MTV

I was told that a Continental Radial I was looking at during an antique farm equipment show was actually out of a tank.

Hmm

Trimtab wrote:MTV

I was told that a Continental Radial I was looking at during an antique farm equipment show was actually out of a tank.

Hmm

When I was a young sprout there were a lot of those being used to power irrigation pumps in the central valley of California. They had lots of those tank engines around but not much electricity out in farm country.

Trimtab wrote:MTV

I was told that a Continental Radial I was looking at during an antique farm equipment show was actually out of a tank.

Hmm

The Continental W670 was an airplane engine. Then they built a ground version of it as the standard powerplant in the M4 Sherman tank. I'm not familiar with the specific differences between the Stearman airplane version and the tank version... but I believe they are both at least from the same family of engines.

I often heard stories of the Hell Cat tank destroyer my father in law ran in WWII. http://www.wwiivehicles.com/usa/tank-destroyers/m18.asp

Big air cooled radial aircraft engines with a big fan to cool it and the hydraulic oil reservoir. It was really hot in there. He was the driver. They could not match the size of the big German Panzer or Tiger because they had to ship tanks in big numbers to the war theater so they built them fast and light. Shoot and Run he called it. They could knock out the German tank from the side in a surprise but head on all you did was give away your position, hence the Run part. The aircraft engine had the power and lighter weight so that is what they used. Continental R 971 became standard. Up to 400 hp and it became the fastest tracked vehicle of WWII at 50 mph.

http://www.wwiivehicles.com/usa/engines.asp

Shit, thanks I thought we were talkin' gear drives!

mtv wrote:........ As in P/W 985 D/H Beaver, Beech 17, etc, P/W 1820 DC-1, DC-2, DC-3 early numbers, etc (and yes, some of those were gear driven, which is why virtually every Single Otter on the planet now wears a turbine)......

FWIW 1820's are Wrights, 1830's are Pratts. And BTW I've seen a fair number of P&W 1340 powered Otters, so apparently all of them are NOT turbine-converted.