Over the past couple weeks since finishing the Spartan, I've been working slowly on the Merkava IV. The torsion suspension was put in place, the road wheels were installed, and a mechanisim for connecting the turret rotate motor to the hull devised and implemented. Oh, and a marker mount is partially installed (temporarily in place). All in all, the tank looks pretty good ... and big!
I switched to Flickr to hold the Merkava build pictures. Flickr isn't that great (I prefer Yahoo Groups file and picture manager) but works somewhat. The link to the Merkava photo album is http://www.flickr.com/photos/39806...@n06/sets/72157620308016739/detail/. I'm very happy with the suspension and turret rotate. The 1/4" diamter torsion rods seem stiffer than suggested on that torsion spring rate web site. After putting the torsion suspension and road wheels on the tank hull, I stood on top of the entire thing. The tank hull dipped about 1" under 220 pounds of me. I don't think there will be any problems carrying weight and bottoming out the suspension. Heh. The turret rotate came out beautifully. The rotate motor is a 24v windshield wiper motor and gearbox. The shaft goes through the middle of the turret plate and meshes with a gear attached to the upper hull. Just to see how it worked, I stuck the motor wires into a 7.2v battery pack. The turret turned smoothly without binding. The turning speed seemed just right. As soon as the speed control arrives next week, I'll get it all hooked up and get some video. After that, the build will take a break while we move back to the Unites States. Once our furniture shipment arrives in the States sometime around October, work will commence again. :) Hopefully, the Monster Merk will be terrorizing battlesfields starting in the Spring of 2010. Mike M --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
