My grandfather worked on many of those as well as the electrical systems in the quad 50 half tracks. As for the A57, he said that many people would mess around with the mixture screws and get them completely out of tune, causing many to backfire and run very poorly. The half tracks were supposed to come with field service manuals, but apparently, most never left French docks. Papa got a citation for figuring out how to troubleshoot common problems in the field, as well as how to make a soldering iron out of a couple pieces of wire, a spent 50 cal round case, and a carbon pile from a broken field radio.. I still have 1 of those contraptions, and it does work!
I marvel at the engineering and manufacturing abilities present over 80 years ago… particularly when one remembers all drawings were done by hand and all advanced calculations by slide rules, to say nothing about designing and building the tooling.
I'm a 63yr old Toolmaker, and run the tool & die/machine shop of a manufacturing company. Every 6mos were get some mechanical engineering students from a local college as co-ops. It's amazing how little they know about the basics of mechanics.
My Dad first joined up in 1940, became a WO1 running tank repair workshops in the North African desert and later in Italy , he talked extensively with affection of this engine in the Sherman's, (though I don't know in which theatre ?) and its complexity , especially trying to re-time them up , and adjusting the carbs correctly - especially when there were enemy shells being lobbed at the camps, and they were being sniped at in Italy. He was impressed with its reliability, said they would run under awful conditions, with the settings all over the place, ....- but when they were set-up right though he said they were unbeatable. I miss you Dad
Shaft through the radiator was common in industrial and old farm equipment driving a hydraulic pump from the front of the engine. I ran into these in the early 70 while working at an IHC Light & Medium Truck Dealer as a mechanic.
Yes, and helped change a fan belt on a Cat loader, everything in front of the radiator had to be removed, oil drained from the hydraulic system. Ted from down under.
Reminded me of how my A&P instructor told us how he diagnosed a bad plug in a radial. Airplanes have independent ignition systems complete with their separate wires and spark plugs. He'd run it on the magneto that gave the lower RPM on run up..then he'd take a stick with a wet cloth at the end and reach up/around and touch each exhaust stack with the wet rag. The one that didn't sizzle was the dead cylinder.
There was one of these on display at the late great Walter P Chrysler museum in Auburn Hills MI. It was an amazing facility whose collection sadly was dismantled and shut down when the Fiat regime came to town. It now sits as office space for Alfa Romeo and Maserati.
I had an elderly neighbor that told me he worked on these engines during the war. Seeing this video makes me wonder why I didn't quiz him more about it. He did say it made the tanks very hot inside.
I believe that the Pentastar logo was to represent the 5 major divisions: Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler, Imperial, Dodge Trucks. Even though there was Airtemp, Chrysler Marine, Defense Division's, those 5 were the most recognized. DeSoto was gone at this point. Lynn Townsend said he wanted a contemporary design that could not be duplicated by hand when he commissioned the logo.
The big considerations were coming up with a design quickly, with the required level of power, and being able to get them produced in a short time period. Using engines that were already in production saved a lot of time compared to starting from scratch.
My great uncle was in a tank in France during WW2. He told us when we were kids about that engine in their tank. Good side was it always ran, bad side was they never could get it running just right.
Me dad talked about these from time to time. He reckoned on getting 4 gallons to the mile on a recovery and 4 miles to the gallon cross country without one on tow. That’d be his recovery unit which was a Sherman without its turret. He also mentioned that he found it common for the two bottom engines to collect water . . . Great vid. Thank you :)
I just bought oil and the cashier was telling me about a guy with an old dodge van with the slant 6 that blew a hole through the block and still worked just fine he just put a rag over the hole so oil didn't come out and drove it like that for a year or so
@@niaciniv177 Drove one of mine with a spun bearing the whole time it was in the car,.. and the mechanics I'm related to say 'nah, it's nothing, just the dover plate on the gearbox rattling',.... It was the number six rod. A hole through the side,.. I've heard of a couple of 225's that broke a rod, usually by being spun like a short stroke 170,.. with owners dropping the pan on the side of the road, unbolting the rod and leaving the piston pushed up in the bore, so they could get home. So long as they have more then 5psi oil pressure, they'll get ya there.
Last time I visited the Imperial War Museum site at Duxford, (near Cambridge UK), which would have been 6 years ago, one of these fascinating engines was on display, so your video is really interesting!
Ford's GAA was 2/3rds of the V-1650 V-12 aero engine that Henry Ford had designed to be a competitor to the RR Merlin. Same displacement, same bore and stroke. The V-1650 had some unusual features in an aero engine. DOHC, cast steel components instead of forgings as Ford was very knowledgable in that field. Side by side connecting rods instead of fork and blade rods, two stage supercharging with integral turbosupercharger for the second stage. GMC also built power units for Sherman tanks and other armored vehicles. Two inline six cylinder two stroke diesel bus engines combined into one unit. As a kid in the 60s l always wondered where the GMC blowers on top fuel and funny cars came from.
The A57 was only installed on the M4A4 variant of Shermans, and it was longer than any other engine installed in an M4. As such, the M4A4 hull had to be stretched to accommodate it. This makes identifying an A57 powered Sherman easy, as the space between the suspension bogies is increased.
@@randymagnum143 I don't believe so for the twin diesels - those were installed in the M4A2 variant and as far I know they have a normal hull. I think there was a multi fuel engine developed by Caterpillar near the end of WW2 that may have required a stretched hull as well.
@@jsplicer9 the Cat was a converted Wright 1820, and were junk. They weren't very long or heavy. A 6046 power-packed is longer than the A57, and just as heavy.
Adam, thanks for yet another great video! You have one of the best "car guy" channels on RU-vid. The story I heard was that Chrysler had lots of these car engines on hand when car production was halted. When the army needed a tank engine in a hurry, the fastest way Chrysler could do this was to join several to a common output shaft. Thanks again!
My late grandfather was in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers; he worked on a lot of "5 bank Chryslers". The starting process is a little unusual if it's been left overnight. First a large starting handle is used to crank the whole lot through one revolution while the ignitions are off. The cylinders of the lower banks would accumulate fuel overnight, so the hand crank was necessary to clear it out and prevent a lot of fireworks.
This is actually very common with large engines and radial engines in particular. Not only to circulate the lubricants but to clear the cylinders as you mentioned.
Had a 1946 Plymouth with a flat-6 and was a smooth and torquey engine. Other than the cooling fan noise, you could not tell it was running. Very economical as well.
Based on a very reliable online six it was a very reliable 30 cylinder. Complex in some ways but fundamentally a simple modular system - if you could work on the six you could work on this.
The Electo-Motive Diesel (GM) 567 engines might make an interesting historical topic. At one time EMD was the largest single user of welding rod in the world, assembling plate steel into engine blocks.
Loving the tank engine content! These engines were really fascinating, and the development work that took place to make this such a reliable powerplant is pretty impressive. I'm definitely looking for the video on double-mounted caddy flathead v8s and hydramatic of the later Stuarts and Chaffee tanks. They sound amazing while running!
Been in the middle of doing an engine swap for my 2000 Ford F-250 Super Duty 7.3L Powerstroke Diesel.. something mechanically damaged/worn out in cyl #3 causing a heck of a knock; has close to 400K miles on it & well since I was able to snatch up a different complete 7.3 with far less milage/time on it, from a 2000 F-450 I was scrapping out, I’ve opted to just swap out entire engines, with intent of fully rebuilding original engine at a later time. Watching this video got my engineering mind churning about, hypothesizing how much additional torque/power could possibly be had, from such an arrangement of this Chrysler engine but, of these International 444 diesel engines! Holy cow, can you even imagine how freakin’ HEAVY that’d be?!!!! DRY WEIGHT AT THAT!!!
6:51 this honestly looks like something from an early issue of MAD Magazine, s satirical engine design drawn by one of their very talented illustrators.
The Ford GAA was the most popular Sherman engine and well loved for its reliability, ease of service and field repair, as well as its lightness do to being aluminum. It also went on to power the next US army tank the M26. The multi bank was far too complex for something being repaired and maintained in a war zone. Chrysler did develop a V12 engine called the A-65 specifically for tanks, but it came late and the army was moving towards air cooling for its tanks which made all the other engines including the GAA obsolete.
Amazed by the sound of the engine running, expected a lot more gear noise due to the five individual crankshafts being geared to a single output shaft.
My father was trained as a tank and halftrack mechanic at the start of WW2 but I don't recall him ever talking about this engine so it's new to me. Thanks for sharing with us the story behind it.
Thanks for making a video on the Multibank. I tried looking up information on this engine a while back and was surprised how few videos there were on it.
Another great one Adam, we seem to have similar wide-ranging interests. I remember Chris Craft wooden speed boats with Chrysler Marine 6's and stickers on top noting the sodium-filled exhaust valves. Before PCV do you know what they did with the crankcase vapors? I don't see a road draft tube anywhere.
IHC tractors in the mid 80’s had a shaft through the radiator to drive the cooling fan which sat ahead of the radiator to suck hot air and dust away from the cab and operator.
@@cirtapseven3742 The pentastar stood for Plymouth, Dodge, Desoto, Chrysler, and Imperial. GM had 5 divisions, and dammit, Chrysler needed 5 to compete, or so they thought.
My friends uncle heaped praise on these from his days in the Italian campaign. His Canadian Unit was in the line next to a US unit with Diesels (I am guessing Detroit) and others with Jacobs radials. Both US tanks were smokier and noisier, and the diesel ones were mandated to be warmed-up daily, which always drew German artillery fire. He went on to Normandy and the Netherlands, using several Sherman types, including the famous Firefly model. He always thought of the multibank engined Sherman as the best.
If wasn't for your video I would never had known this engine even existed. This is definitely an amazing piece of engineering, what is really amazing, when you ran the engine. Very smooth no vibration not that loud very quiet, remember back then there was no computer aided design just pencil paper and a slide rule amazing.
My father in law used to work on these engines during the Normandy campaign he was in tank recovery, he said they were a nightmare to work on in situ but overall good engines.
In the older days, many heavy duty trucks that required a hydralic system, like a dump truck, concrere truck, garbage truck, etc, had the pump mounted up front of the truck. They usually had a shaft running through the radiator to run the pump, just like these.
"Hello? Yes is this Jay Leno? Are you sitting down? I have an idea only you could pull off. What is it? Wellll, you take a Chrysler A57 engine. Yes, that's the one with five six-cylinder engines made into one engine and build a car around it. Hello? Jay? Are you still there?"
I don't know about you guys, but I've never heard of this engine. And there's so many more about others we barely hear about but did exist. And there's many today I'm sure they have that we probably don't know exists.
Never thought of the origin , of the Chrysler star, but found it interesting. Especially, from a MOPAR fan☺️👍!!! Chrysler built the motors, but did they also, build the tanks (Sherman, or other's)🤔???
Adam, l know that your primary interest in older automobiles lies in the larger more luxurious ones. As witnessed by your collection. I had something pop up in my feed the other day from Horsepower Monster. Newcomen Racing in North Carolina took a 4.0 Jeep engine to insane power levels on the dyno. Over 1K HP with some aftermarket parts and some stock.
I would imagine Chrysler learned from this that long curved intake runners develop different amounts of power for the same engine. Inspiration for the slant six and the cross ram V8s that came later.
My understanding is the tanks were originally designed to use air-cooled Radial Aircraft engines, which were in short supply. Chrysler approached the War Production Board and the Army, saying ..."We got idle lines that can produce these 24/7 and they Army jumped on it. The Radial engines could only be idled for about 5 minutes before overheating became an issue. The A57, though it took up a little more room than the Radial engine was water cooled and could idle as needed; Which is A HUGE advantage in Combat.
This is off topic, but since you’ve been covering these military vehicles in your excellent presentations, maybe you could cover the use of the Hydramatic and Dynaflow transmissions that I was always told were used in the tanks. That’s a huge amount of torque to go through a transmission that would have been later used in the Cadillacs, Olds, and Buicks. I’ve always been fascinated by the Dynaflows, being old enough to remember riding in pre-1964 Buicks and remembering the incredible smoothness. I do remember my grandfather having a strong opinion that Buicks were gas guzzlers and Cadillacs were not so much.
4:12 on heavy duty trucks it is common on them to have a hole in the radiator to hang a hydraulic pump off the front and have a shaft to the front of the crank
Thanks for this one, Adam !.. I'm generally not a fan of military applications, but this particular engine was certainly somewhat of a madcap effort.. It was probably 20 years ago that Virgil Exner Jr proposed a Chrysler flagship vehicle that would have used an X-20 engine, two VIPER V-10 engines on a common crankshaft, one upper, and one lower. Are you familiar with that one ?
the radiator tanks don't require as much finicky engineering to accomplish that though, compared to through the fins. there was a bmw 6 cylinder engine with a hole through the sump for a driveshaft.
The original design of the tank used a radial airplane engine. So they adapted this to fit the engine bay. Shermans had several different engine configurations, including caddilac v8's, detroit diesels also.
Funny how so many see these as complicated. You treat them as 5 individual motors with equal ignition timing advance, plug gaps and points gaps and throttle linkage adjustments. Setting the carbies for balanced idle is(or was) easily done with a stethoscope.. I know this, as I have experience tuning multi carburettor motors!
Whenever I get my tank I most likely going to put an inline 6 diesel of some sort probably the industrial version ik where I can find some Sherman hulls in the us on static display
These were developed during ww2 for either tanks or aircraft . A number of other engine manufacturs tried to produce multi cylinder engined . All didnt work out compared to simple larger supercharged / turbocharged conventional engines and eventually turbines.
