"Restoring a Tiger 1 from scrap..." Topic

A 'new' Tiger 1 is being restored in Australia. It arrived in many bits and the bent armour had to actually straightened out to return it to flat plate.

YouTube link

The Tiger is built mostly from one original vehicle but some bits have come from other vehicles around the world. Also being rebuilt on the same site are a Jagd Panther and a Stug.

This is substantial work taking place over several years.

One hour of video and very impressive. And yes, they DID use a modern Leopard to tow the old Tiger out of the workshop.

Barry

Glad they addressed the Zimmerit question!

Damon.

A truly amazing collection!

@Wackmole9:
They have a lot of very good stuff there, I check in from time to time to see how the jobs are going.

For those who do not know I run several tank-related groups on Flickr which everyone is free to look around…

link

link

Tracked self-propelled guns go in here:
link

Tanks wrecks and range targets can be found here:
link

And finally my Normandy 1944 group is here:
link
My late father is the group's avatar. He was in the 86th Anti-Tank Gun Regiment, Royal Artillery and was at Hill 112 in Normandy, Maltot, Carpiquet and later at Nijmegen Bridge in Holland. The 17-pounders seen deployed on the bridge approaches in some photos are the 86th's.

An 86th Regiment 17-pounder can be seen here:
link
with an unlikely French Hotchkiss machine-gun in front of it.

Barry

WOW !!!! Very nice !!!

Their Faceplant page states that the Jagdpanther is almost ready to paint.
facebook.com/ausarmour
There is some debate, apparently, about whether Tank Encyclopaedia is any use at all.

Also the Tiger is not going to move anytime soon. I shall probably get there this year and find it won't have budged an inch.

I don't do Facebook. Are they trying to restore the Tiger to running condition? Big ask I would think.

That's a project for another time.

The link was to youtube, 4th. They say they intend to make it a "runner" but they didn't mention whether they'd found an engine and transmission, let alone how long it would take to restore one.

The Bovington Tiger is reported to be a pig to keep running. I spoke to a mechanic at the museum back door when it was laid-up 10 or 12 years ago and he said it had just blown its third engine.

He said: "Luckily we have a guy whose hobby is rebuilding Tiger engines" so I suppose an Australian runner is not out of the question. The other possibility might be to fit it with a third-party engine. Yet another possibility might be to build a new engine from scratch. The New Zealanders build new WW1 aircraft from scratch using new engines they have made. They have back-engineered four original engines types and can produce many WW1 aircraft.

Anyone got a spare engine from an M1 Abrams? (smiles)

Not out of the question, but then, the Bellarine Peninsular Railway tell us it's not out of the question to have all 3 kinds of Garratt in their collection in steam one day…

Thanks for posting the links and photos Barry.

I love seeing such beautiful, old military kit being restored and lovingly cared for.

That is a beautiful Tiger, whether it is operational or not. Love the paint job on it.

I was lucky enough to get to visit and see some of "The Littlefield Collection" before it was broken up and shipped off to other locations years ago.

They were working on a number of projects way back then, including even a Panther tank with zimmerit back in the day.

Australian Panzer IV D in running order:

YouTube link

Barry

And I have just watched the Jagd Panther restoration. This one was in bits when they got it.

Barry

The museum are apparently managing to find parts to make the reconstruction run, so they are going to offer the replica made from the filming prop for sale.

YouTube link