Hi all,
I'm putting the finishing touches on my DML initial Tiger and want to have the crew repairing one of the outside roadwheels. Problem is, I'm not sure how the tank should be jacked. I have only seen one pic of this, and it was on a Panther tank and didn't show a lot of detail. Would the crew actually jack up the whole side of the tank, or just the roadwheel? Any help would be much appreciated.
Brian

Brian, from having changed a few road wheels in my time, I would say that the jack would be placed on the inside of the roadwheel arm and then raised. This would raise the roadwheel high enough to then be changed. Not sure if this is how the German's would do it, but it is my guess. HTH. "Q"

Thanks red4, but if you ever saw the jacks the germans used on their tanks, that wouldn't be possible. They are about 3 feet tall.

Howdy Panzer Geeks. If the Tiger I (early) men were swapping out one of the four outer roadwheels the inner wheel would be driven onto a block or ramp to raise the outer wheel to effect repair. Easy stuff. If an inner wheel required changing then the tank hull was to be lifted by two bottle jacks of 30 ton rating to get the offending wheel/wheels higher than the track guide teeth. Of course an inner wheel required that many others be removed to get to it along with "breaking track". This infornmation came from the Tiger I operators manual of 1943. Out here.

Ok I dug out some photos:



Not very clear ones but I hope these help a little bit!

Greetings, ekke

The British Army had a very simple device for this. A 6 to 8 inch wide bar with lugs at the bottom and a U cutout at the top. The bar lugs were slotted into the track links and the U put under the roadwheel arm. The tank then simply drove slowly forward over the bar which rotated forward and raised the offending roadwheel up off the track.

It was a simple device yet worked perfectly.

Thanks mikemummey,
That makes sense, but would the block go under the track-on the ground-or between the track and the wheel?

Howdy Brian. The block only needed to be a couple inches thick. It would be placed on top of the inside edge of the bottom run of the track betweeen the wheel and the track. Someone would have to crawl under the tank to put the block in place so the driver could then move the tank and raise just the arm/axle that the wheels were mounted on. The long pry bar would be used to lift the track away (grunt!) from the top of the outer wheel enough to allow it to be removed from the hub. This process only worked for the four outer wheels. I would just have my mini-Tigermen breaking the bolts loose on a damaged wheel prior to doing all this other labor with a new wheel lying next to the tank. Or have them tightening the bolts on a new wheel with a damaged wheel laying nearby. The story will tell itself. Just a thought. Out here.

Thanks again mikemummey, that's a big help.