I guess I must be building tanks fairly well as this was my 3rd commission from Martin. 
This time around, instead of a big heavy full metal Taigen tank, Martin commissioned me to rebuild his all plastic PZ III.




I did not touch the gearboxes themselves, just the wiring. 
Cleaned up the former stiffeners and trimmed the internal cutting to nice clean vesions.
Added in the resin floor base from gearbox "wall" to the butt-end of the hull.
Elevated mounting tray for the TK board to allow for airflow to the bottom side of the board. (Never trust these things to stay cool since the TK40 Sound Amp BS).

Nice 20W speaker w/ vented mount that includes the power switch housing. More than enough speaker for any TK-50. As he informed me, the supplied TK board has a blown sound amp, but otherwise the Board seems to work fine. Side hull mounted volume control (It and the speaker work, I tried the setup with another TK Board).

I finished the lower and have been chasing RX issues. New TX/RX and the controls work well once again!
Currently using a 10 channel RX, because the original 6 channel ones must have come from the same places Dean bought his. The original 6 didn't work with the S-Bus.






Other 3/4 view. 

Upper hull fixes. I upgraded the upper hull magnets, fixed the headlight wiring and cleaned it up. 
I still may replace the MG LED, as it does not currently function.




And now the part that was the most interesting option requested.
Replace the original airsoft barrel with the supplied scale barrel. Recoil unit and if possible servo elevation.

Martin did not care about the barrel flash which had a 3mm LED in the scale 5cm barrel. So I had to find some 3mm IR Emitter LED's. Not cheap...

The barrel itself needed about a 10mm extension to be able to fit with the recoil unit, so Aluminum 8mm OD x 5mm ID tube with a 5mm OD x 4mm ID brass stiffener.





LED size comparison shown between the 3mm and a typical 5mm LED. Tested at 50cm as a test on my Bulldog. Hits registered. Success!
Have yet to test distance shooting however, so effective range is unknown. Also unknown is lifetime of the LED.





Unlike the huge turrets of the KT and cupola location in the Panther, the PZ 3 & 4 house the elevation in the turret bustle. So no real room to made servo elevation. Sorry Martin! But a nice custom apple mount that fits perfectly in the center of the removable cupola.

Just need to finish the turret mods (for the recoil unit) and reassemble and test (and for range with the new IR Emitter)!

Man your wiring is beautiful!

Nice. Is Tk-50 same foot print as the old Tk20 series ?

MikeC wrote:

Nice. Is Tk-50 same foot print as the old Tk20 series ?

TK2x - TK4x - TK5x are all the same basic foot print. 
The TK2x series had a 3rd screw hole by the volume connection. The other 2 holes are in the same locations.

TK6x & TK-8x have the same foot print too.

Ah okay. I have only seen Tk60s and TK80s. Wasn't sure about the 40s and 50s.

Looking real nice. I hope the emitter works good enough to use on the field. Not looking for huge range anyway as that is not how I want to use the tank. More to work with a Tiger like in the early Tiger battalions. I do like the realistic size barrel over the way too big airsoft one

Hammertime999999999 wrote:

Man your wiring is beautiful!

Yes it is!
I may, finally be pulling that pz3 I have out of the box and start cutting. We'll compare some time.

And no Sound TK-50S PZ3 board swapped for a Tiger I and fully setup as a light Tank. LOL...





The guts once I finished... with it. Relocated daughterboard as with the plugs installed, it hung up on the battery!

Video was still processing when I first posted this... So give it time...
Video finished...

That recoil is sweet. Yea it is funny to hear the Tiger sounds on a light tank but I can confess to having no idea as to what the Panzer III board sounds will be. The tank in it's original condition from MatoMart was a total joke. Fortunately I knew you were going to a great job on the internals it so didn't care. Also since it won't be used as my everyday tank I'm hoping the plastic suspension arms, return rollers, idlers will hold up. The plastic tracks I imagine will help in that and they are so cheap to replace as they stretch

Nice!

Very nice !

For anyone wanting to do a PZIII this popped up as a recommendation on YT. Probably the best resource outside of a museum I've seen for looking at the details on them. The one part where they are parking them in the enclosure after the surrender shows some pretty skilled driving too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVEnteNh2OU