An axle and some of its friends

Again the order of the instructions were a bit peculiar to me, of course I could've ignored that and just build these idler wheels when I built the drive sprockets. Or I could've just left them to wait for a priming and basecoating round, just like I intended to work with the road wheels. Apparently being consistent was someone else's method for working, not mine.

Transfer or power

Because the engine lived in the butt-end of the royal kitty and the gearbox complex in the front, something was clearly needed to make these setups communicate between each other. For that a couple of support setups were installed to the bottom of the tank (in the photo below, along the centerline) to attach the mechanical components onto.

The block assembled in the steps 15-16 was clearly something important related to this. I still had no idea about any of this particular subject, I just assumed it was some sort of a pre-gearbox thing, that for some reason was there, halfway between the gearbox and the engine.

The torque to this fresh piece of equipment was transferred by the first axle piece. This part lived just below where the turret's basked was going to be, so this could not be a random coincidence.

At this point I left the second axle to wait for a later stage, while whatever I had just installed was curing. Next I built a couple of walls to sandwich the motor. Before installing said motor. I found this slightly unnerving.

Onto both of these side walls I needed to install a strange-looking bit, seen below. Its function was not apparent from the pics, so I just assembled them, glued them in place and left poking as instructed.

These new walls didn't settle in as straight as their prussian heritage made me expect. Of course this flimsiness would be beneficial when installing the engine and its pipes, otherwise there'd be lots of breaking, and perhaps a couple of swear words filling the airways.

While these space dividers were setting, I glued the gearbox complex into the front floor of the tank, without forgetting the frontmost axle between the gearbox and the middle box. The positioning of these pieces were a bit off, I felt, as when the gearbox was accurately in the front, the rear end wasn't. Additionally this also affected the attachment of the axle too.

Zweiradienlenkgetriebe L801

Heavy hardware

Clearly the driver and radio operator had way too much footspace and too few tools. The solution to this problem was just behind the corner!

Control unit

Unlike the last Indiana Jones movie's tank, this jolly beast wasn't (only) controlled by pulling levers to brake the tracks, but via a steering wheel! The L801 steering device was a simple-looking two-piece module, that was glued onto a larger cylinder setup. The steering wheel didn't look too ergonomic to me, nor did was it a wheel, but that was just silly nitpicking.

Gearbox complex

As far as I understood the next setup consisted of the gear-housing (a 7-gear Zahnradfabrik AK 7-200) and a more blocky gearbox (OG 40 12 16B Schaltgetriebe). From now on, whatever all this should technically be called, will be referred to as "the gearbox" for simplicity.

FunkGerät 5

My King Tiger's radio setup consisted of a couple of boxes. Based on a couple of photos I found from the interwebs it should have a rack frame of some sort (painted white). Setting one up wouldn't be a problem, if one could count on the tank's upper part fitting on top of it. The larger box was a FuG 5, but I didn't recognize the smaller one as anything else - or a command unit's FuG 2 (unlikely, this didn't have the antennae required). This was the time I should've had a handful of very technical sourcebooks... in any case, whatever these were, they got installed on top of the gearbox housing.

The driver's seat

Something for the driver to play with

For the first project hours I had built components and attached them here and there, with an obvious bottom-up principle, without any specific plan or concentration on a specific area within the battle compartment. Now the beast started being in a state where some subareas were to be worked on.

Controllers

Until now the poor driver had only received a single stick, that maybe had something to do with setting the gears or not. Now the dude received some more crap to fill up his working environment.

The first photoetch piece of the kit ended up living next to the driver's head, to the left front edge. At this point the function of this setup was half a mystery. It looked like a periscope, and most likely was one.

A friend of mine in IRC referred to the plate below as a "nail plate" in Finnish, so the translation may be off a bit or eight. Whoever it was, it was installed below some pedals. I still had no idea of how a tank was driven, so I assumed them being a brake and a clutch, while the acceleration (or separately braking the left/right track) was done via the handles.

With the controllers installed and no explanation given about anything the place looked like a jungle. To my eyes the pedals looked like they were a bit too high up compared to the floor level.

Ohjaimet asennettuna, kahvojen merkitystä ei missään selitetty ja polkimet näyttivät olevan vähän hämmentävän korkealla tämänhetkiseen lattiatasoon nähden.

The freshly installed nail plate (?) at least protected the driver's feet from the torsion bars, but the ergonomy really made me suspicious, especially with the pedals being so far away from this new foot-resting plate. Then again, my only experience of sitting inside a tank is from a T-55M, that had pedals like from a go-kart than anything that we've seen here. So I had no real clue for comparison.

Meanwhile, further back

At this point I also built the firewall between the combat compartment and the engine compartment, with the pipes and whatnots. This piece of wall sat into its slot pretty damn nicely.

The driving seat

This seat was built out of quite a load of pieces. Especially while fiddling with the small, unglued axles the bench seemed like it could maybe be adjusted inside the model. Somehow.

Despite the freehand gluing position the bench complex settled in pretty nicely and, surprisingly, sturdy-lookingly.

Sadly I didn't have any sitting 1:35 scale gentlebeings readily available, in a sitting position or otherwise. At this point the bench looked functional. I was just wondering, how did it work in the real world when the dude wanted to actually see where he was driving and popped his cabbage out of the hatch? I somehow doubted it was as convenient as an office chair with quick-locks and whatnot.

Some more boxes to the bottom of the tub

Boxies

A short post this time, there wasn't much that happened between the torsion bars and the next bigger chunk. Now I installed more boxes to the bottom of the tank's hull. Sadly there was nothing to tell me what they were for, for example that hole-topped pair in the end. I'd been more than interested in knowning what I had put together and put inside my tank-to-be. Once again a good sourcebook would've been incredibly handy.

Torsion bar suspension

Not the same as the Panther

This tank's torsion bar suspension was a slightly different beast from the old Panther's twin torsion bar suspension, not that I could say what was the pros/cons set of these systems. At least this one was a bit simpler to assemble, not that the other one was challenging, from a model-builder's point of view.

Series 'A'

Obediently following the instructions I started by building eight combinations of the torsion bars and road arms for the inner road wheels.

Smashing the bars inside the tank's belly was started from the nose, because I thought that the driver's place was the most obvious spot for piratey swearing. It wasn't that bad, just the final millimeters were a bit tight.

One by one the bars found their places. The rearmost one in this photo looked screwed, but I was going to blame that on the angle of the shot. It didn't look twisted or bent seen through my own eyes.

Series 'B'

For the outer road wheels I likewise assembled a set of twelve bars and road arms. Installing those was a similar fight in the end of the tank, where a couple of the throughput bits were misaligned or clogged.

Now the tank's floor was looking pretty hectic, wouldn't want my foot to be caught there while driving cross-country. I remembered from the pics that there'd be an internal floor of some sort, so that the personell didn't need to step between those torsion bars in their cramped, potentially gloomy and most likely bothersomely noisy workspace.

The instructions wanted the road wheels to be installed right now, I hadn't even assembled them (each consisted of two parts), because I knew I wanted to paint them and the outer hull separately before installing the moving bits.

Megabonus

As luck would have it, it happens to be Donald Duck's birthday today. Yay for the 87 year-young dabbler!

Starting on some crew positions

The driver and the radio operator

First of all the driver got a controller bar into his footspace. Installing that multi-angled bar was somewhat frustrating. The flimsy 

Kuljettaja sai jalkatilaansa nyt ohjainkepakon, jonka paikoilleenasentaminen oli kevyesti tuskastuttavaa puuhaa. Rimpulamuovi oli vääntyä poikki moneen kertaan.

The radio operator got a cushion for his buttocks and if I recalled correctly, a first aid kit behind his place. The seat didn't really look too comfortable. If the tiny hatch opening in front of their feet was for anything but light service functions, I will be confused.

The lower front glacis plate was covered in Zimmerit and it was to be installed right now, not when the hull was about to be assembled. Its effect on the internal views was, as expected, nonexistent.

There the hatch went, under the shoes of the radio operator.

Lower inner hull details

Spending a lot of time in the bottom

While working on the tank I often took a look at how the insides started looking when you looked at it from the front. As far as I could somehow the full interior, I'd be enjoying watching its progress.

After the inner walls I installed a couple of lenghtwise support bits, which I assumed to have something to do with supporting the combat compartment's floor and what got set on top of that, than anything to stiffen the hull itself.

Already the vagueness of some of the pics in the instructions had confused in some places. Just like I complained the last time, the attaching surfaces of some of the pieces were pretty tiny and low on tactile feedback while installing: you couldn't easily feel when it was where it was supposed to be.

In the left front corner, right next to the drive sprocket's clutch(?) and the cylinder installed at a 45° angle seemed to house a set of three periscope heads for the driver. If that was the case, it was an interesting detail.

This sad-looking box looked like it was also protecing one of the combat compartment's fuel tanks (170l). Originally spacious panzertub was getting fuller by the step.