Fsttanks

Well finally got around to finishing up the build out and testing of the "metal version" TongDe M60.

Before the review starts here are some finished and out of the box photos. Yes I know that is kinda in reverse.

To be continued:


TongDe M60 at LA Tank Club battle day.

TongDe M60A3 at the April 2023 LA Tank Clubs battle day.

Fresh out of the box.

New more accurate 105mm M68 cannon and canvas mantle cover.

Panther F

Sweet... that turned out so much better than it looked before!

I took the plunge too, waiting on the M60 A2 kit.

Fsttanks

PART 1.

In this review I am going to focus primarily on the mechanical aspect of the TD M60 and so not much on the cosmetics. I think it is well established that the basic cosmetics need some work.

So how is the M60 mechanical? Actually it is pretty good overall, easy to work on and tweak. It does have two glaring issues though that effect its durability and reliability.

The first is the steel gearboxes, although actually nicer then HengLong steel gearboxes because it comes with bearings and is fully enclosed, it did come with motors that have pinion teeth that do not mess well with the corresponding gear as seen in this photo.



This poor mesh caused my M60s gearboxes to lock up frequently. I replaced them with a pair of HengLong blue 380 motors. You can see in the photo how much better the blue 380 motors mesh with the corresponding gear. After adding the blue motors I have had no further issues with the gearboxes locking up and they run smoothly.


The second issue I have experienced is with the suspension travel of the #5 and #6 rear suspension arms/road wheels. The M60 has no physical up or down travel stops. This is not so much of a problem with up, but with the down travel. When backing or driving in reverse over even a small step or obstacle the suspension arms can be easily forced to over extend past the 90deg down point and then start to rotate forward. This puts a huge amount of stress on the torsion bar "locking down" caps and causes them to break with a rather loud snap. Show here simply backing over a small step or obstacle can cause the issues to occur.





Broken torsion bar lock down cap caused by excessive movement downwards of the suspension arm.

This issue my not effect everyone based on how and where they drive their M60 but it should not be happening at all and the lack of a travel limiter is just inexcusable. Fortunately I have been working with JVM3Dconcepts on a solution and will be adding travel limiters to my M60 and designing improved strength torsion bar lock down covers to replace the factory ones.

Feel free to ask any relevant questions.

PART 1 to be continued...

Panzerjaeger66

Glad to see detailed pictures of the gear and the suspension springs!
Regarding the new well formed gun canvas. Does it come with the metal version anyway or was it made by you?

Fsttanks

The front of the mantle is not covered in "canvas" but it has been given a bit of cosmetic work. The sides though have been. The two blend blend together reasonably well after the cosmetic work I did to the stock mantle. Kinda had to because the mantle has holes in it for the mounting of the "ERA" on the RISE armor version which made it look horrible. I had to fill the holes so while I had the mantle off, I added the side "canvas". With this tank it was rather easy given the way the mantle comes apart and the room in and around it. I also added a new barrel "baffling" and a new M68 barrel. All these things add up to a much improved turret look.

Here are a couple of photos Of the mantle being worked on and new gun barrel.

Mantle with holes being filled.

New M68 main gun installed. Note the difference between the stock TD barrel bottom and the new M68 barrel laying next to it.



reasonable blend of stock mantle and "canvas" sides. I could have done better but was in a time crunch to make the April 2023 LA Tank Club event.

Fsttanks

PART 1 continued:

Now on to the mechanical that I feel is good.

Road wheels. These are one piece metal with rubber tires and two bearings. They are held onto the suspension arm with a stainless steel axle/screw similar to the way Tamiya does it on their Abrams, Leopard 2, Sheridan, Pershing to name a few. The one negative are the hub caps. These are not pressure fitted like HengLong caps and need to be glued or magnetically attached. I chose to glue mine on.

Suspension arms. These are rather stout, similar in size and feel to the ones used on the Tamiya Abrams. The suspension arms use two bearings, one on the outside of the hull and the other on the inside. These hold the suspension arms rather precisely in place and provide for very smooth movement.

Torsion bars. The torsion bars appear to be stainless steel and are reasonable thick. The are easy to add tension onto for tuning of the suspension which unfortunately was needed as the M60 had a rather noticeable sage to one side as it came from the factory. A few tweaks to the torsion bars and this leveled out the tank. The one negative I feel is the rather poorly molded torsion bar "lock down" covers. The poor molding I feel makes them the weak link in the suspension system. I have already had new "lock down" covers designed and made out of super strong engineering material that will be replacing the stock covers.



Road wheel and axle.

Bearings on suspension arm.

Torsion bars and black plastic "lock down" covers.

PART 2: Electronics. To be continued...

RC_BobM

Unusual to see torsion bars with ball bearings in any tank - nice! I can see how that cap could pop, especially with the large sink marks in the parts in exactly the wrong place. Nice model after your tweaks. Looks like they did a lot of good things on the running gear. Hoobin could take note.
Bob

tankme

I do like that the torsion bar covers screw into a metal nut on the bottom of the tank and not just into plastic.

Derek

cleong

Nice - I have a set of Tamiya Pershing DMDs kicking around that I could see living in a Tongde hull.

Looks as though he is rapidly making improvements to the product even though he initially said he was aiming for the toy market.

Guess it never hurts to under-promise in order to surpass expectations.

Fsttanks

PART 2: Electronic

This part will be short. The TD control system is similar to the HengLong 6.0/7.0 systems and has many of the same features. Although similar the driving dynamics are slightly different and the TD M60 has starting / stopping inertia built in and the HengLong systems more less do not.

I am not a fan of the TD inertia algorithm, but some people might like it. I also do not feel the overall handling is as good as the newer HengLong 7.0/7.1 systems so I decided to change it over to a 7.1 system. The 7.1 made it possible to further upgrade to servo recoil and elevation. Why did I not use something more advanced like Tamiya DMD11 or Clark? Simple, the M60 has not yet proven itself worth putting something more in it. Although this initial sentiment is changing fast.


TD control systems as used in the M60. Although similar in appearance it is not exactly the same as the HengLong 6.0/7.0 systems.


Other then the control system the remaining electronic are pretty much off the shelf HengLong in nature.

End of PART 2. I also just post a short test run video on my Instagram & fsttanks. Feel free to take a look.

PART 3: To be continued....

RichJohnson

Hooben has figured it out if you order the metal arms. The Leopard 1a5 is pretty good and very durable. Ive been hill hopping and ravine running pretty hard with it and it is holding up great. I wish the Merkava had worked out this good.

Fsttanks

PART 3

In this part I wanted to talk about the M60 metal tracks and sprockets. The M60 uses a proprietary sprocket that uses a drive axle mounting slot compatible with HengLong drive axles. That is good thing, unfortunately the sprocket to fit the cosmetic of the rear of the tank was made wider then scale and has a rather aggressive negative backspacing. This made it so TD couple use a shorter drive shaft and keep the sprockets tight looking against the rear hull as with the real M60.

The draw back is that now the tracks also have to be wider. Not just a little wider but a whole lot wider which removed the ability to use other brands of track already on the market. As an example DKLM with their M60 uses a HengLong Abrams sprockets and drive shaft extensions. This enabled their M60 to use HengLong Abrams and Leopard 2 tracks but also Tamiya Abrams and Leopard 2 tracks plus a few others.

This could become an issue if spare tracks for the TD M60 are hard or time consuming to acquire, which as of right now they are. Fortunately the TD metal tracks are rather stoutly constructed. Unlike HengLong metal tracks the TD do not have hallow spaces inside the pads and the pins are fully enclosed through the entire length of link section. So no scooping up excess dirt/sand. Also the space between the links is rather large. Cosmetically the spacing looks questionable, but coupled with the solid pads it does allow for faster evacuation of dirt/sand which in turn makes the tank run more reliably outdoors. Which takes me to the next question I am asked. How well do the tracks perform outdoors?

Outdoors in the dirt, sand and low cut grass the tracks have run great and I have not yet thrown a track. But given that they have flat metal track pads and are single pin designs means they have poor grip for climbing and can not take full advantage of the excellent suspension travel as the tracks are not as flexible as they could be if they were dual pinned. At times the M60 struggles to climb slopes or rough ground that other similar sized, weight and powered tanks do not. If at some point TD or the aftermarket produce a dual pin track with rubber pads that fit, then the M60 will be almost unstoppable.





I have had a few issues with pins "walking out". This should not be happening as often as it is with new track.


TD M60 metal tracks.

End or PART 3.

PART 4. To be continued.

Please feel free to ask questions or and constructive comments.

Fsttanks

PART 4.

To summarize everything up I have found that aside from some cosmetic issues the metal upgrade version of the TongDe M60 a reasonable good tank. It has features of both HengLong and Tamiya which kinda makes it somewhat of a hybrid and in my opinion that makes for a good base tank to modify or build off of.

So which is it more like HengLong or Tamiya. Well that's obvious, it is more like a HengLong. It drives very much like a large 6.0-7.1 HengLong tank (with similar metal features). So if you have driven one of the newer King Tigers, Abrams, Leopard 2 or Challenger 2s then you will have some idea as to what to expect.

While evaluating the metal TongDe M60 I found a number of thing I especially liked and disliked.

LIKED:

1.) The torsion bar suspension and road wheels. These make for a rather smooth running over rough terrain once they are tuned correctly.

2.) The metal gearboxes. Yes I said gearboxes. They are actually rather nicely put together and very easy to remove from the tank and work on.

3.) The turret. It is roomy and was very easy to install a metal servo recoil/elevation system as well as adding "canvas" to the mantle sides.

4.) The idler adjustment mountings. These huge compared to ones used on the new HengLong large tanks.

5.) The tracks. They are well built and I suspect will provide very durability.


DISLIKED:

1.) The torsion bar plastic lock down covers. These are poorly molded and I had two break on me. I was able to repair them. But I have ended up simply reverse engineering the covers and making them out of high strength engineering resin.

2.) The lack of down travel suspension stops. These would have saved me from breaking the torsion bar lock down covers. I ended up making my own which have been performing flawlessly.

3.) The stock motor pinion gears. Both did not mesh well and both motors had to be replaced.

4.) The sprocket attachment screws. These were Philips head and could not be torqued sufficiently to keep them from coming loose. I did end up replacing them with Allen head screws.

5.) The on/off switch and battery access. Both are under the turret bustle rack. I moved the on/off switch to the loader hatch and arrange the battery connections so they could be reached (with a hook/tool) via the engine deck hatch. Still not happy with the arrangement,but it is the best option for the time being (I am not a fan of magnetic upper/lower hull mountings for hull access. I drive my large tanks to hard and the tops always come off with magnets).

6.) The metal tracks. Wait didn't I just say I liked them? Yes, but I also disliked them for their weight, pins walking out, incorrectly width and poor climbing hip.

X factor) The shipping packaging. I put this last because it is not really tank related but was an issue. My M60 arrived with a number of broken parts. Fortunately I was able to repair them and move forward. The shipping box was undamaged so there was/is no excuse except that the tank was not secure well enough in the box.

So let me know your thoughts. Anything more you would like to see or I did not cover? It tried to keep is short and to the point and I know I left somethings out.

Photos from testing and LA Tank Clubs IR battle day.

Fsttanks

TongDe metal version M60 on rock obstacle during testing.

TongDe M60 on rock obstacle during testing.

tiger rampage

Thank you for your thorough review as I am planning to purchase a few of these in the near future and now I feel confident in doing so.

MAUS45

Thanks for the review. It answered all the questions I had and I will pick up the IDF version.

Fsttanks

Looks like I was correct about what the mounting points under the M60 gearboxes are for. This is TDs copy of the HL "cross drive"/ "dual current" gearbox.

Fsttanks

Just an update. The M60 is still running great so that is a good thing. Next I have received the new torsion bar "lock down covers" and M60 sprocket hub caps from JVM3Dconcepts. The TD M60s do not come with sprocket hub caps.

The torsion bar "lock down covers" are 3D printed in a high performance engineering resin and are very strong. They are much cleaner looking then the TD stock covers.


JVM3Dconcepts torsion bar "lock down" replacement covers for the TD M60 tanks.


JVM3Dconcepts sprocket hub caps for the TD M60s. They are held in place via neodymium magnets (not included).


TD M60 sprocket before.


TD M60 sprocket with the JVM3Dconcepts M60 hub cap.

tiger rampage

those look great, where do you get magnets like that from?

Fsttanks

Any hardware store or hobby/craft store will have them. They are fairly common and easy to find.

Panther F

They are on eBay... very cheap too. I used a 1/4" X 1/16" for the Sheridan sprocket cap. (By the way, has anyone fired up that smoker on the TongeDa?)

Fsttanks

The smoker is the same one currently being used in newer HL tanks except that it is white plastic vs black. I rip them out first thing so I could not tell you how they perform but I would imagine it is the same as a HL smoker.

tankme

Sorry, I already ripped mine out also.

Panther F

Well just thought I'd try the smoker out while running the tank through it's test. No where near a HL unit and really is bad for running it inside. The odor will hang around for a hour!

tiger rampage

I just priced out an M60a3 metal version from DKLM and was quoted 199 usd for shipping to NY USA. This would bring the total cost to around 500 usd is that what you paid for your M60? I was going to purchase one but now I think I’ll just wait for Tongde to find a North American distributor for their tanks.