My Sad Sprockets

[Marc van Aalderen]

Originally Posted by RichardT10829

The general rule as i understand it is if the tracks are down to 160 links...its time to change them out....sprockets would be changed at this point.... I know people who run with less links and they dont have any issues..... the tracks tend to lean over when they are caput... if you look at the rear of the carrier square on (with the tracks on and correctly tensioned) you may see that the tracks lean in towards the diff...or the opposite way depending on what has been done with the tracks..

Richie

Hi Richard,
According to the manual you start with 168 links (8 pieces of standard 21 links) and a new sprocket. After a run in period of 50 to a 100 miles the teeth mesh properly with the track and you remove 1 link. After that you can remove 10 more links and the useful life of track and sprocket are over. So 157 is the lowest limit of links. My Mk2* still has 163 links in them and the tracks lean in to the hull on both sides. I think they always lean in. I noticed this on more Carriers if my memory is correct.

Cheers, Marc

[Lynn Eades]

I would guess that this "rimmed" sprocket, was introduced to help the track chain run a little better to try to alleviate this uneven wear. The book says that the track should be removed, and the sides balanced. This might include swapping the track from one side to the other, to get optimum life from it.

[ron]

Hi Lyn,
We had track support rings here in Australia that were fitted to our later carriers, they bolt onto both sides of the sprockets and give a much wider area of support I always fit them to my carriers, I reckon they must take a lot of weight off the ends of the sprockets, Regards Ron.

[Lynn Eades]

Can you show us a picture?

[ron]

OK Mate will I will take pics and post in the morning,
Regards Ron

[ron]

Hi Lyn just gone through a few pics and found this one showing a track support ring fitted to the marmon herrington carrier conversion that I found some time ago it is only fitted on the one side as the large diameter round plate takes the weight on the other side,I will take pics of the ones on my carriers tomorrow, as you can see there are a large number of bolts holding it together regards Ron

[ron]

Hi Lyn here is a pic showing a set of track support rings fitted, as you can see they give a lot of support to the track and take all of the weight, these would be very easy to reproduece, Regards Ron