King Tiger by Mato, the kit version

[SoCalBobS]

I'll be sharing my experience developing the Mato King Tiger. I bought the kit version, as the RTR was out of my hobby purchase range, and I have a lot of parts and pieces from earlier projects. This may be of interest to anyone contemplating buying a Mato kit tank. This info applies pretty much to any of their kit tanks. The kit version is about half the cost of the RTR. What do you get and not get? First off there is no radio transmitter or receiver/MFU. No turret rotation motor. No smoker unit. Many of the light and motor wires don't have connectors. You do get the motors and gearboxes, the main gun elevation motor and a servo operated main gun recoil mechanism.



The RTR version comes with a Clark TK-22 board and transmitter, but I'm using a Heng Long 7.1 MFU. I could use the 7.0 if I didn't want gun recoil...but I do. I have a HL turret rotation motor, which is an exact match up with the turret gear ring. There are mounting posts for the motor. However, since the whole kit is metal, you will want to use metal bolts (not included) rather than screws. The Mato motors come with JST connectors, so those need to be replaced with HL compatible plugs, 4mm I believe. The headlight and machine gun light do not have any connectors, so I'll be supplying that too.

There was one significant flaw straight out of the box, which has since been remedied. The front top hull was a bit too wide to fit onto the lower hull. 30 minutes of dremel'ing fixed that, but I can't imagine how that passed quality control!

On the plus side, the gearboxes are geared lower for a slower top speed but more torque, a good feature for such a heavy tank. If you like the smoke function (I do) the HL unit fits onto the exhaust ports. More later...

[keilau]

Is this offer by Toucan Hobby the same as your subject?

https://www.toucanhobby.com/products/mt-1228-bb-kit-m-dzn1?srsltid=AfmBOoqXLtj6SYXjzCKijOpA9KXWgHoHsP7CURWRYd0vuja0H3CyNPh8

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[SoCalBobS]

I got mine from Matomart in Canada (direct shipped from China).

[tank_me]

I built the kit Mato Panzer 3 so I can say I had a similar experience. I had to drill and tap a few holes that were missing and grind some material off the adjustable idlers as they were interfering with the tracks. There are also no instructions so the user is left to figure everything out for themselves.

[SoCalBobS]

I built the kit Mato Panzer 3 so I can say I had a similar experience. I had to drill and tap a few holes that were missing and grind some material off the adjustable idlers as they were interfering with the tracks. There are also no instructions so the user is left to figure everything out for themselves.

Yeah, did some other Mato tanks in the past, so I knew what would be required. I will say that Mato tanks have improved over the years. I had a Panzer III from about 6 years ago, and the barrel was pot metal, and bent when the tank flipped one time. A friend with one of their older Shermans that didn't have wheel bearings freeze up on the axles. Now they include steel barrels and bearings on all wheels.

[SoCalBobS]

I'd like to share another positive experience with sellers out there. As I'd said, I bought mine from Matomart in Canada, as they were marginally cheaper than other sellers and I'd dealt with them before. So, I took mine to a battle event and partway through one side track locked up and wouldn't move. When I took it home I found that gear teeth on two gears had broken off. Not sure why, but I'm guessing something jammed on that side and the gears, still trying to run, just broke off.

I contacted Matomart. I had been using it for a couple of months, and I have no idea if there is an actual warranty. However, they were very helpful. They asked for pictures of the broken part which I supplied. They immediately had the factory direct ship a replacement from China, at no cost to me. If I'd had to buy a replacement, it would have been over $100 plus shipping. (If/when our de minimis exemption becomes eliminated, that'd be $245!) The whole process took about a month, which to me is entirely reasonable given that three countries were involved; USA, Canada and China.