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now we're going to look at the wheel come track machine now it's quite
unusual for some reason the experts have it down as an armored car in all the old
publications it's referred to as an armored car except in the tank museum's
own publication when it suddenly becomes a tank
take your pick it runs on wheels and tracks at least that's the theory but it's
unusual in that the tracks are the things that go up and down the wheels
stay where they are which is why the you look at the front wheels here the
bracket that holds them is sort of riveted to the front of the vehicle
there's a big leaf spring running transversely and there are the wheels
their sole releases say they solid rubber they're actually fitted with a
type of tire known as the natural air pressure tire and those triangular bits
in it are the pockets that track the air the idea is as you're going along they
provide the cushion then you normally get from a pneumatic tire what actually
happens is half the time they fill with mud by that time then of course it's
just a solid rubber tyre but there you are that's like what they did they do
we're better than pneumatic spats and they also give a very harsh ride and
that's what this one is now the rear wheels you can't see so easily they're
set in a sort of recess in the back of the vehicle they're the driven wheels
they're fitted with the same sort of tires and they're all hidden by them
mechanism that makes the tracks go up and down and they will do it about 25
miles now in its wheels and probably about 10 13 miles an hour on tracks that
was all now the tracks you'll see are on a framework fitted to the side of the
vehicle they move up and down on Rails on the side of the vehicle and when you
go up close and have a look at them they don't appear to have any sprung
suspension at all they do move each wheels on a sort of some bracket
arrangement and I think they work rather like the American light tanks the early
ones they adjust to the ground and they adjust to one
another but they're not really sprung not in the proper sense so they give an
even harsher ride on the odd occasions when you used them the tracks are
powered they work on a swingarm basis to go up and down driven by the motor
vehicle is powered by a 90 horsepower v8 Armstrong Siddeley it's the air-cooled
engine the same engine you find in the medium tanks and that's located here in
the front with the driver alongside it it's a most peculiar system because that
engine not only governs the movement of the tracks going up and down it's also
and you can select these and I'll lever it has two other options one of them is
to drive the wheels which it does through the differential at the back the
other thing is to drive the tracks which it does from the tracks are on the
ground and you have to select which one you want each time on tracks the vehicle
has an incredibly short track base actually almost within the wheel say
wheel layout of the thing and therefore it must walk quite heavily but they
didn't seem to worry about that at least if they did they didn't know it was
going to do it till they built it well three of these altogether two of them
were built by vickers-armstrong this is the in 1928 this is the first one and
it's fitted with two turrets as you can see the main turrets up there has a
space for two machine guns were fitted in they never were mounted it was only
ever an experimental vehicle and there's another rotating turret on a lower level
at the back with one machine gunner or at least it should have and that means
the vehicles complicated anyway but they built another one which was more or less
the same to look at except it didn't have the superstructure at all
behind the drivers position was just a big open tray we don't know what it was
intended for but one was built and tested in the scrapped this one as you
see has survived the third one was very odd it was built without tracks at all
solds an armored car to the Hungarian police what they wanted it for Lord
alone knows and it ran on solid tires it must have been a swine to drive in
normal circumstances but there we are that's what happened to the third one of
these vehicles and you do see old photos of in and again in hungarian service
which is quite an unusual arrangement but that's the basic vehicle for you
it's covered in arm what it's not really armoured at the moment it's mild steel
but it represents Armour eight millimeters thick which is the same
thickness as your find on a rolls-royce armoured car so although it's quite it's
bulletproof up to a point it's not really very substantial and is easily
knocked out by a tank but whether it really was a tank or an armored car
nobody knows it's just one of those oddities but really the whole wheel and
track concept is idiotic it means that you have got to select what you the
conditions you want to the ground you're going over and you can either have a
wheeled vehicle running at reasonably high speed or a tracked vehicle running
very slowly that's usual with these things but horrible thing to drive and
even worse to attract chopper 8 in any sense
very uncomfortable other thing if you like these films please do subscribe to
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