Armour Dreams

[Jonathan Moore]

two more pictures.

[Jonathan Moore]

On the original tank, where the exhaust exits the hull, there is an armoured cover.
This is my copy.

[Jonathan Moore]

And more pictures.

[Jonathan Moore]

Over the silencer there should be a heat shield, I have looked at loads of pictures and the variation of the hole configurations seems to be quite varied, so I have settled on this one. Loads of holes to drill, bugger.

Jon

[James P]

I have nothing but the utmost of respect for you dedication, abilities and workmanship.

[jdmcm]

Jonathan

I would like to place my order for your upcoming heavy tank line...one Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. E please, with all the bells and whistles!!! Heavy on the zimmerit!

Seriously, absolutely amazing work...it is one thing to have a part to restore and make it look that good, but starting with a piece of bare steel and actually creating...not just a part, but a whole tank...awesome!

John

[karlos59]

Coming along nicely Jonathan

[Jonathan Moore]

Morning,

The petrol tanks in place but not leak tested or finished, as I have been waiting for various components to arrive.
It should hold about 70 litres of fuel, so a lot less than the 170 litres in the original tank but I want to put the electrics between the engine fire wall and the petrol tank. This area then gets covered so that you won't see any of it.

One of the other items that I have been making, is the air filter housing. I want to use a standard early Jag filter, so although the outer housing looks as it should, hopefully, the modern filter fits inside. These are the best two pictures that I could find of the original item.

[Jonathan Moore]

The top cover for the outer housing although in reality, on my version, it's just for show.

[Jonathan Moore]

looking a bit like a vacuum cleaner and the complete housing with the outer housing and brackets in place.
I can't bolt it in place yet as I need to have the gearbox in place to make sure everything fits.

[Jonathan Moore]

There's not alot to show you really, as i have been altering my previous work to accommodate the new, later engine. I took a trip up north to meet Rick, Eddy8men and what a really nice chap he is. The reason for my journey, was to pick up the muff couplings for the steering box drive shafts but oh, how I would love to restore some of his toys. Thanks again Rick, for the bits and the chat.
Whilst I was talking to Rick he introduced me to a new word " Imagineering" so I have been doing a bit myself. One of the frustrating parts of this project, so far, has been trying to decide what to do for the final drives. On the way home, being bored at the wheel, I was thinking about all the options thus far and it looked like I would have to sell a kidney to finance the relevant components, then seeing a vehicle on the road and cursing a lot, I had an idea. A quick search on fleabay and low and behold, someone was scrapping such a vehicle 3 miles from where I live. I haven't done any accurate measurements yet but from a tape survey, they seem to match up, almost too exactly and the ratio looks to be 5.5 : 1. Sunday morning, my son and I, took a Land Rover stuffed with every tool needed for a right bugger of a job but ended up only using a couple of spanners, a ratchet, highlift jack and a big bar. Two hours later they were in the workshop waiting to be washed.

[Jonathan Moore]

Morning All,

This is a long one but where to start. The petrol tank is finished and the new engine is in place, so now on to the electrics. I have an engine, a wiring loom and two ECU's, one engine and one gearbox. The wiring loom doesn't fit the engine, the concept of plug and play has gone out of the window, the wiring loom is the wrong loom for my engine ECU. The ECU requires one yellow plug and one black, my loom has one yellow and one blue plug, that doesn't fit the ECU. As far as I can ascertain, the loom is for a 3.2ltr, my engine is a 3.6ltr. What to do. In a moment of shear depression, I did think about trying to find the correct loom but then I thought, what the hell, I will rewire the whole thing. The Haynes manual is like the proverbial chocolate tea pot, so after a lot of searching on line, I found a wiring diagram for a 3.6 of roughly the right vintage and begun chopping.
This is definitely not a job for the faint hearted, it involved altering, and I am not exaggerating, about 80% of the wiring loom, even the colours are different. Eventually after two days of chopping and adding I was getting somewhere but where I wasn't sure.
Even the simple items had either more of fewer wires. At last I turned the key, nothing. There was, in the loom, a group of about 10 wires that were all permennant lives, in other words they were live even when the ignition key was turned off, something I don't like, so I cut them into individuals and traced where they went, ignored what I didn't think was important and connected the remainder, just one. After my initial test or failure, I realised that I needed a second permenant live to the ECU, this was connected and I tried again, the ECU fired up along with the fuel pump. I now had two of the main items, a cranking engine and fuel but no spark. When the expert, had decided that I needed a different engine, part of his reasoning was that this engine didn't require an ignition amplifier. I spent hours looking for a wiring diagram that didn't require this amplifier but I couldn't find one, so I rang the expert. Now amazingly he told me to ignore what he had told me and fit an amplifier.

This should give you some idea of what I have been up against.

The amplifier was ordered and duly arrived. The wiring diagram showed 5 wires, the amplifier had 7 connections and the plug had 7 connections but only one of the wire colours in the plug matched the diagram and that was in a different position in the plug. Again, back to the internet but I couldn't find the relevant diagram. What I did find, was a thread where a bloke had wired in his amplifier incorrectly and attached pictures of the connections and their relevant place in the plug. There's a but, the plug had 7 spaces but only 3 wires were connected. The wiring loom that I have, originally only had 3 wires, of course the colours didn't match but I decided to attach these 3 wires into the plug as per his picture and blow me I had a spark.

Today I reassembled the cooling unit into the hull, connected everything up, filled the cooling system, attached a temporary fuel tank and pressed the starter. After the fourth attempt it started, what a sweet note from the exhaust, well for 30 seconds and then the oil pipe to the oil cooler shot off and emptied 8 litres of oil on the floor. Bugger.

I have to admit that I have shortened this story so that you don't consider suicide.

Jon

[Ganmain Tony]

Perhaps an old flat head V8 may have been the way to go Jonathan.

What a nightmare.. good on you for plugging away.

The final drives are out of ????

[Jonathan Moore]

Morning Mike and D,

I am glad that you are enjoying my pain.

The engine is a 1990ish Jaguar 3.6 ltr straight six fuel injected petrol unit and the gearbox is a four speed auto.

Jon

[Lynn Eades]

Hi D. The sickness lingers???

[D Ellery]

Hi Lynn.
Ha ha yes, iv'e not been cured.

Got anything I can play with ?

Jon I take it that you are looking to get track cast or use something similar ?

Cheers. David.

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

Today I trial fitted the first final drive unit, it all lined up as anticipated.

The original had an armoured cover over the final drives, obviously my cover won't be armoured but it will hide the castings and make the area look roughly like the original.

The big question is, can I get my welding to look like the original?

[Mike Cecil]

Thanks Jonathan,

Mike

[David Dunlop]

Wow! Quite a range of welding quality in that one photo, Jonathan. Interesting. If vehicles could only talk, sometimes.

David