That man has a very understanding wife.

Pectoral?

This guy needs a hobby. Five prostitutes dressed as Nazis perhaps.

Must be nice for deer hunting.

There's a show running on the Military Channel called "Tank Overhaul". One of the recent shows was about restoring a German Panzer that was found in the bottom of a small river in Poland.
Fascinating stuff.

Holy bandwidth!

Is it a two stroke? (please say yes)

@Vintage Racer:

There's video of that restoration on YouTube, shot by the people involved. Some great footage of the monster Maybach motor in action.

@bugattatra:
Have to check that out. Kinda makes PCH pale by comparison....

And nobody mentions...

KILLDOZER.

*** DUSTYBUTT SHAKES HEAD IN DISGUST ***

Tanks for the gasm inducing posts...

You know your totally awesome when you need a fucking CRANE to assist with your restoration project.

Armor is very expensive to restore. Very uncommon and very expensive to acquire.

Armor is it's own part of the military vehicle hobby.

Tank Overhaul was on Discovery HD as well (no HD showings coming up, sorry). The guys - the married ones, anyway - who do this stuff have wives that love them (and, probably, ramen-as-an-entree as well).

The hoonage is epic.

your = you're

D'oh.

@clinto: The fellow who posted the pics mentioned $800,000 as an approximate value for the finished product, but I have no idea how accurate that might be. I'm sure the parts and labour cost a fortune.

@Andrewpetty: Actually yes, it's a two stroke turbocharged, supercharged diesel. I'm sworn to secrecy on the power figures though.

his next video will be "how to upgrade into a killdozer- a popup book"

@DustyButt: there. i just did. and better yet, without having previously read your post.
now give me a COTD. or a star.

and not a special Polar star.

@mikedrawcar: Actually, apparently the tank's pre-restoration use was as something akin to a Killdozer. A demolition company owned the thing and used it to knock over houses, which is part of the reason why it was in such rough shape.

I would love to have that for heavy traffic use. Would pray for someone to pullout in front of me.

@Ben Wojdyla: The turbo/supercharger set up makes sense then.

Work-horse engine of the day?

@Schweppes: Any idea on how one would go about getting a job like that? That sounds like fun, drive into shit in a big ass tank and get paid to do it.

Now if it only had a cd player so I could listen to Trogdor the Burninator while I drove it.

@something_unique_and_descriptive: I think it was his dad if I recall. He also mentioned that his dad retired early and did this to keep himself from getting board.

This is also his 2nd tank restoration too. He is quite handy with metal fabrication.

There's too many pages of post to go through, but wasn't his dad name Fuzzy?

i'm not sure which one i'd rather want: the Audi powered Lotus or the Sherman Tank.

Guess the lotus would get more chicks but the tank would be pretty damn cool... but what do you do with a tank? ... oh yah, anything you want :)

What would you do with a restored Sherman tank? Well, if you're C. Thomas Howell, you'd hook up with a non-brassiered hotty, take on the Georgia police, and avenge the wrongs done to James Garner:

[www.imdb.com]

Can't believe I'm the only guy that remembers this bit of classic cinema fromage...

@slantsick: Hah! I clicked on the imdb link and the plot key words start off with "nipples visible through clothing" and "spanking" and only then get to "corrupt official" yadda yadda yadda.
Fromage indeed.

@Молотов: ...and the Trogdor comes in the NIIIGHHT!!!

@something_unique_and_descriptive: You could try the Army. I understand they have lots of work these days...

@Novaload: Yeah, not exactly James Garner's finest hour.. (He's the one that does the spanking, BTW) But it really isn't that bad, just typical 1980s broad action-comedy.

Another tank-rampage movie is Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came, but that's really poor, in my estimation- the car-crushing carnage adds up to about 5 minutes near the tail-end of a 2-hour movie.

Amazingly it looks loke this dude scored a new crate engine. Wow.

@ slantsick

might not be an oscar movie, but it was ton of fun.

@DrJeffie: No, the original engine in the Sherman was a radial airplane engine modified for use in armored vehicles. They replaced it with the Detroit Diesel because hey, it puts out just as much power and it's not impossible to find.

Did they remember the step where you load the cannon and wail on the back wall of a Best Buy or Frys?

@elwood: according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, later Sherman's were equipped with Detroit diesels. I doubt they were 2 stroke V8's, however. So this is probably a replacement for the original gas or diesel motor.

@Andrewpetty: Well dang, you're right. Looks like some later models were equipped with gasoline V8's too. But I actually looked through all of the pages, and I seem to recall the guy saying somewhere in there that it wasn't an original replacement engine.

I hate to be a smartypants fellows, but...
@elwood: @DrJeffie: @discontinuuity:
@Ben Wojdyla:
&
@Andrewpetty:
...according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, later Sherman's were equipped with Detroit diesels.

Do what? According to:[en.wikipedia.org] -
Continental R975 C1 gasoline
400 hp (298 kW) gross @ 2400 rpm
350 hp (253 kW) net @ 2400 rpm
It was definitely a gasoline engine. That, coupled with thin armor, at least compared to Panzers, made it very prone to catch fire and tankers called it a deathtrap when hit. It got the nickname "Zippo" and/or "Ronson" which were two contemporary brands of cigarette lighters. The Germans even used those nicknames, in addition to "Tommy Cookers" if the crew happened to be Brits. Diesels don't light up like that since the fuel is less flammable, hence everybody else used'em. I believe most Panzers had Daimler-Benz diesel engines, too...and a couple were designed with Ferdinand Porsche involved. Which brings up back to Jalopnik....

I apologize. Some did come with diesels, but most had gasoline of some sort, mostly the Continental radial or a Ford V-8.

Now it dawns on me y'all were talking about the project engine, not the production Sherman. So, I'm not a smartass, I'm a dumbass. I beg forgiveness while holding my metric wrench (or spanner, whatever...); I throw myself upon the mercy of Jalopniks everywhere.

It's been a rough week.

@PapaLegba: So all this talk about engines in tanks got me thinking earlier, what about hotrodding a Sherman? Do a little firewall chopping and drop in a 1500hp Cat C32 engine, out of the big mining trucks. And since you've got the extra power, regear the transmission for some more favorable ratios, and who knows how fast your Sherman can go now.

@elwood: How about swapping in the gas turbine out of an M1A2 Abrams? Same 1500HP as the Cat engine, but it's already set up for use in a tank. Seeing as the Sherman is almost exactly half the weight of an Abrams, it would give you double the power to weight ratio of the original application (not counting however much more the Abrams engine ways than the original Sherman engine). Should be able to hit somewhere around 100 km/h with a bit of work as you treads shred themselves into little pieces on the commute home from work.

Is that a firefly Sherman? The gun is not the stock 76mm. Very very cool.

I prefer the tank I bought off of Amazon. Of course, don't try and run it through the drive thru..
[www.amazon.com]

Like I said, amazingly it looks loke this dude scored a new crate engine. Wow.

In 2 cycle Diesels the supercharger doesn't count. All 2 cycle Diesels have to have a blower in order to function since they have no intake stroke. 2 stroke Diesels can't use the down stroke to push the charge into the cylinder like 2 cylinder gas engines can.