DAK Tank Trap Bridge
Four days before the next DAK battle and I discover my Tiger suffered some sort of damage from its run in with a certain bridge at the DAK field. DAK has "Dragon's Teeth" obstacles on the field but this bridge is apparently far more deadlier than they are.
I was trying to drive across the bridge while viewing it and the tank perpendicular to the driver's side (making it hard to see whether I had the tank lined up properly on the bridge because the Tiger is so damn wide). I wasn't lined up correctly and the driver's side sprocket went up and over the middle side "tooth" of the bridge, came crashing down and the sprocket slammed against the last "tooth" (circled in red) bringing the tank to a sudden and hard halt. This violent action lifted the turret clean off the chassis and dropped it back down over on the loader's side of the upper deck.
Now at any speed, the driver's side sprocket wheel stutters as it rotates only when the tank is moving forwards (strangely it does not do this when run in reverse). It will make about 3 complete revolutions then it will momentarily STOP, then continue to rotate, creating a stuttering movement of the sprocket as the tank moves along. It does it not only when the tank is on the ground, but also when it is up on a block and the tracks are hanging freely above the ground.
Only thing I have been able to notice is that each time the sprocket stutters, the brass bushing (circled in the gearbox photo) will rotate a little bit in sync with the stuttering sprocket wheel. Normally the bushing is motionless and does not rotate. I have seen the same bushing on the opposite gearbox rotate at times though too (but not at regular intervals), and that sprocket does NOT stutter at all. The stutter is reduced when I remove the tracks from the driver's side and have the gearbox just turning the sprocket wheel alone.
I'm not quite sure what is causing this stutter motion. None of the gears are stripped. Maybe it is the brash bushing.. It doesn't look like I will be able to fix it before the next battle on Saturday though.. So I'll probably have to show up with a wounded Tiger for the last battle of the season. I've yet to bring it to a battle where there wasn't something wrong with this tank..
As a side note, I had thoroughly cleaned those gears and applied white grease to them in January. Now the grease looks black like old motor oil! What the hell??