Options for 8.25 x 10 Tires

[rob love]

We used foam filled tires on all our 4wd forklifts in Afghanistan. It almost makes the tires indestructible. Large sidewall cuts that would normally require the tire to be replaced could be ignored. I cannot comment on what the heat buildup would be with old WW2 rubber at higher speeds mind you.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Speedways makes an "INDUSTRIAL ALL PURPOSE" tyre in 8.25-10 Size in 10, 14 Ply Rating.

See http://www.speedwaystyres.com/traile...car-tyres.html

[Marc van Aalderen]

It doesn't have a military pattern but I have a picture of a 6Pdr with two different tyres and one looks like the one that you found. This might thus be a very acceptable alternative! Well found.


dt17of57RhB.jpg


Cheers,

[Marc van Aalderen]

I just scrolled back to the top of this post and David's post nr4 shows Industrial All Purpose tyres with the same pattern but a different size.

Cheers,

[tankbarrell]

Originally Posted by Marc van Aalderen

It doesn't have a military pattern but I have a picture of a 6Pdr with two different tyres and one looks like the one that you found. This might thus be a very acceptable alternative! Well found.

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

[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.