Another obvious mold situation are the brake levers at each wheel. The inner side is detailed with visible differentation between the brake release handle and the brake lever, while the outer side is flush and has no detail at all. To detail the brake levers, the end of the release handle was drilled out so that it would appear that the handle could move over the lever to release the brake; the end of the brake lever itself was left solid. To make the release handle stand out as a separate item, a thin sheet of styrene was used to fabricate a new side.
A sheet of paper was pressed down on the detailed inner side to create a pattern to fabricate outer release handles. Here you can see the new outer handles after they were glued on but before they were trimmed/filed to fit the existing release handle.
To detail the axle housing, a dividing line was filed into the center of the rectangular piece with a triangular file to give it the appearance of two different flanges. Achtung! (inserted later) Before adding the bolt detail above to the axle housing flange, please decide if you want to keep or remove the extra molded axle supports (one of which is barely visible in the left edge of this photo) on both sides of the front edge of the axle housing flange. Once bolt details are added, it will be difficult to remove them without damaging/removing your bolts, like I had to do! The molded support, like other molding items, adds strength to the toy but are not present on the real Pak. For comparison see this later picture, showing the supports in the process of being removed:
Bolts and nuts were added to show these flanges bolted together like the real axle. Note, by comparison to the photo below, that it appears 21st Century has these flanges installed upside down, as the short side is on top, not the bottom. With this flange turned around the end of the axle drops (raising the gun) instead of rising which would result in lowering the gun profile. It is probably for this reason that their Pak has a higher profile when deployed than the real Pak has in historical photos. It is tempting to cut and turn the housings the right way, but with the suspension parts molded to the axle end they would be facing the wrong direction and would likewise have to be cut off and mounted on the other side. Another detail visible in the picture above, are the castlelated nuts on suspension anchor (towards the upper left corner of the picture). These were created by cutting notches into a regular nut with a hacksaw, running a short section of machine screw through them and gluing them into a hole drilled into the molded plastic piece.
Detailing wheels/running gear
The 21st Century Pak 40 has simple round sections with pins molded into the wheel for log nuts. There is also approximately 1/8th of an inch space between the back side of the wheel and the wheel drum, which is not present on the real thing. This was something I wanted to change, to add ‘working’ lug nuts, draw the wheel tight against the wheel drum, and make the wheel drum look wider, as the real Pak 40 has a fairly wide section of the wheel drum exposed.
Original pak: wheel is tight against wheel drum, and a fairly wide wheel drum
Although a little hard to tell, the wheel and wheel drum are not tight against each other and the wheel drum itself is not all that wide.
To start, remove the large nut on the outside of the wheel (17mm I believe, a wrench and light twist will pop it right off), and then remove the screw holding the wheel to the axle. The wheel drum rotates when the wheel does because of a peg that extends from the back of the wheel into the wheel drum. I used this, along with a fabricated wooden alignment tool (dowel shaped to replicated the end of the axle) to hold the drum and wheel in proper alignment while drilling holes for the lug bolts.
The wheel and wheel drum do not fit flush against each other because the axle shaft of the wheel is too long. I trimmed this down so the wheel drum sits flush against the back of the wheel.
Once the wheel drum and wheel sat snug against each other, I inserted the wooden alignment tool to keep both in the proper position for drilling out the lug bolt holes. You will notice no matter how perfect you line up your drill press with the molded lug bolts on the other side, the wheel drum is not centered perfectly on the wheel. This means some of the lug bolts will be in different positions in relationship to the drum, but this can be covered over.
The lug bolt holes are not in perfect alignment with the wheel drum, but these will not be noticed when the project is completed, and could only be changed by making a new wheel drum which is more than I want to do.
Since the lug bolts are basically coming out of the very edge of the wheel drum, notches have to be made in the drum for that the ‘lug bolts’ can be inserted.
I used ¼ inch long 2-56 screws for the lug bolts.
The old molded lug nuts have to be removed from the wheel, which I accomplished with a Dremel tool. Once this was done, the whole thing was ‘bolted’ together so I knew the lug bolts were in the proper position. I then used superglue (I’d use JB weld if I had it on hand) to hold the bolts in place and lock their position in. Then I used Testors Contour Putty to fill in the wheel lug bolt openings. Once this was dry, screw heads that extended out from the contour of the wheel drum were filed off and again covered with contour putty so there was no visible distortion of the wheel drum.
The new mounting of wheel drum and wheel eliminates the space between them and draws the wheel drum out of the wheel drum backing plate to make it more to scale with a real Pak 40.