M1 abrams tank

[bill mart]

Little off topic but the closest forum to what this applies.Any one out there ever do maintenance on a M1 Abrams tank? I was at an estate auction on saturday and picked up a part to what I thinks goes to an Abrams tank.Its identified as " 6650-01-078-1180 " part # 12282271. ( mirror, opitical instrument).This mirror has apparently been sent back to the manufacturer for appraisal as it marks where all the scratches and defects are.Bill M.

 

[markiz41]

Probably just your basic "first surface" optical mirror. They are expensive, but totaly useless uless you are building a periscope or calibrating a collimator.

 

[bill mart]

mirror surface appears to be polished aluminum bonded to the cast aluminum body.Well I guess its a place to start in building my own Abrams from parts.Bill M.

 

[Fred Martin]

Mount it in the roof of the car/truck, make a good rear view mirror. ohfred

 

[Anonymous-0]

There you go... like Johnny Cash "I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime". That would be a tall order carrying out all the pieces from the Lima tank plant to put together your own tank.

 

[El Toro]

We ran drawbarpull on those tanks back in the 1970's using this Mobile Field Dynamometer and the three trailers. We also had an old M88 Recovery Vehicle behind the last trailer for extra load and for doing a stall. The tracks started to slip. We had a GM test vehicle and one made by Chrysler with the turbine engine. That's what went into production. Hal

 

[Mark - IN.]

Nope, but I raced one through the range at Ft. Hood in an M151 jeep and lost.

True story. Was early/mid '80's, I was at Ft. Hood. They were just replacing the M151 Vietnam era jeep with Chevy Blazers, and going to scrap the jeeps. Me and another guy took our last remaining jeep out onto the Amored and Calvary firing range where we weren't supposed to be to beat that jeep to pieces. We were doing Rat Patrol to that thing, and to be honest with you, with the independent suspension, I don't know how the wheels didn't just fold up and we wipe out and flip or something. So there we were, Rat Patrol, beating the snot out of that poor thing, airborne and everything, and we happened to look over and there was an M1 Abrams about a hundred feet off keeping right up, turret and main gun pointed right at us, never wavering the whole time it was bouncing and going airborne at speed as well. Those guys never said a word to us or tried to stop us, and whereever we went, they went. Looking back on it, I'm glad to have given those guys realtime practice at aiming their gun on the full all out move. They were just introducing the Bradley to replace the M113 APC at the same time, but none of them were out on the range that day, and they didn't have a big gun to practice on us with anyway. And we did kill that jeep too. Heading back towards the motor pool, on the road now, flying down the road we came up to the two bridges. One was new replacing the old, and of course, the other was the old one being replaced. We forgot which was which, and one we were supposed to use, and not the other. Right between the two bridges was a tank trail, so at highway speed, we didn't go left or right, we went down the middle where the tanks snorkled through the water, but we didn't have a snorkle after we flew over that hill and down into the water. There was a reason those bridges were there, the one we forgot about, at highway speed. Oh well, they were scrapping that jeep later that day, or the next anyway. Our mission was to kill that jeep, and we accomplished our mission.


Mark

 

[El Toro]

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle was another big project when we tested it at Aberdeen Proving Ground and it had a lot of transmission problems made by GE. They should have used an Allison transmission and they did on a test rig BFV. We did the M113's too both the gas version with the Chrysler engine and the Detroit diesel vehicle back in the late 1950's & 1960's. Ran drawbar pull on all of them. Hal

 

[Mark - IN.]

You know, that M88 Recovery Vehical was one huge vehicle. I saw them used at Ft. Hood all of the time. Lots of broken tanks had to get recovered. One that I will never forget though, was when I was in Mannheim, Germany. This fella from Armored got a Dear John letter from his girlfriend, and man did he take it hard. He went to the motor pool and tried to sign out a firing pin for an M60 tank on a weekend afternoon. That should've sent up red flags all over the place, but didn't exactly. So the guy goes down to the motor pool, fires up his M60, and off he goes to downtown Mannheim, running over everything in site. Cars, trucks, buses, street car, everything. He was one angry young guy. Finally he goes to cross the Rhein Neckar River on a huge bridge, but the Polizi (police) are on the other end of the bridge blocking it, except after the damage that guy had already done, there aint no way those guys in their Audis and Volkwagons were going to stop that kid if he decided that they weren't. So he screws up and tries to spin the tank around, but goes through the rail and down into the water and drowns with his M60. The M88 wasn't big enough to fish that guy out though.

Hold on, I'll go see if I can find a picture on the net to link.

Mark
Drowned M60 in Mannheim, Germany