Quicksand Fans

Cranking Tiger 131 Brad takes some heat on this, since the initial post was late at night The Tiger does not use a diesel, but a gas-powered V-12 Maybach; what you see is the inertia starter here, similar to what the DB601 on a 109E used. But a real Tiger, so all ist forgiven


Shotgun! Cartridge starter for FM-2 Wildcat.

Talk about your collector vehicles. According to Wiki six of them have been pieced together from spare parts over the years but #131 is the only complete surviving example.

Thanks for sharing that! FYI, although Tiger 131 is the most complete example, it isn't perfect. When it went on display, the original Maybach V12 was sawed in half for display purposes.

I followed the rebuilding online. Tiger 131 is sort of a "hot rod"- they had access to a King Tiger engine, and managed to shoehorn that in there- had to design and fabricate custom fan drives. After it was complete, they fired it up, drove it outside the workshop on a test run- and the engine blew. They managed to come across another King Tiger block, and the result is what you see in the video. If memory serves me, they somehow down-rated the engine and/or added cylinder liners. The Maybach V12s have ridiculously small clearances between the cylinder bores.

Mynock wrote:Talk about your collector vehicles. According to Wiki six of them have been pieced together from spare parts over the years but #131 is the only complete surviving example.

That'll teach me to trust Wikipedia haha.....still a hell of a ride.
Wonder how much it would cost to build a "Year One" type replica out of new fabricated parts. They have to have all the blueprints stashed somewhere or could take measurements from the existing pieces.