Tarox conversion wheels

Okay, so I screwed up...  I forgot that I had some detailed photos of the kit from Blood and Skulls Industry, showing how the kit fits onto the GW Taurox kit.

So, in the interests of the rest of you who might want to "de-track-ify" your Tauroxes, here are the images and a little commentary.

Tires and axles before modification

The tires had just a bit of flash on them that needed to be trimmed, but it came of easily and I was able to sand it back to the level of the tire tread quickly.  A little cutting was needed on the struts and axles of the Taurox.  Once the attachment points were cut off, the wheel mount axles were ready for installation.

Removing the track attachment points

A quick fit of the wheel axle mount onto the now-trimmed struts made for short work and the mounts were ready for a test fit.

Ready for wheel axle mounting

Axles glued to the mounts and dry-fit

One of my greatest concerns was how the fenders on the body would look.  Worst case, they would be too large for the tire mounts.  Hopefully they wouldn't be too small and look like they left no clearance for the tires.

Dry-fit of tires to cross-check clearance from fenders

Not bad, for an add-on kit.  I'm glad they did not attempt to cram two wheels into the front section.  Since these wheels theoretically turn to steer the vehicle, I can rationalize how much larger the fenders are over the tires.  At least the back two axles look good and just barely fit while leaving a little clearance for the tires.

One of the side projects I also wanted to do was to add hinges to the aft hatch for the Taurox, since it was detailed differently than other Imperial vehicles.  It worked out very well to place the doors in place on the aft hull, drill through them with a pin drill and then push the pin through as the hinge.One set of doors I drilled in place.  The other set I drilled separate from the hinge mounts.  This did NOT work very well.  I nearly didn't make the pin-holes line up, which would not have bode well for the hinge.
   After pushing that hing through carefully there were small stress fractures in the outer hinge area, but I'm not planning on opening these things every day!







After pressuring the pins through, everything worked fairly well, and only took a little greenstuff to fill in stress cracks where the plastic was a little thin around the pin hinge.

Fitting the pin hinge VERY carefully

Overall, I think the operating doors turned out fairly well, and if they break loose due to the thin plastic, I'll just glue them in place!

Pretty happy overall with these modifications to the stock Taurox.  Now back to the FTGT Hobby Budget Challenge!