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MadInventor

Jagdpanther build

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I recently had the oppurtunity to build a new tamiya FO Jagdpanther. Following is my description of the build of this kit, along with some comments on the kit.

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Nice box !

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Off with the lid..

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Note the 4 holes in the glacis plate. :o

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Skip ahead a couple of hours, and I've assembled the suspension. As with the other tamiya tanks I've built (King tiger and Tiger I) the suspension arms are a pig to fit and require careful alignment. I did find that the suspension arms are a better fit than on the king tiger though, with less slop in the suspension than the KT or tiger I. (Plus point 1). On the negative side however, I didn't like the new 2mm screws with the 'flush' heads. They are impossible to get what I call tight, necessitating use of threadlock (as per the instructions, but I prefer to simply adequately tighten the bolts so threadlock is not required).

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I also ditched the kit nuts holding the track rollers on, and replaced them with flange nuts. My other criticism at this stage comes from the assembly of the track tensioners. When I came to do this, 2 parts ME1 (Idler wheel mounting arms) are required. I found one in a bag with suspension components, the other was in completely different bag, neither of which were labelled with the contents. Not a problem for me, but if tamiya want to try and encourage new people into this hobby, this is not the way to do it. In the older kits every part was either in a bag with a tag showing the contents, or in a blister with a label. Just bunging the bits in poly bags with no labels is not very helpful, and is definetly a backward step. I also don't like the way in some kits now the parts are bagged by assembly steps, so that the same bits may be contained in several different bags. I prefer the old system where for example, all the 3mm self tappers were in one bag, no matter how many steps they were used in. This makes it much easier to do an inventory check to ensure the kit is complete.

I'll also mention a this point the 4 holes in the glacis plate at the front of the tank. These are to accomodate fitting of the standard tamiya 380 tank gearboxes. The gearbox side plates slot into these holes. To cover up these holes, tamiya supply a piece of aluminium tape to stick over the front of the glacis plate. This is the biggest bodge I have ever seen on a tamiya model, and I was severly unimpressed by this. There appears to be a reason for this having been done, but more of that later.

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After the suspension has been assembled, I then painted the hull and suspension. I first painted it with halfords grey primer, followed by tamiya acrylic paint using an airbrush, followed by a coat of vallejo matt varnish.

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After painting, I quickly smeared a bit of silicon down the gaps in the hull, to help with keeping dust and water out of the lower part of the hull.

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Here's the second problem, and it's a fairly major one. When I tried to fit the gearboxes into the tank, I found that they fouled on the aluminium hull. I had to file out the holes around the sprocket drives to line up with the holes in E4 and E7. Even then, the axles are far forward of the centre of the holes. I think this is why the hull has slots machined in it at the front. I think after the prototype was produced T found that the front sprockets were in the wrong place and had to move the gearboxes forward, but didn't bother or forgot to reposition the holes in the side of the aluminium hull. When these kits are such a large amount of money, you don't expect to have to attack it with a file in order to be able to assemble it properly. Very, very poor :o Also when fitting the gearboxes, there is no mention of greasing the gears in the instructions. The only reference I found was in the small print in the operators manual. So if you're building one of these, don't forget to grease the gearboxes carefully, making sure all the meshing gears have plenty of goo on them. I used tamiya ceramic grease.

At this stage I also assembled and painted the wheels. I ignored the instructions and painted the wheels first, then glued them together, then fitted the roadwheel rubbers. If you do as the instructions suggest and fit the tyres first before/during assembly, you'll end up having to mask the tyres when airbrushing the camo onto the wheels, which will be rather time consuming. As with the hull, I painted first with halfords primer, then tamiya colours, then vallejo matt varnish. When I fitted the final drive sprockets, instead of securing the caps with silicon rubber glue as suggested, I just smeared the backs with grease and pressed into place. So far after a couple of test runs they have stayed in place without any problesm

So, I'm now up to the stage of having completed the lower hull, took about 4 evenings worth of work. I then started assembling the gun mechanism.

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Recoil mechanism assembly, not in the order recommended in the instructions ! I assembled the gun, along with elevation and left right swing mechanism. I shouold also mention at this that there is a tremendous amount of slop in these mechanism, mainly due to a poor fit of swing arm fitted to the gearboxes. Again, not very impressed, with a little more effort T could have made this a nice responsive mechanism, not the slopfest it is at the moment. It could have been made a very precise mechanism by using modified servos. Oh well......

At the same time as building the gun, I assembled and painted the upper hull.

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Here's a pic of the metal etch parts fitted to the engine grills. I painted the hull first as I didn't want to clog the grills with paint trying to get an even colour. The metal parts are sided, they have a smooth side, and a textured side. The textured side is supposed to be face up, and I was careful to align the grid on the grills with the axis of the hull. Again, no mention of these details in the instructions.......

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Now this I like :( The hatches on the the top of the hull can be made to work with a little care. I put a small amount of grease on the hinge pins before glueing the hinge clamps down, to ensure that they didn't get accidentaly glued by excess glue. I was also careful to ensure a nice tight join between the 2 halves of the doors, as it is possible to glue the doors on not aligned properly.

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Note here that the mantlet and muzzle brake are still removable at this stage. I did this to ensure that it would easy to remove the mantlet so that when spraying on the camo pattern I could get behind the mantlet with the airbrush. I also have not fitted the flash unit inside the barrel at this stage, as I didn't want to get overspray on it.

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As I had decided to fit exhaust without flash suppressors I had 4 holes to deal with on the rear hull. Tamiyas solution is to supply 2 pieces of aluminium tape to stick over the holes (I smell bodge again....) My solution was to use a little filler to fill in the holes

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The above pics show the hull with the dark yellow painted on. I also tried the commander from a king tiger in the top of hull. I also want to say at this point, hats off to Tamiya for finally supplying five view detail of the camoflage patterns for the tanks. This helps enormously with being to produce a consisten camoflage pattern.

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More or less finished, I haven't fitted the wooden jack block as I'm going to make a proper wooden one from mahogany. The exhausts were done using scenic rust.

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The last major complaint. The upper hull is warped !!! :D At this late stage in the build I found that the rear of the hull is warped as does not fit properly to the rear hull plate. This is just bleep bleep bleeping poor and shoddy manufacture. Who was asleep in QA when this escaped through the door ????? Really not impressed !!!

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Right, now lets talk about the electrics. After positioning the MFU and DMD unit as suggetsed, I found that the gun would not swivel equally left and right, as something was fouling. Yet again the instructions went out the window. I moved the MFU and DMD as far back as they would go, and then mounted the receiver at the front of the tank.

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Now the gun operates as it should do.

So, to summarise this kit, things I didn't like:

The instructions, they lacked important details such as greasing the gearboxes, how to properly mount the metal etch. There was bad advice on how to assemble the tyres to the wheels, and I thought their choice of layout for the electronics inside the tank was poor. On the plus side the diagrams are clear and the english is good.

Build quality and design. I didn't like the aluminium bodge tape to cover up holes in the hull, the fact I had to file the hull in order to get the gearboxes to fit, the huge amount of slop in the gun movement mechanisms, the new 2mm screws you can't get a flat bladed screwdriver on, the fact the positioning of the gearboxes seemed to be an afterthought, and most of all, the fact that the hull didn't fit properly.

On/off switch does not hold in place very well with the double sided tape. A screw mounting would have been better.

Things I did like.

The suspension is very slop free when assembled.

Good track tensioning mechanism.

5 view camoflage detail on the painting and weathering chart.

As usual, a great sound system with plenty of volume.

String tow ropes are very good with plastic moulded ends. This is a good idea and better than the after market kits that use wire IMO.

Working doors on the top of the hull.

Overall, an easy to assemble kit, but the build quality and design needs to improve. It seems to have gone downhill somewhat since the Tiger I. ;)

Comments welcome.

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Great paint job. You did the work and we get to enjoy it, thank you. You have built Tamiya's tank before, so Tamiya should take note of your comments, which I am sure they do. My beef is most of the tanks come with plastic tracks.

Now, got to re-read what you did. :)

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Great paint job. You did the work and we get to enjoy it, thank you. You have built Tamiya's tank before, so Tamiya should take note of your comments, which I am sure they do. My beef is most of the tanks come with plastic tracks.

Now, got to re-read what you did. :)

Thanks for taking the time to comment. Took me about 2 hrs to create the post with all the uploading & text.

I've tried not to be overly critical of the kit, which is good overall, but with a little more time and effort spent on design it could have been much better. There are 2 more examples of this. If the tray the MFU and batteries sit on was raised slightly, it would be possible to tuck the motor wires under the plate, making for a neater installation. Also, if the speaker had been moved rearwards slighty (which would have been possible, there is the room if the speaker box was redesigned slightly) it would have been possible to stack the MFU and DMD unit vertically at the back of the tank, just in front of the speaker box. Again, this would give a much neater installation. With a complete speaker box redesign (similar to the design of the tiger I box, it would have been possible to position the DMD unit under the speaker box, as is done with the Tiger I kit).

I'm also considering ditching the traversing gearbox and simply using a servo plugged straight into the RX to move the gun left and right. This will give a much more positive response, and as there is no sound associated with this I won't be missing any functionality by bypassing the MFU.

I know what you mean about the metal tracks, but they would add a lot of cost to the tank, especially if you have to pay to ship the extra weight half way round the world. Also, I've found the metal tracks eat the tamiya gearboxes quickly, so if they were to include these, they would need to completely redesign the transmission.

I'm hoping at some stage this will happen, I would like to see the tanks with 540 size motors and a beefed up DMD unit to cope. I've already got a couple of 540 gearboxes for my king tigers, and the extra torque makes it a lot easier to manouvre the tank accurately. For the german armour, it would make a lot of sense to accuretly reproduce the real transmission and have a pinion and spur gear external to the hull with a bolt on cover plate. This would then give plenty of clearance from the glacis plate to use larger gears in the internal transmission, which would make it easier to make the transmission bombproof.

I shall be seriously looking at Hoobens products for my next tank. They are much cheaper than tamiya (mainly due to a lack of DMD/ MFU unit), they already have a T55 on the market which looks great, and rumours have been abounding for a few years of an E100 kit.

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Thanks for the build log! Your camo work is awesome!

Yeah, Tamiya (and Dragon kits) drop the ball once in a while with their instructions. The problem is too many cooks in the kitchen!! :)

Just make sure you do some research on the Hooben T-55. By what I have read the instructions might be simpler and easier to decipher, but a lot of clean up will go into prepping (flash) the parts before they can be assembled. Don't get me wrong ... I'm not knocking them, just think every kit has it's own set of problems.

Back to the Jagd ... I like the results of the exhaust work. Pretty convincing.

- Jeff

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Thanks for the build log! Your camo work is awesome!

Yeah, Tamiya (and Dragon kits) drop the ball once in a while with their instructions. The problem is too many cooks in the kitchen!! :lol:

Just make sure you do some research on the Hooben T-55. By what I have read the instructions might be simpler and easier to decipher, but a lot of clean up will go into prepping (flash) the parts before they can be assembled. Don't get me wrong ... I'm not knocking them, just think every kit has it's own set of problems.

Back to the Jagd ... I like the results of the exhaust work. Pretty convincing.

- Jeff

Thanks for the comments Jeff :).

Did you notice the gearbox output shafts being not central in the hole in the hull when you built your Panther / Jagdpanther ???

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Did you notice the gearbox output shafts being not central in the hole in the hull when you built your Panther / Jagdpanther ???

Yes, and that's what I was trying to tell this vendor from whom I got the SCHUMO bearing supports from. As soon as everything was installed the axles were in a bind.

It happens.

- Jeff

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You got skills and talent. My only point is the Jag is very nicely done but the rust tail pipe (must be difficult to creat the result) is out a bit out of place. I hope you will not be offended by my comment. I appreciate all the photos you have taken, up loaded them plus the helpfull write ups. Like I said before, you did all the work and I / we get to enjoy it + learn from it. Two thumbs up!

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Nice looking tanks guys!

Right now I'm working on my Late Production Panther G from Tamiya and it's been a blast! Lots of scratch built details have been keeping me from moving ahead PLUS these aluminum WECOHE roadwheels need to have all the wheel bolts cut to fit. That's fun! :D

I was hoping that SCHUMO would have released an early mantlet for the Jagd instead of the late version but I guess I'll just have to modify the kits stock piece. The early Jagdpanthers were the best looking in my opinion and I'll have to brush up on my zimm work now. :blink:

~ Jeff

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Thought I'd post a bit of an update on the Jagdpanther. I've been able to use it a bit now, and have found a couple of running issues. The worst is when travelling at speed over rough ground the barrel bounces up and down quite badly. I thought this was because the gearbox used for elevation was full of slop, but under investigation I found that it's the whole plastic mount the elevation gearbox is mounted on that is twisting and allowing the barrel to bounce. To get around this I'm going to remake the plate and barrel mount in aluminium, and beef up the design somewhat whilst I'm at it. I'm also looking at making a mount so that a standard or micro servo can be used for traverse left and right instead of the gearbox. This will eliminate hitting the stop on the gearbox and getting clicking, and should give me a much more positive movement on the barrel.

I've also noticed that the steering is quite notchy. I have to move the steering stick quite a lot before I get any movement from the steering, and then I get a lot at once. I may have to retune the MFU / DMD again, as I'm using a different RX from my original setup. I will post some pics of the mount as soon as the machining work is done. Once this is complete I think i may have to put in a final maximum effort to get the steel KT running again:)

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Compliments :)

My Jagpanther

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Hallo

Looks like you put the Jap through her paces...I can see the screw on the driver sproker. I think with your skills and work shop access, any piece missing or not working properly, you can replace it or correct it. I remember the first time running the older version leopard, many parts AWAL to into lawn.

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Here's an update on the build of the Jagdpanther

I've now fitted a servo to control the gun traverse, and an aluminium gun mount to prevent twisting of the standard gun mount between the gun and the elevation motor unit.

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The pictures above show the installation. I used a HiTec HS81 mini servo, this provides the same torque as a normal futaba S148 servo, but is considerably smaller.

Here's a detail pic of the servo mount. It's made in 2 pieces, one is a flat plate which screws to the standard tamiya mounting bracket, the other piece a C arm that the servo bolts to, and then the C arm bolts to the mounting plate.

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Here's some pictures of the gun mount. I machined this from a solid lump of aluminium. It took about 10 hours to make, as I was trying to be clever with things to get the metal as strong as possible, and then ended up machining bits off to make clearance for the gun. It would be a lot faster to make a second one now I have a proper template to work from.To fit the parts the only modification I had to make was to file a small amount of plastic from the end of the gun barrel sleeve.

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(Note the second ball joint on the recoil mechanism frame.)

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The only other mod I made was to use a second ball joint for connecting the gun elevation track rod. This takes a surprising amount of play out of the system. The servo is plugged directly into the receiver channel 4, and the plug from the MFU was disconnected. Gun traverse does not make any sound with the Jagdpanther, so I have not lost any functionality by doing this.

The gun is now a lot easier to control being on a servo control. To get full left or right is a lot easier as I don't have to wait for the gearbox to start clicking to realise I am at the limit of travel. Overall I'm very pleased with the result.

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