So I'm reading about Russian military history and equipment and...

AbitNutz

AbitNutz

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Feb 19, 2021
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#1
Due to the Russian Ukrainian war and my past acquaintance with our Russian friends I started reading about their military wares. I think we're all familiar with the Russian stereotype of having crude but effective weapons. However, I never thought of them as weird, until I started running into details like this. The WW-II Russian T-34 tank had a Kharkiv Model V2, 60-degree, Vee twelve-cylinder diesel engine of 2,367 cubic inches.

This engine has a 6mm longer stroke on the right side cylinder bank compared to the left. As a trained engineer I can only say. WTF?
 
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#3
AbitNutz said:
Due to the Russian Ukrainian war and my past acquaintance with our Russian friends I started reading about their military wares. I think we're all familiar with the Russian stereotype of having crude but effective weapons. However, I never thought of them as weird, until I started running into details like this. The WW-II Russian T-34 tank had a Kharkiv Model V2, 60-degree, Vee twelve-cylinder diesel engine of 2,367 cubic inches.

This engine has a 6mm longer stroke on the right side cylinder bank compared to the left. As a trained engineer I can only say. WTF?
Click to expand...
And due to the inertia of communism they were still producing T 34 tanks right into 1990.

But hey it was communism. Those centrally controlled production quotas don’t go away by themselves, do they?

Here’s a fun fact for you, on start up the T 34 through the T 80 tanks produced about a pound to 2 pounds of iron filings in their sumps after initial start up. Either from lack of cleaning during production or simple beating its self into spec.

That said the combat life of a T 80 was under 10 minutes. So who cared how long the engine lasted?

Russian gear was designed to meet production standards created by a communist bureaucracy. It was not designed to survive on the battlefield.

Cheers
 
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#4
AbitNutz said:
Due to the Russian Ukrainian war and my past acquaintance with our Russian friends I started reading about their military wares. I think we're all familiar with the Russian stereotype of having crude but effective weapons. However, I never thought of them as weird, until I started running into details like this. The WW-II Russian T-34 tank had a Kharkiv Model V2, 60-degree, Vee twelve-cylinder diesel engine of 2,367 cubic inches.

This engine has a 6mm longer stroke on the right side cylinder bank compared to the left. As a trained engineer I can only say. WTF?
Click to expand...

I bet that had an interesting crankshaft design.

Edited to add:

I looked that shit up! It uses linked connecting rod design, kinda like a radial aviation engine.🤔



 
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#5
ken226 said:
I bet that had an interesting crankshaft design.
Click to expand...
Ya know, you make 60-degree V-12 because it is an inherently balanced configuration. You then deliberately unbalance it by making the stroke longer on one
ken226 said:
I bet that had an interesting crankshaft design.

Edited to add:

I looked that shit up! It uses linked connecting rod design, kinda like a radial aviation engine.🤔



Click to expand...
That explains it....the French Aviation engine from Hispano did the same weird shit on one of their designs but abandoned it.
 
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#6
AbitNutz said:
Due to the Russian Ukrainian war and my past acquaintance with our Russian friends I started reading about their military wares. I think we're all familiar with the Russian stereotype of having crude but effective weapons. However, I never thought of them as weird, until I started running into details like this. The WW-II Russian T-34 tank had a Kharkiv Model V2, 60-degree, Vee twelve-cylinder diesel engine of 2,367 cubic inches.

This engine has a 6mm longer stroke on the right side cylinder bank compared to the left. As a trained engineer I can only say. WTF?
Click to expand...
It had articulated rods, meaning two pistons share the same rod.

A8BAFFBC-1DBB-4E1A-9579-1A29B723701C.jpeg
EB894DB3-B12C-47CA-AE18-64244ABFA680.jpeg

 
#7
AbitNutz said:
Ya know, you make 60-degree V-12 because it is an inherently balanced configuration. You then deliberately unbalance it by making the stroke longer on one

That explains it....the French Aviation engine from Hispano did the same weird shit on one of their designs but abandoned it.
Click to expand...

Notice how far left of the engine centerline that the crankshaft center is?

That's probably so that the right bank of pistons doesn't have such a severe connecting rod angle during the power stroke, with that short rod.....

That's some weird shit right there. Even stranger, apparently it worked!
 
#11
sirhrmechanic said:
And due to the inertia of communism they were still producing T 34 tanks right into 1990.

But hey it was communism. Those centrally controlled production quotas don’t go away by themselves, do they?

Here’s a fun fact for you, on start up the T 34 through the T 80 tanks produced about a pound to 2 pounds of iron filings in their sumps after initial start up. Either from lack of cleaning during production or simple beating its self into spec.

That said the combat life of a T 80 was under 10 minutes. So who cared how long the engine lasted?

Russian gear was designed to meet production standards created by a communist bureaucracy. It was not designed to survive on the battlefield.

Cheers
Click to expand...
T-80 was a turbine as well

That much material out of a turbine…now we know why it was 10 min
 
#12
I read a paper on this. It gets rid of a bunch of big end rod bearings and trades them for small end journal bearings....and their even larger associated failures. Especially when combined with the much higher BMEP of a diesel engine. They copied a French Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine design, stripped off the supercharger, turned it into a diesel, and put it into tanks and tractors. What could possibly be weird about that? What was I thinking?
 
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#20
Dad was a radio operator in Korea. He carried a 50# (if I remember correctly) radio on his back, along with an M-2 Carbine. He was later offered a position on a tank crew. He turned it down, calling it a steel coffin. He would never talk much about the war but I remember that comment.
 
#21
There is a book, some would say THE book on the T34 called T34 mythical weapon. A rather expensive book at over $200, but it has everything and if you are a student of this stuff a must have in your lib. I suggest getting the latest production run that you can, the early english versions (it was Polish IIRC) have some pretty bad english and none of the pictures captions got converted to english....so get a newer copy, you can generally tell by the price.

That said I remember reading that when the US started to capture them and bring them back for study they had issues keeping them running, at about 120 hours they just quit....all of them, hard failures. Talking to a defector they learned that the engines are only to last 70-ish hours then a full replacement if the tank did not have any new holes in it.

It really was not that great by any metric, early or late, build quality being a big issue. Did not really matter there are more humans ready to stick in there.
 
#22
brianf said:
T-80 was a turbine as well

That much material out of a turbine…now we know why it was 10 min
Click to expand...
I should have said up to T80. Yes the turbines were a lot better. But almost everything in their inventory from BTR’s to BRDM’s had these horrible diesels. I had a Dnieper motorcycle in the early 2000s. I was the first stoner even though the bike had been around a few years. And was the first to start it. That first oil change probably took a thimble full of metal shavings out of the motor.

Russian quality control has never been great. That said they are highly capable in certain areas. Space being one. Nuclear weapons being another. But seemingly simple things often elude them due to top down economics.

Cheers
 
#23
lightman said:
Dad was a radio operator in Korea. He carried a 50# (if I remember correctly) radio on his back, along with an M-2 Carbine. He was later offered a position on a tank crew. He turned it down, calling it a steel coffin. He would never talk much about the war but I remember that comment.
Click to expand...
My WWII vet grandfather said tanks were nothing but a big iron pot, that roasted the crew. He was US Army infantry in Germany in the worst of the war.
 
#24
TurboTrout said:
People dont think balls deep corruption be like it be, but it do

General buys a fleet of new land rovers for all his mistresses, but the tanks tracks fall off, or it just runs outs of gas
Click to expand...


Same with the Imperial Qing Chinese Navy during the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War... The Qing Navy at the time had some of the BEST full sized and full capability dreadnoughts in the world, all specifically designed and built by German and British engineers. Far superior over the Japanese navy's own home designs, which, like the Japanese WWII tanks, had a reputation for being light, shoddy, and mechanically clumsy. However, the 80% of the Qing officers and recruits were corrupt to the core. Most were heavy opiate addicts and were using the ships under their command to traffic opium in resin form, as well as in refined hydrochloride and morphine/powdered bags. Entire sacks of gelled opium were disguised as powder bags for the ships' cannons and stored in the magazines for transport.

As a result, the Qing land and naval forces got absolutely WALLOPED in the resulting fight against Japan. The entire Beiyang and East China Sea fleets were annihilated down to the last vessel and the Qing army on land also lost Korea, and thus began the 50 year long occupation of Korea under Imperial Japan. Admiral Li Hongzhang, Qing governor of Korea, who had risen through the ranks as a civil servant and officer-in-training in the Qing New Army Corps during the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, was one of the very few uncorrupted leaders in the Qing state but was powerless to do anything about the rampant corruption throughout every branch of service. Stationed in Jilin when the first Japanese amphibious assaults began to be launched against Pyongyang, the last stronghold and Qing command base in Korea with over 100,000 soldiers, he took his own life with his Mauser automatic pistol once he received the news via telegraph that Pyongyang had fallen to the Japanese army.
 
#25
sirhrmechanic said:
And due to the inertia of communism they were still producing T 34 tanks right into 1990.

But hey it was communism. Those centrally controlled production quotas don’t go away by themselves, do they?

Here’s a fun fact for you, on start up the T 34 through the T 80 tanks produced about a pound to 2 pounds of iron filings in their sumps after initial start up. Either from lack of cleaning during production or simple beating its self into spec.

That said the combat life of a T 80 was under 10 minutes. So who cared how long the engine lasted?

Russian gear was designed to meet production standards created by a communist bureaucracy. It was not designed to survive on the battlefield.

Cheers
Click to expand...
There’s how many graveyards of equipment in Afghanistan that prove this point. Cheap, expendable machines to look like a strong well equipped force.
 
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#26
sirhrmechanic said:
I should have said up to T80. Yes the turbines were a lot better. But almost everything in their inventory from BTR’s to BRDM’s had these horrible diesels. I had a Dnieper motorcycle in the early 2000s. I was the first stoner even though the bike had been around a few years. And was the first to start it. That first oil change probably took a thimble full of metal shavings out of the motor.

Russian quality control has never been great. That said they are highly capable in certain areas. Space being one. Nuclear weapons being another. But seemingly simple things often elude them due to top down economics.

Cheers
Click to expand...
Funny how those areas where they were ahead (like directed energy), were mostly from Ukrainian scientists. Just saying....
 
#27
sirhrmechanic said:
I should have said up to T80. Yes the turbines were a lot better. But almost everything in their inventory from BTR’s to BRDM’s had these horrible diesels. I had a Dnieper motorcycle in the early 2000s. I was the first stoner even though the bike had been around a few years. And was the first to start it. That first oil change probably took a thimble full of metal shavings out of the motor.

Russian quality control has never been great. That said they are highly capable in certain areas. Space being one. Nuclear weapons being another. But seemingly simple things often elude them due to top down economics.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Same stories on the Ural as well, that first oil change you could build a battleship.
 
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#28
forgot..

being the t-80 were a horrendously thirsty turbine, they piss through fuel even when idling

the other russian tank designs being diesel engines can idle forever,,,i actually think the t-80u (last model) went back to a diesel

when the russians put the t-80 into chechnya the crews were not really trained them yet

more than once they left the tank idling emptying their gas tanks

the chech fighters would wait for them to run out of fuel then attack
 
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