Ex-WWII tanks still used as paddock bashers on Australian farms

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-19/tinkering-with-tanks-and-preserving-australian-farming-history/8017194

by astdb • 10 years ago

118 45 10 years ago

abc.net.au

Chris2048• 10 years ago

Not sure how this would replace a bulldozer, what is the purpose? Transportation?

gtvwill2• 10 years ago

Clearing land. You use them to pull ball and chain setups to clear hundreds of acres at a time

gruez• 10 years ago

I have a hard time visualizing that setup, are there some pictures?

ethbro• 10 years ago

Tractors -> Tanks (see Christie selling M1931s to the Soviets after the US military passed on them, shipped as the less suspicious "agricultural farm tractors")

So not inconceivable to turn them back into tractors. In fact, if you shed a lot of the armor, you'd probably have a pretty decently performing vehicle, especially for the price.

vvanders3• 10 years ago

The armor isn't a bad thing, generally with tractors the heavier the better. It's really common to have tires filled with fluid and wheel weights for traction and stability reasons.

45h34jh53k4j• 10 years ago

And this is the kind of aussie ingenuity that is sometimes missed by the world. Because of resource and distance, sometimes the battler needs to think creatively and repurpose what is available.

Sadly as we pivot to a pure consumer society of plenty this ingenuity is no longer a necessity. (China is closer to Australia than US. Cheaper consumer goods, sometimes cheap ($<10) every day mfg goods are cheaper in AU vs US).

yoodenvranx• 10 years ago

Sadly as we pivot to a pure consumer society of plenty this ingenuity is no longer a necessity

I guess the necessity is still there but often you can't do anything because most products contain way to much electronics.

The only thing you needed to fix an old farm tractor was a hammer, a piece of pipe and a screwdriver. But nowadays you need to study computer science before you can get such a thing running again... Or look at old TVs or audio equipment. Back in the day you could repair them yourself but nowadays it's full of non-servicable SMD parts.

mrob• 10 years ago

non-servicable SMD parts

It's just a matter of having the right tools, and in most cases you don't need anything expensive. A cheap Chinese hot-air rework station, some flux, and tweezers will let you service a lot of those "non-servicable" parts. People tend to overestimate the difficulty of surface mount soldering simply because the parts are small. In many cases it's actually easier than through hole because surface tension does so much of the work for you. You don't need perfect alignment. BGAs are admittedly more difficult but even those can be replaced with cheap/improvised tools if you're sufficiently dedicated. In the old days tools were more expensive and we didn't have easily accessible video tutorials for most common repairs. I think a bigger reason for the decline of repair is the lower costs of replacement products.

the-dude• 10 years ago

Or look at old TVs or audio equipment. Back in the day you could repair them yourself

And they included the schematics!

WalterBright• 10 years ago

I have several old VCRs, when they break I just throw it on the pile and get another from the thrift store for about $20. I noticed one day that although electronics of the VCRs vary widely, the spinning heads all seem the same. So I had one with a damaged head, replaced it with a head from another one (different brand, different electronics) that was broken in another way, and it worked perfectly.

_Adam• 10 years ago

http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/reporter/stories/s3...

Another great example of Aussie ingenuity! One farmer's way of dealing with the 2010 locust plague.

grecy• 10 years ago

As an Austrlaian living in North America, this is something I feel on a daily basis.

When somethings stops working, needs repair, or just some attention, it boggles my mind when my suggestions of repair and improvise are completely ignored in favor of "order a new one with overnight shipping".

I personally derive great satisfaction from fixing the stuff I rely on, and it's working out really well for me now I'm traveling through West Africa.

thejosh• 10 years ago

order a new one with overnight shipping

ahhh, the things we do to our stuff when things can't be shipped and already cost a fortune (AU) :).

walking• 10 years ago

I was in my late twenties before I started programming professionally. Always had super crappy jobs before that, and grew up without a lot of money, so I ended up with a fix-all-the-things mindset. I'd think something like "well, I don't have hundreds of dollars to get my truck's ignition fixed. Guess it's time to learn how ignition systems work and fix it myself before I need to goto work on monday."

It could be super stressful, but I appreciate knowing those things now that I could afford to ignore them if I wanted to.

I actually ended up getting a side job working for a stage magician because I worked for the moving company that moved his stuff. I overheard them talking about a motorcycle they used in a trick, and how it wasn't working. I told them how they could fix it and they asked if I wanted to make some extra cash fixing other tricks, which by their nature were all cobbled together one-offs.

knz• 10 years ago

Kiwi in the US here.

It probably varies depending upon your social circles. Plenty of North Americans repair and improvise, especially those not in dense urban areas. Americans may love their disposable consumer goods but I wouldn't write of their ability to adapt and improvise just yet!

okreallywtf• 10 years ago

If you get out into the country (especially the mountain areas which have always bread independence) you'll see similar mentality. That to is going away in favor of a more throw away society but for the time being you still have a lot of tinkerers and rural-renaissance people (farmer/welder/machinist/etc).

oh_sigh• 10 years ago

How much does the doubling the distance of shipping on massive container ships increase the price of a product?

douche2• 10 years ago

On the History (haha) Channel show Ax Men, there was one season were one of the crews was using a yarder rig mounted on an old M4 Sherman chassis. My dad has also told me some stories about converted surplus tanks used as bulldozers and half-tracks skidders back when he was starting out logging in the 70s, before there was a lot of really specialized equipment.

vvanders3• 10 years ago

6 gallons of diesel an hour, uf da.

Our little 2-cyl Ford 1500 CUT has a 5 gallon tank and uses half a gallon an hour.

Curious if they ever tried to rig a 3pt hitch in one of those.

userbinator• 10 years ago

You should compare them to bulldozers; a quick search reveals that they use just as much fuel:

http://farmingforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?4846-Fuel-co...

vvanders3• 10 years ago

Oh I'm well aware that they aren't equivalent, out little Ford is only ~25hp at the crank :).

countingteeth• 10 years ago

well, that wasn't as alarming as "one down the shed there that'll use 13 litres of petrol every hundred yards." I hope it is moving a lot of dirt in those 100 yards.

Demcox2• 10 years ago

That is just awesome. I love how they utilize old war machines, which was build to destroy, to create life and provide food!

Even though it has crazy poor fuel/range ratio, it has outlastet the CO2 footprint is initially made.

dmoy• 10 years ago

Good to see old stuff still useful. Up here in Seattle we use old M60 tanks to shoot the mountains for snow clearance in the winter.

marssaxman• 10 years ago

It's always fun to baffle visitors from other states by bragging that our highway department is better-armed than their highway department.

r00fus• 10 years ago

The proverbial swords to plowshares. Reminded of a very powerful mtg card...

azernik• 10 years ago

Misleading headline - according to the article body itself, the tanks were used as bulldozers in the immediate post-war period when they were cheaper than purpose-made bulldozers. What's going on now is that farmers that own tanks from that period are acquiring, restoring, maintaining, and running them in their original military configurations for historical reasons.

Which is still super cool.

cryptozeus• 10 years ago

Batrock international :)

crypto5• 10 years ago

Soviet WW2 T-34 is still in use in Syria and Yemen nowdays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OoS8Zhg6EM

h4nkoslo• 10 years ago

Australia is kind of interesting in that it has a lot of preconditions for success (relatively high IQ & conscientiousness, high levels of social cohesion, stable governing institutions, good education, high social & human capital in general) but just an enormously spread-out geography, both internally and externally, and a relatively tiny population.

It ends up with a really odd economic dynamic where they have to leverage their internal resources because, eg, it's simply too much of a PITA to get a particular rare part shipped from a hemisphere away (from a supplier that isn't really set up to routinely ship to them anyway because it's not a huge market), and yet they actually end up being pretty good at it.

Ex-WWII tanks still used as paddock bashers on Australian farms

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