Tank Restoration Facility

The Tank Restoration Facility has been busy this winter with many projects. Our maintenance and winter upkeep for our fleet of vehicles used for parades and events are always underway and looking pretty good for the spring activities. Besides that, we have our ongoing full restoration projects like the M36 Tank Destroyer and M4A2 Sherman.

The M36 effort has had a jump in progress concentrated on the rear of the hull and engine compartment. What was once a V-12 out of a Russian T55 powering this tank while in the hands of the Yugoslavian Military will now be powered by the Ford GAA V-8, which was what this tank originally had coming off the assembly line at the General Motors’ Fisher Tank Arsenal.

Going from the V-12 to the V-8 version has required many extensive modifications to get it back to the American standard.

The M4A2 project found a snag once we determined that the original engines supplied were unusable. However, we were lucky enough to find a set of engines close by to replace the bad ones…fingers crossed!

Mixed with all that we’re nearly finished with our M48A2 AVLB paint refresh. The last half of the bridge platform has been moved to the sandblast booth making it the last component to paint before reassembly. Be on the lookout for our 3-part series of our progress on the museum’s YouTube channel.

Another great accomplishment the restoration shop experienced was bringing the M88A1 Tank Recovery Vehicle from the front of the Poolaw building to the restoration shop. It is the ultimate workhorse when it comes to moving and maintaining our tank fleet. I’m especially excited to have the M88 not only for its tremendous capabilities around the shop, but that type of vehicle was a big part of my early years in the Marine Corps.

We are also working on a MK11 Chieftain, with problems in the “whoa and go” area. After finding steer and brake pads with discs to take care of the “whoa” portion we found our problem with the “go”!

We had to separate the engine from the transmission to get them both out of the tank to replace the brake components on the transmission and that’s what exposed the engine to transmission centrifugal clutch assembly.

It became obvious to us that the pads needed replacement and the drum needed resurfaced. Now we’re doing what we always do in a case like this…. search the world high and low for what we like to call “un-obtainium” parts!

Oh and there’s always a handful of smaller projects not mentioned here for space reasons in the newsletter. If you’re in town stop by and see us for a full run-down on all the fun we have here every day!

— Mike Lamb, Tank Restoration Facility Supervisor