henry roberts

The new toy... in preparation for a Panzer 4 build???

Nope, the attention to detail is what makes this so good. The interior is where you as the owner and driver will relate to it when it is moving. Having the interior detailed so close to the original gives it substance. It changes it from a cool toy to an experience. Climbing in through a hatch will be climbing through a portal in to 1940.

Hi Jon, please don't think i was belittling what you have achieved, it is amazing and is the reason i signed up here. No i have never built a tank, or ever really thought much about them, till reading this thread inspired me to learn a bit about them. There is currently no chance i could do what you have done as I have basically no experence welding, on a lathe or a mill. With the schwimm comments were based solely on the thought of building the body from scratch. I have tried making compound curved stuff from sheetmetal, it takes time to get it to even look roughly close, let alone making dimensionaly tolerenced parts that fit together.

The schwimmwagen is a totally different animal to a tank. I would estimate an absolute minimum of 4 + times the work in a schwimm. Every panel is sheetmetal with compound curves, which require a lot more time and a totally different skill set to the tank build. If you are sticking with vw running gear building a reasonable approximation of schwimm running gear but in 2wd would be fairly straight forward, reworking 50's parts, but 4wd, ouch. For 4wd your only option for a swing axle transaxle (like the original) is an original KDF box or a custom reworked 2wd box. Reworking a vw box for 4wd has been done but... For the rear reduction hubs the bolt on options are KDF or barndoor kombi which are in a similar price range to KDF parts. The 3rd option is vw australia built Country Buggy reduction hubs, but they only made about 2500 of them for the australian and phillipine markets, so they are less common than the others, plus they are based off later kombi parts so are bigger/heavier looking. The more accessable 55-60? kombi reduction hubs don't bolt to the beetle style trailing arms. To make them bolt on you either need to make an addaptor block which won't look right or weld an addaptor to the redux hub that looks like the original. If you want to use the original style torsion bar front suspension but 4wd, a later front beam could be modified to look right but for front kingpin carriers and spindles your only option is again original KDF or total custom fabrication. The suspension geometry means the machining cuts are not all parallel/linear/concentric. I'm not saying it is un-achievable, it is just a massive undertaking.

A little off topic, but once this is done, whats next?

I had wondered if the drivers compartment had been given "special treatment"... I would have focused on that area so I could sit there making vroom vroom noises for motorvation and to think through the stages ahead. Dumb q. I figured about 79 different parts in the hatch/hinges. Close?

This project amazes me. I've been watching for months but had to sign up to comment on it. The amount you achieve in the time you spend in crazy, plus the level of detail going in to it... wow. Thank you for taking the time to share it with us. Do you have a specific build order you are following or do you just build what ever part you feel like, next.