Rikk,
>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?
This doesn't sound off to me, although I am sure they meant hard use, not
idling in the motor pool. Remember, the Army was not expecting these
things to be around for ever. In fact, they expected that something
serious would go wrong sooner rather than later. These engines were
under a LOT of stress and strain, so my guess is that the Army decided
that at 400 hours it would probably be time to chuck it. Hehe... this
was when they had PLENTY of spares lying around!
I have been told that my M29c Weasel had an expected life of 1000 miles.
That didn't sound like alot to me at first, but my first Weasel has 2,500
on the odometer and was in military service for almost 30 years. I have
checked around and other Weasel owners think that 2,500 is in fact the
original mileage. So this tells me two things:
1. These things were built a lot tougher than they were originally
"designed" to be.
2. Even in wartime the number of miles put on a tracked vehicle was not
as much as one would expect. Or at least the ones that were really
stressed out aren't here for us to collect anymore.
Love to hear from more experienced MVers if this sounds right to them.
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:18:30 PDT