Tank General (no pun intended)

>go into autozone
>"what can i do for you user"
>"i need a track linkage for a 1976 T72"
>"2 wheel drive or 4 wheel drive?"

>wouldn’t have a complete set of spare treads
You keep a spare tire, don’t you you stupid fuck?

Tank mantainance should be pretty easy for a somewhat well funded militia

It was a joke you dense mother fucker

A pretty funny one too actually

You can buy them at mortarinvestments.eu along with your tank. You put the thing on jacks and let the drive sprocket do the work, then connect the track

Meh.
I was getting you and the anti-tank fuckwit mixed up.
Sorry man.

No problem, i think tanks are fucking awesome but unfortunately out of reach. I will own one some day!

>mfw at few years ago I saw an ex-bosnian Hellcat with a working cannon going for £35,000

if I could have scrapped together the shekels I would have bought it honestly

>cummins swap it
miss me with that gay shit.

>One day.
you'd better hurry the fuck up, their asking price for T-72s tripled recently and I can only imagine that the same will happen with the T-55s. You're honestly better off getting a truck or UAZ, I plan to import some of the latter soon.

Me too! I will use it when shtf to hunt commies

>mexico or china invades
>lol
>boom

Old /thg/ poster here
Monitoring this thread

>gets tank
>gets full coverage

>Motherfucker, do you even into tank maintenance?
Do you? Do you have any idea how much it costs to keep one of these tanks running? Your base cost for a basic export model T-72 on the private market is roughly $55k. The examples you see on mortar investments or other EE dealers are usually rust buckets that no longer work properly. Most of the good examples were bought in the 90s or early 2000s when they were sold by the fleet to arabs and africans. The Russo-Georgia war lead to the last good T-72s being bought up by the Georgians. The models you see for sale have been rode hard and have more problems than the government of those countries care to fix. They will have mechanical problems, rust problems, and transmission problems. The tracks will likely be worn and need to be replaced, the guns will be butchered during the demil process, which I'll touch on later. So base cost + repairs to make it usable roughly equals $75k if you are lucky.

Then comes shipping. Shipping within the EU is easy and not hard, just need to get the proper paperwork. If you live in the USA, shit gets crazy. You will need to apply for proper import paperwork, which will take a while, then you will need to certify that it has been demilled properly. This entails that the breach of the main cannon is torch cut (which means you have an unstable mass flying around in the turret while you drive), the barrel of the main gun has a 125mm hole drilled into it, it is then plugged with concrete near the breach. The main gun is then considered deactivated. The coaxial and commanders gun are then removed, its radios and sights are often removed as well, and the armor has holes cut into it at certain points. These holes are then filled with cast iron (which are worthless for ballistic protection). After this is all done, you are looking at $8k-$15k shipping costs and import paperwork. So the total cost is around $90k for a useless beat to shit monkey model T-72. Cont.

The story is similar for T-54/55, with the exception that T-54/55 will be cheaper to buy upfront. In order to get these tanks back to near combat condition again, you will need to invest $100k to fix the holes in the armor properly, replace/repair the main gun, fix (upgrade) the targeting system, acquire a coaxial and fabricate a custom mount since semi-auto PKs are expensive as fuck, fabricate or acquire a custom mount for the semi-auto M2 commander's gun you will mount, replace seals, repaint, fix the autoloader, radios, etc. Congratulations, you have a 40 year old export model MBT with no ammo for the main gun, shitty armor that can be penetrated by some cartel spic's RPG or a decent EFP, and an absolutely horrible driving experience. You also won't be able to use this on any public road and will need to pay for specialized transport whenever you want to move it. If you really want a tank, skip the EE models and go for shit like Chieftains/Pattons or light tanks like Scorpions. Stick to NATO tanks so you don't get fucked in the ass with a beat up tank and parts that are nonexistent.

Ive been wanting a centurion. They're badass and quite reliable

Would a gas turbine engine swap in a scorpion be a good idea?

Bruh, I can into import laws.
I’ve looked into on more than a few occasions because of various reasons (mostly because ports kits are now really fucking expensive, but i’ve Also checked into AK mags)

I don’t need a working cannon the second I get the fucking thing.

The rest is fairly easy up until I get to the US border.

Also, I wouldn’t go for the T-72, I’d go for the cheaper T-55 in order to have older, easier to fabricate (hopefully) parts.

As for the armor, I live in an area where we fabricate tank parts and so I have people with knowledge of armor manufacture as well as multiple machine shops and i’m Currently studying MTT.

As for the guns, I would probably just leave them as parts kits for a long while and mount something like my FAL in the man time.

The main gun could wait.
I don’t want everything right off the bat and love a challenge.

You can buy parts from them. They pull them off other t 72s and mail them to you. They also will fix them up nice before they ship it to your house

It sounds like you want to go forward with it, so I wish you good luck. I would still highly recommend checking out NATO offerings as their tanks will be taken better care of and will likely have already gone through the demil process. Remember that armored vehicles like tanks (especially soviet models) have prices that revolve around current conflicts. That's what leads to the price jumps another poster mentioned. Since the war in Donbass and Syria are calming down some, prices on T-72/T-55 parts prices should start coming down. The problem with soviet tanks is that you'll be constantly competing in a bidding war with more state and non-state actors for the same parts. NATO tanks weren't as widely exported, and parts are largely either in government stockpiles or in the hands of collectors.

Good luck and have fun.

Im considering a scorpion with a gas turbine engine swap, a t 72 or a t 55. It depends on a lot

Scorpions are unique little tanks. One of last true light tanks, they are very fast and fun stock and can fit in a standard garage and can be towed by a normal HD pickup. Common problems to look for usually revolve around its complex transmission, with can cost a shitload to fix ($50k+). Good news is that they can be had in a wide variety of roles, as tanks, apcs, missile carriers, etc so there is plenty of variety.

Would a gas turbine be a good idea in a scorpion? The big advantage is the lower weight and the ability to run it on anything that will burn.

Maintenance on tonks:
>Parts are non-existant. Prepare to get a degree in engineering to reverse engineer the worn and broken ones and have new ones made to whatever spec the wear of its mating parts requires.
>Parts are big
>Parts are heavy
>Parts are numerous, so that one part you reverse engineered has to be made more than once, and probably with different tolerances for each copy
>Parts need to be replaced more often than on cars by several orders of magnitude because of the high loads on everything. Tanks aren't made to drive half a million miles, you know? You'll be lucky to do less than 10 full vehicle revisions in that kind of distance.
>Main gun parts are greater pain in the ass by additional orders of magnitude, and where the fuck do you even plan on finding ammunition?
>Do you even know how much a main gun shell costs even at military bulk prices?

Buying the tank is just pocket change compared to what you will spend afterwards to the point where you won't even care about the fuel it consumes.

Watch this series.
youtube.com/watch?v=5wM0KN27ano

Gas turbines are largely overrated in armored vehicles. Stick to diesels. Easier/cheaper to fix, operate, and install. Multi-fuel is nice, but IIRC if you don't have a stable supply of proper fuel, you don't have the logistics to operate a tank.

True. Im just attracted to the idea of an engine and gearbox you can still buy parts for, which is a serious problem for a t72 or any tank for that matter.