Custom Tracked Vehicle

[Tyler85uSMC]

If I were to do it all over again I would go with (look up) 2/5 scale tank transmission. I went the Hydraulic route, spent thousands, and almost 2 years later I am still working on it, though with less enthuesism. Hooking a hydraulic motor up to a differential, you have to take into account the gear ratio. IE if you bought those 160 RPM wheel motors and put it onto a 4:10 differential, you would have 40 RPM wheel speed.(slow) If you have the transfer case, then you have the transmission too, so no need to add hydraulics.

My vote is for the 2/5 scale tank transmission with double pullys for at least forward shaft.

Well if i go this route the 2/5 wont work. This diff we are talking about right now is for turning. It s a double diff setup. The drive diff(we will call the bottom one) will be driven via the rear output shaft on the transfer case. The turning diff(top diff) which we are talking about needs to be powered but not often. I am wanting to use a hydraulic motor to do this otherwise it will be hand powered worm gear, turned via a steering wheel. I am completely unsure of how fast the diff needs to turn when i want to turn i dont believe very and i think 160 sounds reasonable for this application. This is another good spot if anyone has any recommendations of the speeds they think would be needed to apply to the top diff? So with this setup i would need a hydraulic pump if it is possible id like to run it off of the front transfer case output and not a pump on the engine.
In all honestly this vehicle will weigh to much for the type of transmission on the 2/5 route i would think anyways, how large of a vehicle do you think they would work on?

[PapaPerk]

Is that 2/5 trans the one the guy in Australia made for the model tanks? It's innovative... But I would stick to the proven designs that are used in professionally built equipment. See gear train link above...

[J_J]

I am thinking you will have to know the torque for the hyd motors to be able to figure out a VSP variable speed pump to drive the wheel motors, and then figure out the engine HP required to power the hyd pump.

My Power-Trac has 4 hyd wheel motors, and a variable speed hyd pump. The engine HP is computed to run everything on the machine. It also has three hyd pumps, a steering/loader pump and a PTO pump for implements.

The steering is accomplished with hyd cyl's. Unit swivels in the middle.

Your steering on a tracked vehicle could be accomplished by two VSP pumps each driving each side, similar to a Zero turn mower setup. One lever for each pump giving fwd/rev, and speed.