Mixing gasoline and oil during WW2

[abycat]

Originally Posted By: ecotourist
One of my friends told me a story about German armour on the eastern front in WW II. In the morning it would be so cold the tanks wouldn't start. But if you built a fire under the VW staff car engine you could get it to start. Then you could get the half track to start by towing it with the the VW. Finally you could start the first tank by towing it with the VW and the half track. But by then it would be getting dark and time to shut things down for the night.

The story may be apocryphal (I'm not so sure about towing a half track with a VW for example) but I expect it is representative of the difficulties.

In any case the Germans were wholly unprepared for winter.

I worked in Fort McMurray (northern Alberta) in the early 70's and we used to leave our company vehicles running constantly during really cold weather. They were only stopped (wait for it all you BITOG fans) to change the oil!


we even do that sometimes around here. Never get your diesel started off you shut it off. I hate ft mac. 1500$ a month for a room rental.

 

[L_Sludger]

Originally Posted By: abycat
Originally Posted By: ecotourist
One of my friends told me a story about German armour on the eastern front in WW II. In the morning it would be so cold the tanks wouldn't start. But if you built a fire under the VW staff car engine you could get it to start. Then you could get the half track to start by towing it with the the VW. Finally you could start the first tank by towing it with the VW and the half track. But by then it would be getting dark and time to shut things down for the night.

The story may be apocryphal (I'm not so sure about towing a half track with a VW for example) but I expect it is representative of the difficulties.

In any case the Germans were wholly unprepared for winter.

I worked in Fort McMurray (northern Alberta) in the early 70's and we used to leave our company vehicles running constantly during really cold weather. They were only stopped (wait for it all you BITOG fans) to change the oil!


we even do that sometimes around here. Never get your diesel started off you shut it off. I hate ft mac. 1500$ a month for a room rental.

i bet the roughneck wages make up for it. why don't you just get a conversion van and live in there? better than renting a room.

 

[goodtimes]

Most of the engines were diesels? Gas would be ok in a small amount, burn away I would think. Germans would know about cold weather. They had bigger problems than thinking about oil quality anyway.
I never mixed gas into oil, but had a Saab, 93 I think was the model, that I put one quart of oil into 8 gals of gas to give a full tank. I carried a case of Wolfshead 30 in the trunk. It was a good car, peppy, and never had oil to change. It just went out onto the cars behind me and the peoples lungs inside. No stinkng EPA telling me what to do then.(sarcasm)

 

[Joel_MD]

Originally Posted By: 4wheeldog
I used to be a partner in a Cessna 210E, 1965 aircraft. It had an option installed for cold weather starting. Using a supplied chart, you diluted the oil before shutting the engine down......Hold the valve open for a set period to mix in the required quarts of fuel. By design, the fuel would definitely evaporate into the crankcase ventilation system as the engine warmed to operating temperature.

My dad was a reciprocating engine mechanic in the MN Air National Guard during the 1960s. In those days they had the old Boeing C-97s equipped with four huge Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radial engines. Based at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport, they obviously dealt with a lot of cold weather. Similar to what 4wheeldog described for the Cessna 210, there was a post-flight checklist for the flight engineer that included estimating the temperature for the next time the engines would be started. Then for each engine a valve was opened to mix a certain amount of avgas into the engine oil to thin it before shutdown, so the engine could be started even in subzero temps.

 

[abycat]

Originally Posted By: L_Sludger
Originally Posted By: abycat
Originally Posted By: ecotourist
One of my friends told me a story about German armour on the eastern front in WW II. In the morning it would be so cold the tanks wouldn't start. But if you built a fire under the VW staff car engine you could get it to start. Then you could get the half track to start by towing it with the the VW. Finally you could start the first tank by towing it with the VW and the half track. But by then it would be getting dark and time to shut things down for the night.

The story may be apocryphal (I'm not so sure about towing a half track with a VW for example) but I expect it is representative of the difficulties.

In any case the Germans were wholly unprepared for winter.

I worked in Fort McMurray (northern Alberta) in the early 70's and we used to leave our company vehicles running constantly during really cold weather. They were only stopped (wait for it all you BITOG fans) to change the oil!


we even do that sometimes around here. Never get your diesel started off you shut it off. I hate ft mac. 1500$ a month for a room rental.

i bet the roughneck wages make up for it. why don't you just get a conversion van and live in there? better than renting a room.


Oh no you won't see me living up there. I'm in gp. I lived in my 24' motorhome when I got up here for 9 months. minus 45 was horrible in it. I even had a wood stove. Never again will I live in something with wheels. got a nice 4 bedroom house with a huge yard and big 20×30 shop. couldn't make the wife and kid live in an rv. I actually pay way less in my house than I did in the rv.

 

[Stelth]

Originally Posted By: goodtimes
Most of the engines were diesels? Gas would be ok in a small amount, burn away I would think. Germans would know about cold weather. They had bigger problems than thinking about oil quality anyway.


Most WWII tanks, other than Russian, were gasoline-powered. There were a few Shermans with 2 Detroit Diesels in them, but these went mostly (or maybe all) to the Russians. There was also a British diesel version, but I don't know how many were made. I'm not aware of any diesel powered German tanks. The Maus, if produced, might have used a diesel, but it never went into production.

 

[The_Jeff]

^ Didn't WWII tanks also have some of the first automatic transmissions?

 

[Shannow]

The British ones had pre-selector gearboxes.

 

[Stelth]

I don't know a lot about tank transmissions, but the M-26 (which saw very little action in WWII) had an Allison Torqmatic transmission. This transmission used a torque converter and a planetary gearset, but I don't know if it was completely automatic or if the driver had to select the gear. Electrical transmissions were also tried.

 

[L_Sludger]

Originally Posted By: Stelth
, but the M-26 (which saw very little action in WWII) had an Allison Torqmatic transmission. This transmission used a torque converter and a planetary gearset, but I don't know if it was completely automatic or if the driver had to select the gear. Electrical transmissions were also tried.


Originally Posted By: Stelth
I don't know a lot about tank transmissions

Don't be modest now. You know a lot more than most.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: Stelth
Originally Posted By: goodtimes
Most of the engines were diesels? Gas would be ok in a small amount, burn away I would think. Germans would know about cold weather. They had bigger problems than thinking about oil quality anyway.


Most WWII tanks, other than Russian, were gasoline-powered. There were a few Shermans with 2 Detroit Diesels in them, but these went mostly (or maybe all) to the Russians. There was also a British diesel version, but I don't know how many were made. I'm not aware of any diesel powered German tanks. The Maus, if produced, might have used a diesel, but it never went into production.


Correct: ALL German tanks (in fact, I think all their vehicles) were gas-powered. Only the Soviets and the Italians fielded mostly diesel tanks. Some British tanks (including the Matilda) were diesel-powered, usually using bus engines. I recall the British got many of the diesel Shermans.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: Stelth
I don't know a lot about tank transmissions, but the M-26 (which saw very little action in WWII) had an Allison Torqmatic transmission. This transmission used a torque converter and a planetary gearset, but I don't know if it was completely automatic or if the driver had to select the gear. Electrical transmissions were also tried.


Unfortunately, the M26 wasn't very good. Mostly, the drivetrain wasn't up to hauling the weight...they got hung up easily in poor terrain.

For what had to be a true maintenance nightmare, I recall some Czech tanks has the clutch, transmission, and steering entirely air-operated.