Canadian T72 tanks

[James P]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Towrie

Hi, we have two T-72’s at the Ontario Regiment Museum now, one a good runner, one a gate guard.
The runner is a Polish tank, from a private owner’s collection, and I believe it came from Poland via the UK.
The second is a Czech tank (I believe) and came across to a Canadian base for testing, before we got it.
Anyway, we have lots of manuals,Polish, Russian, and Bosnian (according to Google translate), and a couple of abbreviated ones in English, but Google struggles to do a comprehensible translation (or the manuals are very poorly written) so technical info is a problem.
My present question is more from curiosity than a need to repair:
- the tank is 24 volt as expected. However, the electric starter is 48 volt, supplied by temporarily connecting the four 12 volt batteries in series using a large relay activated by the start push button.
- slaving is done by another T-72 supplying 48 volts somehow.
- does anybody know how the slaving tank supplies 48 volts while it is running in 24 volt mode? We occasionally need to slave it.
The manuals we have shed no light on this.

Malcolm

The practice was to do air starts, or a combination of air/electric. Have you do a tow start and do you double suction the transmission for ease of start , and that said don,t stand in front of the tank on start up.