Options for 8.25 x 10 Tires

[Marc van Aalderen]

Originally Posted by tankbarrell

That's a 57mm AT gun, didn't the US guns have different wheel sizes to the 6 pr?

Hi Adrian, you could be right there. The wheels are much bigger than those on my 6 Pdr. Don't know how I overlooked that. The absence of a muzzle brake does not make it a 57mm perse. In the original 1942 6 Pdr manual that I got through Rob Nixon the pictures show a gun without muzzle brake. I can't remember from where on the web I got this picture and I didn't copy the caption.

Cheers,

[horsa]

Finally made the time to repaint the wheels for my towed mortar and got the new rubber mounted last night on my backyard deck. While still not a British wartime pattern, I'm much happier with them than I was with the aircraft balloon tyres I had. And I like them much more than a NDT U.S. pattern. Being a 10 ply, I probably won't ever notice if they are low on air pressure since the mortar is only around 5-cwt.

Now I just need to finish painting and assembling the rest of the parts.

[horsa]

We got a break in the cold temps so I was able to get the rest of the towed mortar base painted and assembled. Two shots attached to show the final result of the modern tyres mounted on the 6-pdr pattern wheels.

Interestingly, the 4.2-inch towed base design first appeared in 1944. But the wheels and related parts used on my example must have come from unused or salvaged artillery parts as they are all 1942 and 1943 dated. I'd have thought that the military would have used up all of the earlier produced components and had more current (at the time) items when they began building the portable base plates.

When first produced in 1944, these would have used wheels like the ones pictured on the airborne 10-cwt trailer also seen in the shots. Then sometime in 1945 they went to the wider and slightly lower profile 6-pdr pattern.