Armour Dreams

[Ganmain Tony]

A final drive unit Jonathon?

Whats it out of?

[Jonathan Moore]

Not quite, It's a steering unit out of a 430 series tracked vehicle and it's heavy.

jon

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All, again,

I haven't got a big press or indeed any of the tooling required to produce the cone needed for the idler wheel so I decided to make it in 8 individual pieces. I used what I could find a real bodge it and scarper set up but it worked. I used a very old and hard as nails piece of oak, that I planned to the form that I required, as a press form tool. What can I add, I use what I have and none of it is modern or complicated. I am doing quite a bit of machining as I go along to make sure that it all runs as true as possible, so its taking a bit of time.

[Jonathan Moore]

But it's getting there.

[Jonathan Moore]

Last three pictures for now.

Jon

[karlos59]

Coming along nicely Johnathan

[Jonathan Moore]

The finished article, well almost. I have still got to make the end cap and the oil seal retainer for the rear of the bearing housing.

Jon

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

I have been itching to get on with the Panzer but kept finding other things to do, so today at last some progress, I made the two idler wheel shafts.



Jon

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

In my spare time I decided to get the tow hitch made, it's position has a bearing on the tie bar that runs along the rear of the chassis, so it needed making sooner rather than later.

Jon

[Jonathan Moore]

At the rear of the tank, there are two flanges that protrude either side beyond the the chassis rear plate, these are where the idler wheel housings bolt on to the chassis.


Because the chassis tended to flex in this area, the joint between the rear chassis plate and the flange tended to crack, the solution to this problem was the incorporation of a strengthening rod, my job for today.

I have drilled and tapped each end of the rod so that the centre attaching bolt goes through the idler wheel housing, through the chassis flanged and threads into the bar.

[Jonathan Moore]

Just one more picture.

Jon

[Jonathan Moore]

Talk about high's and lows, this last week has been full of them, it's strange how stressed I can get over my baby.

I now have 6 springs cut and drilled and assembled. I was waiting for the other 4 to be delivered, which wasn't due until Monday, today, so I decided to get on with other things and blow me they appeared on Thursday evening. By then I was in the middle of getting 4 suspension arms and wheels on so they will have to wait.

The springs have to have 3 drilling operations on each leaf, that's 390 holes, if I only have 13 leaves per spring and the steel is spring steel, so it's tough. Slow speed and loads of coolant. Each spring has a keeper plate with an M8 tapped hole in and a 22mm clearance hole for the main M20 fixing bolt. Then, for each spring set of 13 leaves, each arm requires 4off 80mm x 10mm flat steel packing plates and 3off 3mm x 80mmpacking plates, all drilled with a 22mm clearance hole. As you can tell I have been drilling a lot of holes.

[Jonathan Moore]

First I drilled through with a 10mm HSS/Carbide drill and the opened it up to 22mm with a re-sharpened masonry drill.