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WD McLaren traction engine


Great War truck

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The engine had just been restored (for the first time after coming back from the Southern hemisphere) The owner at the the time couldnt remove the front axle even after removing the pin that held it in place so didnt bother

 

And then presumably forgot or didn't bother to replace the pin, either.

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crikey as Tony said , the old girl did have the Chieftain moving backwards though ! I am amazed ..i really wouldn;t have thought a traction engine could overcome the grip a tank would have ..maybe the tank would have won once the driver had 'the clutch up and the gas down' but ...I'm mighty impressed :)

and the 'model' is truly awesome ... a real feat of engineering, my hat is well and truly off Sir ! :)

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crikey as Tony said , the old girl did have the Chieftain moving backwards though ! I am amazed ..i really wouldn;t have thought a traction engine could overcome the grip a tank would have ..maybe the tank would have won once the driver had 'the clutch up and the gas down' but ...I'm mighty impressed :)

and the 'model' is truly awesome ... a real feat of engineering, my hat is well and truly off Sir ! :)

 

There was another engine Lord Roberts A Burrell road loco) driven by the late Steve Neville who did move the tank quite some distance. Gigantic was then put on the tank and I rather think the army wernt going to be beaten again!!!

Will try to get that video uploaded!!

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I hared a slightly different twist which will elaborate somewhat. The driver of the cheiftain was in gear, and he tried to give the mclaren a tug.

 

Apparently with the good grip both had, not only did the Mclaren loose its front wheels, but it lunched the transmission in the tank too. Apparently there was some arse kicking done by the NCO afterwards.

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A Chieftain has a centrifugal clutch and a seperate gearbox that uses epicyclic gear trains and hydraulicly operated clutches / brake bands to engage each gear. The centrifugal clutch allows you to start off and then gearchanges are done entirely by manual command, immediately and under full power. If you try to move off against an impossible load, you melt the centrifugal clutch or spin the tracks. As you can imagine, clutches do not last for ever under normal use but actually work remarkably well and very smoothly.

 

David

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  • 6 months later...
A Chieftain has a centrifugal clutch and a seperate gearbox that uses epicyclic gear trains and hydraulicly operated clutches / brake bands to engage each gear. The centrifugal clutch allows you to start off and then gearchanges are done entirely by manual command, immediately and under full power. If you try to move off against an impossible load, you melt the centrifugal clutch or spin the tracks. As you can imagine, clutches do not last for ever under normal use but actually work remarkably well and very smoothly.

 

David

 

In this case, I happen to know that the driver of the tank engaged 'emergency forward gear' which was a manual override of the system on a Chieftain. This caused the McLaren engine to rear up and as the split pin was missing from the perch swivel the front axle fell out.

 

Unfortunately the tank gearbox was completely 'mullered' in the incident and the driver was charged with wilful destruction of army equipment.

 

That is what happened.

Tomo

Edited by Tomo.T
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  • 5 years later...

Hi Tomo

I was part of the RAC display team and was one of the NCOs, I was there that day. The guy who owned the traction engine went over the public address system and challenged us to a tug of war. We met up with him and inspected his engine and was quite clear a tug of war was out of the question and we would have ripped the back of his machine off. So it was agreed to take turns doing a straight pull instead.

For some reason a smaller engine went first?? And did a successful pull and the crowd went nuts the tank did a successful pull but with no reaction from the crowd.

The next engine connected and you see the results. I can confirm there was no damage to tank it drove off the arena and drove onto the tank transporter at the end of the rally. No NCOs we're bollocked and the driver was not charged.

I later asked the driver a very proud tank man what had had happened, he said after the first pull he wasn't impressed by the reaction from the crowd, so on the second pull he put the light switch into convoy mode which kills all lights and puts a small light on on the rear of vehicle which you wouldn't see during the day, it was still out of gear and he applied the foot brake which meant it would be a 56ton dead weight, and the brake lights wouldn't come on due to it being in convoy mode.

The tank functioned for the rest of the season with no issues.

No questions we're asked as it was made clear at the start it was at the owners risk, to be honest we weren't interested in doing it in the first place.

Hope this helps regards Gaz

 

 

 

 

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