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 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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
Adam, thanks for yet another great video! You have one of the best "car guy" channels on TH-cam. 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!
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.
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.
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!!!
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!
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 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.
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.
"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?"
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
The British liked it for the simple reason that it's what they received and it worked. Using other engine variants would only cause unnecessary supply chain issues.
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!
The one advantage these engines had over the other 3 used (The Continental radial, the Detroit Diesel dual-six, and the Ford GA V-8) was that the Chrysler engine could run on even the crappiest fuel available, including the 70-ish octane fuel used in a lot of farm equipment of the time. The Ford needed at least mid-80 octane gas, the Continental needed avgas, and the Detroit needed diesel fuel. for forward-line units, often waiting for fuel from the rear lines to get to them was not an option. Fuel from any damaged/abandoned car, or from any farmer's fuel tank could be used without worry.
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.
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 War Department gave Chrysler the job to figure out how to mass produce armored tanks being designed by Ordnance. Chrysler realized there would be a shortage of the Wright R975 radial engines if the US was to provide tanks for Great Britain and the USSR since they were using surplus and rebuilt engines obtained from commercial air carriers until Continental could start turning out new radials using Wright's tooling. Chrysler had warehouses full of assembled 251 CID L6's for their cars and trucks whose production was cancelled so decided to try using those as a medium tank engine. They came up with the A57 which was first shown to the British Army. They took a pass on the monster motor so Chrysler showed it to the Soviets who rejected it as being too complicated. Chrysler went back the British to say they'll be getting the A57 in their M3 and M4's since the US Army only wants to use radial engines. Chrysler engineers worked with British Army tank mechanics to make the A57 as easy as possible to service and remove then reset for major servicing and replacement. The US Army decided to adopt a practice of removing engines and transmissions after 200 hours of run time for inspection and refurbishing with new or refurbished units taking their place. The British tankers found that their A57 could stay in use longer before an overhaul was needed, with many running for 1000 hours or more before needing that done. The US tankers were happy with their R975's since those kept being improved during the course of the war. The Ford GAA was still having its bugs worked out when put to use in the M4 and rushed M26. Ordnance tested the Gilberson Diesel radial engine in 1941 before settling on the GMC L6 Diesel engine. Later in the war, Ordnance had Caterpillar build a radial Diesel engine for testing.
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
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.
Detroit, the arsenal of democracy!
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.
@@pb68slab18😅 snot nosed kids 😅
@@pb68slab18 😆 this seems to be the case in my experience as well oh well what can we do
That is because most of them never fixed a bicycle or lawn mower.@@pb68slab18
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!
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.
Drove a S series 1900 snowplow setup like that in the 80's.
Seen them on late model railroad med duty trucks 15 years ago
Common on a fair number of WWI aircraft that used water cooled engines as well.
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.
Yep, two options, wet-box and sort of nothing, where those tubes were blocked.
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
Awesome guy god bless
Yes they will all be missed
Legend has it there’s still a GI in the motor pool trying to diagnose a single cylinder misfire on one of these
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.
It's amazing how smooth the engine sounds
It is said that if you pay attention, you’ll learn something new every day. Well I certainly learned something new today! What an amazing design.
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.
That is correct
That is correct, I remember seeing the 5 of them on many parts boxes, and dealership banners.
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 saw it there as well. I miss that museum!
Fu... Stellantis
Adam, If I was shopping for 30 cylinders worth of legendary Chrysler engines, I would buy 5 Slant 6s. 😉
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
I totally agree
That’s kinda what that is, wow 5 distributors
Or…….. how about five 265’s running fifteen side draught webbers for a total of 1525 hp.
@@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.
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.
The twin 6-71's also, right?
@@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.
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.
By the time the a57 was well developed the british absolutely loved it.
The IH 50 series farm tractor of the eightees had that kind of radiator.
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.
One of these was on display at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum that closed in 2012. Iw was a great museum.
Fascinating and brilliant design, using 5 of their inline 6 cylinder engines this way, very ingenious.
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!
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.
Hand cranking would also guard against hydro lock. I think they would hand crank the radial engines for the same reason.
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.
Interesting detail and it makes total sense. Thanks to gramps for his service.
A truly impressive piece of engineering. So cool.
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.
Read a little about these engines as a teenager in some WW2 books. Nice to see one, thanks.
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.
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 remember reading something about the multibank being able to still run around power the tank effectively with only 3 of the 5 banks operational
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.
Those 567s and their contemporaries from Alco, Lima and Baldwin are some quite fascinating contraptions.
Adam, thanks for yet another great video! You have one of the best "car guy" channels on TH-cam. 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!
Amazing engineering!
Wow, what a monster engine!
I'd never heard of this one.
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.
Thanks Adam for doing a individual video on this engine. They were used in a version of the Sherman designated RAM built in Canada in Oshawa.🇨🇦🇧🇲❤️
I thought the RAM had the radial engine?
@@jsplicer9 You were right, I misremembered.
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.
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!!!
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!
I worked on one of these in High school Mechanical shop , we called it a 5 bank Dodge in a Sherman Tank in 1962.
...how cool... driving around in Normandy with something that sounds like a Don Garlits dragster...
Look at you jumping over into the Mopar camp
Super interesting
Thanks for sharing
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.
Very interesting and unique! Thank you for sharing this with us, Adam.
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.
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.
Thanks. I really miss the old Chrysler Corporation
"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 can just imagine the tank engineers handing over the requirements to the engine engineers and they say we have to do what!
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.
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.
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.
We also worked on the 3 bank Ford V8 that were also put in the Sharman Tank.
Very interesting. Great video Adam.
I always thought that the Pentastar was indicative of the 5 year/50,000 warranty.
@@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.
@@61rampy65 was DeSoto still around when this logo was created?
Definitely has that a radial engine sound for not being one.
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.
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.
My hat goes off to these Chrysler engineers. Bad ass if the pentastar logo is tied to this engine.
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.
My Dad told me about maintaining Sherman’s with this engine during WW2 as a REME craftsman.
Absolutely fascinating engine setup!
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.
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.
Losers use emojis.
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.
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.
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.
There was also a special edition for the French Army. It only had one speed forward. But six in reverse.
@tomrogers-Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!😂
Many thanks for the technically very interesting video. I really enjoyed the explanations!
I love the fact (seen at about 6:00) all 5 balancers have the hand crank provision still incorporated.
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)🤔???
(8:50) Wow. Next to the mechanics one truly appreciates the huge mass of this engine. (The sound however not so great.) TIL
Very impressive ! 👍
Really really cool.. you got a lot really great videos 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
I really enjoyed the video about this unique and Marvel of an engine. Only Chrysler Could engineer something like this
Expected a lot more gear noise due to the five individual crankshafts being geared to a common output shaft.
Strange nightmare or just a dream , but surely one strange imagination. 👍
Only the Napier Deltec diesel compares.
Awesome thank you
Shaft through radiators are common on some class 7/8 trucks driving a front mounted PTO. Think garbage packer.
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.
Mack trucks still uses a shaft through the radiator on some COE trucks, mostly refuse trucks. I’m sure other manufacturers do too.
If there is one thing i have learned it is that more complex always means better
_watch and listen to this engine running_
S W E E T
Thank you!!
"Aww, points must be bad, the engine quit running."
"Don't worry, we have four more".
This engine is a perfect example of "it's not stupid if it works".
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.
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
its interesting that they still included the crank bolts with the starting jaws
What a beast. Wow. Thx Adam for sharing this…never knew of it. God…how much did that monster weigh?
When I was a kid, my father used to call the Pentastar the puckered bumhole😂
Love it!
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 ?
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.
I’d love to hear one of these running.
Watch the end
The British liked it for the simple reason that it's what they received and it worked. Using other engine variants would only cause unnecessary supply chain issues.
The exhaust bias might actually help by spreading out the torque band?
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!
The one advantage these engines had over the other 3 used (The Continental radial, the Detroit Diesel dual-six, and the Ford GA V-8) was that the Chrysler engine could run on even the crappiest fuel available, including the 70-ish octane fuel used in a lot of farm equipment of the time. The Ford needed at least mid-80 octane gas, the Continental needed avgas, and the Detroit needed diesel fuel. for forward-line units, often waiting for fuel from the rear lines to get to them was not an option. Fuel from any damaged/abandoned car, or from any farmer's fuel tank could be used without worry.
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.
I’ve seen a steering shaft go through the upper radiator tank. International Harvester did that alot on their tractors.
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 War Department gave Chrysler the job to figure out how to mass produce armored tanks being designed by Ordnance. Chrysler realized there would be a shortage of the Wright R975 radial engines if the US was to provide tanks for Great Britain and the USSR since they were using surplus and rebuilt engines obtained from commercial air carriers until Continental could start turning out new radials using Wright's tooling. Chrysler had warehouses full of assembled 251 CID L6's for their cars and trucks whose production was cancelled so decided to try using those as a medium tank engine. They came up with the A57 which was first shown to the British Army. They took a pass on the monster motor so Chrysler showed it to the Soviets who rejected it as being too complicated. Chrysler went back the British to say they'll be getting the A57 in their M3 and M4's since the US Army only wants to use radial engines. Chrysler engineers worked with British Army tank mechanics to make the A57 as easy as possible to service and remove then reset for major servicing and replacement. The US Army decided to adopt a practice of removing engines and transmissions after 200 hours of run time for inspection and refurbishing with new or refurbished units taking their place. The British tankers found that their A57 could stay in use longer before an overhaul was needed, with many running for 1000 hours or more before needing that done. The US tankers were happy with their R975's since those kept being improved during the course of the war. The Ford GAA was still having its bugs worked out when put to use in the M4 and rushed M26. Ordnance tested the Gilberson Diesel radial engine in 1941 before settling on the GMC L6 Diesel engine. Later in the war, Ordnance had Caterpillar build a radial Diesel engine for testing.
Boy, that thing is really something....
That is cool
That pentagon shape is found on the skin, under the feathers, of Plymouth Roosters.
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