I made the side skirting out of 12mm x 12mm solid bar and on top I will weld 1.2mm plate. The side is made of 6 door like panels that can swing open individuality and can also hinge up out of the way (that is as close i could make after seen all available info from photos and video)
Finally time has come to START and test run the engine with drive system
Here is what I did to have this tank ready for the first test drive.Right drive sprocket was machined 1mm wider for track to fit. And the track fitted with road wheels lined
The only bad luck that i had was with my welding and plasma cutter machine, it blow up after two months of idling so my petrol tank is not completed and As you will see the best part of testing is missing video camera battery not fully charged, is this happening the result of Merphy's Law or me been in a hurry to test run my tank ? Video for this test has been uploaded. http://youtu.be/zuRc5gE0vfI
After this test drive this is the pros and cons results.
1) Drive gear Excellent with minimal adjustments of clutches was able to deliver full torque up to the point of spinning the tracks and not moving.
2) Sprocket drives and chains (forward and reverse drives) performed very well
3) Drive track very robust but the polypropylene moldings give very poor traction on cement or tar road, my drive way has 25% inclination (9meter long with 2,3meter climbing) and it was spinning with no forward movement. For the near future R&D have to be made using rubber and vulcanizing.
4) Road wheel no 7 left side the one before drive sprocket broken of at the welding of the arm, but the test went on
5) Suspension is the weakest item of this build, very soft it can’t carry the full weigh of the tank 280Kgr and 94Kgr of me.(Road wheels 1,2,6,7 are set harder than center wheel 3,4,5 as per original setting) I will try to set all at maximum setting and for road wheel 1 and 7 the wheels that most of track tension is applied I must use two torsion bar assemblies connected parallel. I hope that this adjustment will solve this problem; else I must replace the inset rubber of the torsion bars with a harder and thicker one.
As a result of soft suspension the track becomes very loose and that makes it to jump the drive sprocket .
Soon after I complete the modification necessary a video will be taken from the point the first video was stopped
I LOVE THIS BUILD
After modifying the suspension torsion bars by replacing the 18mm rubber insert with a harder ones this gave me extra loading per road wheel. here is the video of this test drive http://youtu.be/FlGfFfKNLZM