Com-Central.net

- bsmart

You know you're spending too much time on the discussion group when

You can identify the museum a picture was taken at by first glance at the background!

- Doug_Kibbey

Would aluminum road wheels have appeared on a slick 60 in real life or was this just what they likely had on hand for a display vehicle?

When did 'luminum start to appear on service vehicle road wheels?

Come to think of it, is an M85 barrel "correct" for an early M60?

- Sabot

Well, actually the steel wheels appeared with the M48/88 first and the aluminum wheels on the M60/A1/A2/A3. The aluminum wheels were not as durable as the steel wheels so on the M60 series, the old steel wheels started to be phased onto the vehicle.

Obviously, you don't jack up a tank and replace all aluminum road wheels at once. You replace them as they go bad. The only caveat was that both wheels on the same road wheel arm had to be the same type (both steel or both aluminum).

One of the problems with the aluminum ones were that they would crack around where the fins ended. We had a brand new one break off of my wingman's tank and roll right off.

The other problem was that they had wear plates bolted to the inside of each wheel. They were replaceable and ideally would extend the life of the road wheel. Nice in concept, but the road wheel normally wore out before the wear plates did. Sometimes when the wear plate did wear out, it would break at some point and foul the end connectors.

Basically a real pain in the butt. Even replacing wear plates required road wheel removal to mount new plates.