Thread: Fiddle's Green
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Old 08-19-2012, 10:45 PM
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Panther Al Panther Al is offline
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Those shouldn't have been an issue: the design is sound. What was happening as the years went on, is materials. Using quality materials, all the various bits performed exactly to spec or better.

If there was any failure points, these are it:

Final Drives.

Where the Panther was designed to be 30 tons, even the designers didn't buy that. They budgeted a 50% increase by the time it hit the field. Good thing too, as they was right in that regard. However, the Final Drives was overlooked. Those was still rated for 30 tons. Now, they beefed them up, so they could (and on occasion last forever under combat conditions - crew quality was key) handle it, but it was at the *very* limit of its capabilities. And the Final Drives are tied into all sorts of mobility issues that the Panther would have at times.

At first, the engines had issues - pumps and head seals mostly - but with the P30 motor, those was no longer an issue.

The last issue was 3rd Gear. Seriously. That gear for some reason was always the first one to die, and die often.

Other than that, all the issues was all tied to substandard material quality, be it parts or what they was made out of.
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