[frizzen]

Thanks guys! I'd seen a lot of good things about conversions of this model.

For the blade-lift: i pulled the fake cylinders off, pulled the rams out, removed notchy detent thing. Then i hit the inboard sides of each Cyl a little above center line with a cutoff disk, so that i could now span a piece of steel wire between the rams. Rams run freely in Cylinders Then grabbed a linkage, used a servo mount brass tube to reduce some slop, added some brass-tube spacers to align the linkage on this bar, and brought it back to a Spms401 that i stole out of my Rally Subaru. Servo lost 1/2 of a mount ear, and belly pan got slotted. Interior got some stiffeners shaved off bottom side.

Then I hacked out more from the hood side panels to clear this steel & brass Ram transfer bar, and bonded the offcuts back to the lower section. This way the new travel slot is mostly hidden by the rams. The belly pan usually has a smooth taper from a body tab support up to blade cylinder mount area, now i've got a hard 90 degree jump. Post 1, Pic 3, check out area near Right cylinder.

Blade lift & lower also had some work done for more travel both directions. Not sure if it's even needed, but i was in there anyway. I'd rather use end-points to control travel instead of worrying a hard stop would hit first.

Originally, I had wanted to run a narrow servo somewhere in the engine area, more directly acting on one of the blade support raised parts where it clears the axle. I didn't have any narrow enough on hand, and wasn't having much luck.

I also left some of the epoxy putty a little chunky on the under-carriage (from drive servo install) which will probably get weathered into caked on dirt/hydro oil/schmoo. Probably going to make a belly weight to ease the transition from belly to servos.
When i converted the servos to 360 drive, i also moved the wire slot to exit at the new top for better cable management.

Also the the grille is somewhere under / around my garage workbench... for the last couple months.