Armour Dreams

[Jonathan Moore]

two more pictures.

[Jonathan Moore]

On the original tank, where the exhaust exits the hull, there is an armoured cover.
This is my copy.

[Jonathan Moore]

And more pictures.

[Jonathan Moore]

Over the silencer there should be a heat shield, I have looked at loads of pictures and the variation of the hole configurations seems to be quite varied, so I have settled on this one. Loads of holes to drill, bugger.

Jon

[James P]

I have nothing but the utmost of respect for you dedication, abilities and workmanship.

[jdmcm]

Jonathan

I would like to place my order for your upcoming heavy tank line...one Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. E please, with all the bells and whistles!!! Heavy on the zimmerit!

Seriously, absolutely amazing work...it is one thing to have a part to restore and make it look that good, but starting with a piece of bare steel and actually creating...not just a part, but a whole tank...awesome!

John

[karlos59]

Coming along nicely Jonathan

[Jonathan Moore]

Thank you for your encourage. As for making a Tiger, that would be a bit too big for me, a Panzer IV would be the biggest that I should commit to, the only problem appears to be, finding someone who seriously wants and can afford, to have a tank built. As I always say, I will build what you want, just don't ask me to paint it.



Jon

[Jonathan Moore]

Morning,

The petrol tanks in place but not leak tested or finished, as I have been waiting for various components to arrive.
It should hold about 70 litres of fuel, so a lot less than the 170 litres in the original tank but I want to put the electrics between the engine fire wall and the petrol tank. This area then gets covered so that you won't see any of it.

One of the other items that I have been making, is the air filter housing. I want to use a standard early Jag filter, so although the outer housing looks as it should, hopefully, the modern filter fits inside. These are the best two pictures that I could find of the original item.

[Jonathan Moore]

The top cover for the outer housing although in reality, on my version, it's just for show.

[Jonathan Moore]

looking a bit like a vacuum cleaner and the complete housing with the outer housing and brackets in place.
I can't bolt it in place yet as I need to have the gearbox in place to make sure everything fits.

[Jonathan Moore]

There's not alot to show you really, as i have been altering my previous work to accommodate the new, later engine. I took a trip up north to meet Rick, Eddy8men and what a really nice chap he is. The reason for my journey, was to pick up the muff couplings for the steering box drive shafts but oh, how I would love to restore some of his toys. Thanks again Rick, for the bits and the chat.
Whilst I was talking to Rick he introduced me to a new word " Imagineering" so I have been doing a bit myself. One of the frustrating parts of this project, so far, has been trying to decide what to do for the final drives. On the way home, being bored at the wheel, I was thinking about all the options thus far and it looked like I would have to sell a kidney to finance the relevant components, then seeing a vehicle on the road and cursing a lot, I had an idea. A quick search on fleabay and low and behold, someone was scrapping such a vehicle 3 miles from where I live. I haven't done any accurate measurements yet but from a tape survey, they seem to match up, almost too exactly and the ratio looks to be 5.5 : 1. Sunday morning, my son and I, took a Land Rover stuffed with every tool needed for a right bugger of a job but ended up only using a couple of spanners, a ratchet, highlift jack and a big bar. Two hours later they were in the workshop waiting to be washed.

[Jonathan Moore]

Morning All,

This is a long one but where to start. The petrol tank is finished and the new engine is in place, so now on to the electrics. I have an engine, a wiring loom and two ECU's, one engine and one gearbox. The wiring loom doesn't fit the engine, the concept of plug and play has gone out of the window, the wiring loom is the wrong loom for my engine ECU. The ECU requires one yellow plug and one black, my loom has one yellow and one blue plug, that doesn't fit the ECU. As far as I can ascertain, the loom is for a 3.2ltr, my engine is a 3.6ltr. What to do. In a moment of shear depression, I did think about trying to find the correct loom but then I thought, what the hell, I will rewire the whole thing. The Haynes manual is like the proverbial chocolate tea pot, so after a lot of searching on line, I found a wiring diagram for a 3.6 of roughly the right vintage and begun chopping.
This is definitely not a job for the faint hearted, it involved altering, and I am not exaggerating, about 80% of the wiring loom, even the colours are different. Eventually after two days of chopping and adding I was getting somewhere but where I wasn't sure.
Even the simple items had either more of fewer wires. At last I turned the key, nothing. There was, in the loom, a group of about 10 wires that were all permennant lives, in other words they were live even when the ignition key was turned off, something I don't like, so I cut them into individuals and traced where they went, ignored what I didn't think was important and connected the remainder, just one. After my initial test or failure, I realised that I needed a second permenant live to the ECU, this was connected and I tried again, the ECU fired up along with the fuel pump. I now had two of the main items, a cranking engine and fuel but no spark. When the expert, had decided that I needed a different engine, part of his reasoning was that this engine didn't require an ignition amplifier. I spent hours looking for a wiring diagram that didn't require this amplifier but I couldn't find one, so I rang the expert. Now amazingly he told me to ignore what he had told me and fit an amplifier.

This should give you some idea of what I have been up against.

The amplifier was ordered and duly arrived. The wiring diagram showed 5 wires, the amplifier had 7 connections and the plug had 7 connections but only one of the wire colours in the plug matched the diagram and that was in a different position in the plug. Again, back to the internet but I couldn't find the relevant diagram. What I did find, was a thread where a bloke had wired in his amplifier incorrectly and attached pictures of the connections and their relevant place in the plug. There's a but, the plug had 7 spaces but only 3 wires were connected. The wiring loom that I have, originally only had 3 wires, of course the colours didn't match but I decided to attach these 3 wires into the plug as per his picture and blow me I had a spark.

Today I reassembled the cooling unit into the hull, connected everything up, filled the cooling system, attached a temporary fuel tank and pressed the starter. After the fourth attempt it started, what a sweet note from the exhaust, well for 30 seconds and then the oil pipe to the oil cooler shot off and emptied 8 litres of oil on the floor. Bugger.

I have to admit that I have shortened this story so that you don't consider suicide.

Jon

[Ganmain Tony]

Perhaps an old flat head V8 may have been the way to go Jonathan.

What a nightmare.. good on you for plugging away.

The final drives are out of ????

[Jonathan Moore]

The trouble is Tony, a ford V8 would be expensive, where as these engines cost about £200 so it's worth a bit of effort from me. The drives are from an old David Brown tractor, so built like a brick sh1t house.

Anyway all's well after my little oil leak, the engine starts, revs but I have another unexpected problem, the exhaust is tooooooo quiet.

Jon

[David Dunlop]

Are there any surviving recordings of a running original you can compare to, Jon? That muffler is an impressive size and I suspect could dampen quite a bit of noise, but the engine is also running under absolutely no outside load at the moment. Things might change when the full powertrain is installed, the full weight of the vehicle in place and the engine suddenly has to earn its keep.

David

[Jonathan Moore]

You are probably right David, I will wait and see before making any changes.

Guten Abend zusammen,

The steering box is bolted in it's final resting position, which isn't exactly as per the original but because of the components that i am using it was always was going to be a compromise. The final drives / reduction boxes stuck out too much from the side of the chassis, meaning that the front sprockets wouldn't be inline with the rest of the wheels. I therefore removed material from the castings, first of all with an angle grinder and then I finished them to size on the milling machine.

[Jonathan Moore]

The next problem was bolting the final drives to the chassis as I had cut the original studs off of the castings. There are six 1/2" UNC threaded holes already in the front of the castings that I can utilise but I need some in the flange area. The answer was to drill five new holes for M16 bolts and then weld bosses on the rear of the flange so that the flange bolt securely on to the chassis. The output shaft was then reassembled into the casting so that I can position the final drive housing onto the chassis and drill all the attaching holes.

That's all for now folks,

Jon

[Mike Cecil]

Hi Jonathan,

I've been back through the thread, but seem to have missed what the engine actually is/is from: could you enlighten me please?

I admire your perseverance with the wiring (well, with the whole she-bang, really!) Great work.

Mike

[D Ellery]

Wow!!! What an awesome project. Amazing planning, problem solving and engineering and all to a very high standard. Damn I shouldn't have looked I'm hooked again. Look forward to the next update, well done.

[Jonathan Moore]

Morning Mike and D,

I am glad that you are enjoying my pain.

The engine is a 1990ish Jaguar 3.6 ltr straight six fuel injected petrol unit and the gearbox is a four speed auto.

Jon

[Lynn Eades]

Hi D. The sickness lingers???

[D Ellery]

Hi Lynn.
Ha ha yes, iv'e not been cured.

Got anything I can play with ?

Jon I take it that you are looking to get track cast or use something similar ?

Cheers. David.

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

Today I trial fitted the first final drive unit, it all lined up as anticipated.

The original had an armoured cover over the final drives, obviously my cover won't be armoured but it will hide the castings and make the area look roughly like the original.

The big question is, can I get my welding to look like the original?

[Mike Cecil]

Thanks Jonathan,

Mike

[David Dunlop]

Wow! Quite a range of welding quality in that one photo, Jonathan. Interesting. If vehicles could only talk, sometimes.

David

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

Just a quick update, in truth there's not much to tell, I seem to have spent the last week doing everything other than the tank.

Getting the final drives inline with the steering box took quite a lot of time and I lost count of how many times I had to remove the steering box to make alterations but the easy side is almost complete apart from the drive shaft cover.

The right hand side has been a right pain because of the limited space and the need to have the longest possible splines on the drive shaft. Time has moved on from when I was a full time machinist, had someone brought us a hardened shaft and asked us to machine splines on it, it would have been a no go but I bought a carbide cutter and even my old milling machine made easy work of the job, impressed, I should say so. In my opinion this is still the weak point in the drive chain but time will tell.

I fear that things may slow down even further in the near future as I have some rooms to refurbish in an old rectory.



Jon

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

I have been making the flanges for the final drive housings. On my tank, the covers are really for aesthetics, however the flanges will actually add some rigidity to the area
Picture 1: The outer profile of an original housing
Picture 2:The profile of my housing
Picture 3:The flanges were made by piecing sections together then welding and grinding them to finished shape Picture 4: .The area concerned on an original tank

[Jonathan Moore]

The final pictures are of the Flange welded onto the Hull and the housing flange bolted to the hull flange

Now all I have to do is fabricate the housing cover.



Jon

[D Ellery]

Hi Jonathon. Love the concept of imagineering especially using David Brown final drives. What will you be using for track, cast copy's of the original or something available. Awesome project and work.
I look forward to your next update.