"John Souza" <John.Souza@ci.fresno.ca.us> wrote:
> The biggest problem towing a vehicle behind a military wrecker using
> a towbar to the axles and the wiffle tree to the towing shackles on
> the bumber, is that you CAN'T turn.
[...]
> But, the pivot point are in two different planes. The hook from the
> wrecker that is attached to the wiffle tree pivots on the front
> bumper and the tow bar pivots at the rear of the truck.
Please forgive me if this is a dumb comment (because I've never towed
anything with a wrecker), but maybe it would work better if the crane
boom was lifted to a higher angle, so there would be more cable
between the boom sheaves and the hook sheaves, and then the hook could
swing from side to side as the towed vehicle pivots around the
wrecker's pintle? I think that would tend to lift the front of the
towed vehicle higher, and thus give it a natural tendency to
straighten back out, but I don't know if that force would be strong
enough to mess up the tracking of either truck. Aren't the boom
supports that you use during towing adjustable to allow the boom to be
set to a few different heights when they're in use?
> When towing a truck, remember that you try and hook into the brake
> system on the towed vehicle. The 5 tons have glad hands on the front
> for that purpose.
Will applying pressure to the service glad hand at the rear of an
M44A2-series deuce apply its service brakes, since it's not a true air
brake system?
While we're on the subject of wreckers, I'm a bit curious about the 1
M246A1 5-ton wrecker/tractor combination shown in some of my older
manuals. It looks interesting to me because my manuals suggest that
its boom is significantly longer than the boom on the regular medium
wreckers (26' vs. 18'). I don't think that a regular wrecker's boom
would let it put a hook high enough over the ground to lift the van
box off the back of my deuce for restoration work, but that
wrecker/tractor's boom might be able to do the job. Here's a manual
excerpt with line drawings and some basic specs:
http://www.qsl.net/ke6myk/tmp/M246A1.pdf
(about 150k, and temporary; I'll delete the file in a few days or weeks)
Can you tow an enclosed semitrailer with one of those beasts? The line
drawing in one of my manuals suggests to me that the boom would get in
the way, even if it was turned 180 degrees to stick out over the cab.
If the boom was raised enough to get it out of the way of an enclosed
trailer, I think it would stick up awfully high. This manual excerpt
suggests that this truck was intended to be used to recover crashed
aircraft, so maybe it was just supposed to be able to lift stuff onto
its own flatbed semitrailer. Can anybody shed some more light on this?
By the way: Whether I eventually succumb to temptation and
successfully bid on a wrecker through the DRMS or not, this thread has
been very interesting and informative! I'm very happy with the answers
I have gotten, and the other related threads that have sprung up from
my initial question.
-- Mark J. Blair, KE6MYK <mblair1@home.net> PGP 2.6.2 public key available from http://www.keyserver.net/ Web page: http://www.qsl.net/ke6myk/ DO NOT SEND ANY UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL TO THIS SITE PLEASE SEND PLAIN ASCII TEXT ONLY -- NO HTML OR QUOTED-PRINTABLE
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