lower. The only problem was there were no holes to mount the bracket so I drilled some right above the mounts for the idlers and I was in business. I printed myself an apple base I found on Thingiverse, fabricated an apple cable, cut a rectangle hole below the commander's hatch (in the metal which was a PITA BTW), drilled a bigger hole for the emitter tube in the mantlet, installed an IR LED, and the battle system was fully functional. I had some pre-wired SMD LEDs I dropped into the front headlights and used some Testors clear plastic glue to make some lenses for the open slits. Over two evenings all of the other electronics got wired up and tested. This is probably the fastest build minus paint I've ever done.
The rivit counter in me wanted to do a bunch of detail work to it as German tanks seem to have a lot of detail stuff - much more than Russian tanks. For the past two years it stayed unpainted while I decided what to do with it. I took it out to the battlefield and ran it as is. The little rat rod performed well, but did need to have a few things glued (like wheels) and loctited (the adjustable idler) The idler also needed wee bit of grinding as the metal tracks were dragging on it.
Inside shot:
Apple mount:
Tensioner:
Headlights On:
Headlights off. It's hard to get a good pic of the lenses:
Pulled the on/off switch up to the rear hatch. Single thumbscrew holds the upper on.
And that's how it sat until last night....(continued on next post).
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