skyowa

So I bought the "upgrade version" of Heng Long's M1A2 Abrams to complete my collection of their American tanks, and while I thoroughly enjoy the look once the detail parts were installed there were issues inside, the way the controller was mounted is a joke, jammed into the slot in the side and held in place by cramming all the motor and battery wires against it and the gearbox housing to wedge it in. Apparently while running the tank, the plastic tab the other end was jammed up against broke off the controller came out of the slot enough to pull wires into the turret gear and jam it. It needs to be side mounted so the turret wiring doesn't snag on it, or some means of extending the wiring to the front where's a ton of room, so while I'm looking options there, I have a drive axle support bearing, full bearing gear box and some other stuff coming in prep for going metal tracks.

skyowa

ps. I'd post photos but ti keeps telling I ha e to have 10 points to post a URL...

jarndice

Hi, Every Tank I have I have glued a sheet of "Velcro" to the hull base and sides and on the control board, smoker and battery,
This retains everything in place yet allows you to move/remove whatever needs servicing,
The battery usually goes on the side of the hull the controller opposite but there are no hard and fast rules,
Put what you want where you want and if the wires are not long enough longer one are readily available on e-bay.

Max-U52

Welcome to the dark side of RC. You're gonna love it.

A few years ago I did an Abrams and got rather extensive with it. I did quite a few videos on that project so if you'd like to see them I can probably dig them up after work and post a link.

tankme

I typically do the velcro thing also. I also make sure all cables are routed well and/or bound together with others so they don't get sucked into the gears of stuff. I've built some pseudo firewalls between the gearboxes and the tank with styrene that can protect the wiring and stop oil from flinging everywhere.

skyowa

There's battery box built in and it's in about the perfect spot, only thing I'm thinking of moving is the controller

skyowa

Well ended up leaving the controller where it was with servo tape and rerouted the wiring, also installed drive axle bearings and a metal idler with bearings, the gearbox is slowly winding it's way from China, next order of business is metal road wheels, then tracks.

skyowa

skyowa

Pah co chu puk

Looking good. The Abrams is a nice tank, lots of room inside for upgrades. I added metal tracks to mine a while back but it was too much weight for the motors so the tank could hardly move. I did not upgrade the motors, so it's back to the plastic tracks for now.
As you have learned, the Abrams does well in snow, just let the tracks cool down before driving and they will ice up less. Sand and mud are no problem too, just don't let the drive sprocket get packed up or you will throw or break a track. My tank webpage has movies of my Abrams in action, just click the Western Slope Division link below.
You have your.50 cal machine gun mounted upside down. The Heng Long instructions show it upside down, so most people mount it wrong. here are some pix to reference.
What part of the planet are you located in?

Max-U52

They shoot further if you mount them upside down. The bullets think gravity is going in the other direction. Bwahahahaha

skyowa

There are no machine guns on the Abrams at the museum I'm using for reference, I'll make a note of it once the final assembly is done. Never had an issue with the tracks loading up with snow unless it's really wet snow, at which point it clogs everything anyway, but I found out yesterday it absolutely hates loose sand, inevitably sand or even a small rock get's lodged in the sprockets center guide and throws the track to the side of it. Until that point it does well though, and it hasn't been an issue with the idler or the road wheels, but the slot in those is even bigger than the slot on the sprocket and seems to eject most of what they pick up without causing issues.

The good news is my gearbox cleared customs today, so it might get here sooner than the expected 2/20

Max-U52

Not sure what gearboxes you ordered, but for my Abrams I got them from Imex in Florida and I used the 3:1 High/Low, black steel, ball bearing, $69.99 (currently out of stock) and they gave me a scale speed of just over 45 mph. I believe the Abrams is governed for just that speed.

Pah co chu puk

I have a metal drive sprockets without that center guide. I had to drill out the holes in the sides to look correct, but otherwise they work great in sand, mud, and snow.
Keep us posted as you upgrade your Abrams. Here is mine playing in sand.

skyowa

I got mine from Toucan, I believe it's basically the stock steel gearbox with ball bearings and blue motors installed, don't know what the gear ratio is but the blue motor should offer around 20% higher RPM over the stock so a speed and power increase is expected.

IIRC, 45mph at 1/16th scale is roughly 4'/sc, that would look pretty cool if you could get the suspension to float a bit for realism

skyowa

Got the gearboxes today, got them installed, they were wired backwards so I just flipped the connectors for now, there was a clearance issue with the power switch, just moved it over for now, I just wanted to see how it ran, a definite increase in power and speed was noticed, enough that I need to get the metal tracks ordered, don't see the plastic tracks holding up very long.

skyowa

speed comparison

Fsttanks

Switch to the "red" 390 motors if you want to see a real speed difference.

skyowa

Probably will once I get the rest of the drive train upgrade, red is a waste with plastic tracks.

skyowa

saw a video on this suspension mod, drill a new index hole at the 12 o'clock position to decrease the preload, pretty pleased with the results, a bit of tweaking to the rear is still needed but overall it's exactly what I wanted.

skyowa

Finally got new shoes for the Abrams, once I got everything tweaked, we threw everything we could at it to try and get them to slip off the sprocket and they stayed put. so we ordered a set of metal roads wheels to complete the conversion.