M4 pictures

OK got the M4 out of the shop today and took some pics. I can't figure out why the engine pic comes out big and the seat pic is small. They're all sized the same in Photobucket. The stats plate snuck in there twice but I'm done fiddling with the pics.

Anyway, after 450 hours of labor here it is. It should have a big box for shell storage sitting on the back but after these things went in to civilian service the boxes were removed to gain access to the engine. The owner will find a box someday but it hasn't happened yet. The shell box held the shells for whatever big gun it was designated to pull. From some of the reading I've done I've found out it pulled the 150mm,155,8 inch,9inch and 240 mm guns. The 155 had a 14 mile range and the 240 supposedly had a 20 mi range. I just read somewhere that the 155 weighed 30,000 pounds. It has a 40,000 pound winch on back so I have a hunch it was used to pull out stuck tanks, or whatever. Or it could pull itself out of the mud if there was a tree big enough and close enough to hook to. There's a full air brake system for the trailer if it had air brakes, along with an electric brake system for the same reason. Had a heck of a time finding cast iron glad hands to replicate the originals along with the brass shutoff valves in front of the gladhands.

I custom made the entire wiring harness using the old one as a pattern. Even used old looking fake cloth covered wire. The tractor has a 12V electrical system, but the trailer brakes are 6V. There's a big resistor under the dash to knock the trailer brake system down to 6V. The blackout driving light is 6V also so it has a resistor. Can't figure out why only the BO driving light is 6V and the rest are 12V. The dash lights are 24V running on the 12V system so the dash lights aren't too bright.

Engine is a Waukesha 817 cu. gas with two one BBL downdraft Zeniths. Calculated mileage is .9 MPG!! The torque converter is filled with #2 diesel fuel. We spiked it with a little ATF cause today's diesel doesn't have the lubricity the old stuff had. Transaxle uses 50WT straight mineral oil and has a big cooler the size of the radiator, along with the torque converter cooler that's the same size.

It's gonna be at the Albert City Threshing show this coming weekend. The site is 4 1/2 miles away from here so driving it there should take somewhere close to 5 gal of gas. OUCH! It's already been mentioned that we should hook it to the tractor pull sled at the show but it aint gonna happen. Don't wanna break a track or something like that though it would be fun to pull the sled out the gate and into the next county. The stats claim it has a 37,000 pound drawbar pull.

My next project is just a simple old F20 restoration of my own to wind down on. Jim

Excellent! Thanks for the photos.

cool pics thanx

Its a great looking machine!!!
I would think that a 4 mile drive would be harder on the tracks than pulling with it would be. Rubber or metal tracks? Rubber pads I would guess it you were planing on driving it on road!
What kind of shape are the road wheels in?

Can you give us a little history of how it ended up in civilian hands? Where it came from. It's past military history.

I had gotten wind about 30 years ago of some guys about 40 miles from me that were pulling huge disks with some old tank retrievers.

I think fuel economy shelved the proposition. Never found out what became of them.

Gene

great looking machine the itch would be to great
to see what it would pull for me would have to try it once !

I would really like to find a weasel one day. Perfect size. Did they ever offer a diesel version?

tank retriever

(quoted from post at 21:59:07 08/07/11) tank retriever

Click to expand...

Nope don't have the winches or booms. Same running gear used on the retrievers of the time frame but that aint one of em. Was kind cornfusin in those days....one of the tanks was also an M4.

Rick

M4 Abrams?

The four mile drive is on gravel, which might be good or bad. I'm not experienced in the wear characteristics of a rubber tread track. The track is put together just like a roller chain, with side links, and it's HEAVY. Jim

Lst night when I posted this the pics were all different sizes. Shut the compuker off for the night and now this morning everything is sized as I had wanted it to be.(sigh) Jim

I have a feeling quite a few of these were converted to diesel later on but they only came out new with the Waukesha. The engine just sits in there with a short driveshaft going from the clutch housing to the torque converter so a swap would be fairly easy. Jim

Don't know where this machine was based. The owner found it in Clear Lake Iowa. It had a boom added to it for unloading bridge beams from trucks. Yellow industrial had been painted over the military OD color and when I removed the yellow I found some lettering that would tell me where it had been based but it was too far gone to read. As I understand some of these machines were used to pull cable across the land by power line construction crews. One of the two junk machines I got parts off of had been used to skid logs.

A farmer a few miles from me bought a personell carrier that was a little smaller than this machine, to do field work with. The idea failed for a number of reasons. First reason was the engine wouldn't stay cool under steady load. Then there was the steering problem. These machines don't have steering clutches. You steer by lugging back on the brake lever only so if it's on a sidehill or wants to drift one way or the other the only way to correct it is to drag a steering brake. Then there's the weight. It's just plain heavy and the track treads are pretty narrow so I would imagine the compaction would be bad even though it's a track layer. The track pads sank into the grass pretty far shen I drove it to where I shot the pics. Jim

A lot of people do call it a tank retriever and it might have been used to pull a tank out of trouble, or a CCKW which was the official name for the deuce at the time. The main designation is artillery vehicle. According to what I've read it was used not only to pull the big guns around in places where the deuce or even the five ton trucks couldn't go but also to transport ammo and personell to the big guns. There's a machine gun ring on the top for a 50 calibre anti-aircraft gun but he doesn't have the carriage that runs on the ring though he does have a lead on where one is. No gun yet. Jim

There is some sort of military vehicle salvage place right off I 235 in clear lake , always interesting to see what they have on hand

I 35 ,oops

"Military Vehicles" Magazine is chock full of
ads for surplus vehicles and parts.

Thanks for the refreshing trip down amnesia alley! I haven't had a ride in one of those since I was a runt. Back when car dealerships weren't too big for their britches, some used to have car shows (maybe some still do?) that would draw all sorts of older vehicles, military vehicles & maybe the occasional airplane (Me 262 - Yellow #5 or #7). The MVCC always had quite a few neat toys & usually had a couple of M4's on hand. I was able to get a ride on one when they drove it around the building to load it onto a trailer. Sure do miss the days of being a "cute kid" & "someone who must carry on this knowledge".

Mike

Artillary outfit I was in in Germany in 1956-7 used these to pull 90MM AA Guns They were pretty old at that time and not too dependable by then, sure glad we were not in combat at the time!!

I'm glad to hear from someone who was around them. I can sure see why dependability could be a problem after working intimately with this one. There's a gazillion hoses, pipes, belts, wires, switches and everything else without even getting into the tracks. When I first started working on it I thought it was overbuilt when I saw a clamp every few inches on the hoses and lines. After driving it I know why! Jim