Hmmm, what a conundrum!
Bob, I offered the excerpt from the 1943 booklet well aware that different manuals offer differing advice. I found it perplexing that there was SPECIFIC advice regarding orientation of tracks on Aust and NZ carriers. There is no explanation why the NZ carriers are mounted in the opposite orientation. This doesn't seem to me to be the result of a typo or other misunderstanding. I have noted in both the Ford and Chev CMP manuals there is advice regarding fitting of chevron tyres, saying that fitting them with the open end to hit the ground first will offer lesser traction, but will greatly extend tyre life. Could it be that there was some experimentation with tracks that determined that the initial instructions (1941) caused poorer performance in some aspect (traction, sprocket wear, track life, etc) that was remedied by a correction in later instructions (1943)? The Kiwis either were not convinced by the trial, or they think that whenever the Aussies tell them to do something they're having a practical joke played on them, and continued to mount the tracks in the original fashion.
The track link castings must have been machined in a left and right version to have the lead plug on the outer edge, do the parts books offer any clue to wether there was a changeover date in L to R and R to L?
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