----- Original Message -----
From: "Rikk Rogers" <rkltd@swbell.net>
To: "MVlist" <MVlist@yahoogroups.com>; "Mil-Veh2" <mil-veh@uller.skylee.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 11:34 PM
Subject: [MVlist] M4 Tanks
> I just read in Army Motors that the life of the 500 HP ford V8 had an
> expected life of 400 hrs.
> Is this right? and if so, why so short?
>
The life of a tank engine is desperately hard and during WWII air filtration
was very poor indeed, in dusty climates and the Desert 40 hrs could be the
limit.
The tank engine is worked within an inch of its life continuously, or may be
idled for a long time and then thrashed causing all manned of temperature
related differential expansion.
The Meteor (Merlin less blower) in the Centurion was considered very good
initially having the typical 400hr or so of life but required a programme of
mods to make it acceptably reliable and even then was only delivering 650hp.
The Chieftain L60 was of course dogged with problems throughout its life and
notoriously unreliable, the RR CV12 in Challenger is better but life still
is in hundreds of hours and its often brought down by ancillary breakage,
the current Perkins P6 is better but does wear out very quickly compared to
the accepted norm for other duties.
Richard
Southampton - England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:18:30 PDT