|
|
|||||||
Quote: I've wondered about the independent suspension on the Pinagauer. I considered buying one when I lived in Northern Arizona. There was a guy near Payson who imported, rebuilt, and sold them. At the time I often enjoyed playing with my old Willys Jeeps in the rocky terrain of Ma Nature's sandbox (rather like NASA images of Mars). The Willys were tipsy enough with their narrow wheelbase (good for slipping between large boulders and through narrow ravines) and I wore the 6X16 military 'skinny' NDT tires. I did manage to flip my stock '48 (no rollbar, windshield down) one day while being stupid (I have it on video tape...), but got out of it's way. Had I been belted in I'd have been crushed. As it was I went back to town for a buddy's truck, strapped it over and filled the fluids, drove 'er back to town using the bent steering column as a tiller (the steering wheel was destroyed). Here's a military training film of a M151 flipping violently (at 1:45) when hitting a ramp at 15 miles per hour (24Kph). They were also known to flip violently if one hit a bump while turning. The wheel would tuck under at an angle and trip the vehicle over as it landed. At 4:44 in the video, they address this fact. The flip at 11:00 is pretty spectacular. YouTube That (concern regarding lawsuits) is why very few M151 vehicles were sold to the public as surplus. When I went to some DRMO auctions at Fort Ord in the late 80s, all M151s offered for sale had been torch cut into cubes of about 3 feet. The same was done to surplus HMMWV ('Humm Vee')vehicles due to contractual obligations with General Motors. Here's another vid: YouTube |