Hemmings Motor News Blog Blog

Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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Tracked Motorcycles and Miniature Engines

Posted March 31, 2009 12:01 AM by dstrohl

Why the French through they needed a front-wheel-drive tracked motorcycle for their military remains unanswered, but at least one of these 1937 Merciers still exists. A J.A.P. 350cc engine powers the contraption.

Also, while there are plenty of operational quarter-scale engines out there, most of them are scale versions of the small-block Chevrolet V-8, so Bob Finlay's 3/10-scale Crosley four-cylinder is a bit unique. He's apparently been working on it for about a year and expects to make it operational soon. Though somebody needs to tell him that the original was cast-iron, not aluminum.

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#1

Re: Tracked Motorcycles and Miniature Engines

03/31/2009 5:17 AM

Magic... far more sensible than the average 4x4
(That's the trousers I'm talking about)

Del

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Re: Tracked Motorcycles and Miniature Engines

03/31/2009 8:12 PM

Now if you just put a couple of those moto-tracks under that van body you'd really have something.

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#3

Re: Tracked Motorcycles and Miniature Engines

04/01/2009 6:39 AM

Interesting! Would probably go well in mud. I would'nt mind trying it out but I think that steering it would be a bitch.

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In reply to #3

Re: Tracked Motorcycles and Miniature Engines

04/01/2009 3:08 PM

No problem really,

Just use a center bogie to adjust the shape of the track, thereby decreasing the frictional area, for hard surfaces.

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Re: Tracked Motorcycles and Miniature Engines

04/02/2009 2:53 AM

Yes, that would work and they probably did iron out those problems during design. I would still like to ride one. Got one? Know anyone that has one? Driven one?

enjoy you day,

cheers,

Leon

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