Panzer 4 Back

[Olivie Inoue]

Inorder to maintain my sanity during the long New England winters, I like to spend my evenings and weekends in the garage spinning wrenches on some mechanical pursuit or another. This year, I'm restoring a 1962 Panzer garden tractor with a 1953 Plymouth 8.25" rear axle. This is a ridiculously overbuilt little piece of mechanical Americana manufactured on the East Coast from 1954 to 1971. My understanding is that the factory built these little tractors with shortened Plymouth rear ends exclusively; welding the frame tubes directly to the axle housings. This particular example made its mark on me when I was in the 3rd grade and, 35 years later, I'm still enamored by the turquoise colored machine.

The reason I'm writing on your forum today is that I'm looking for information on the 8.25" rear end. I've got new axle bearings, but I'm trying to locate outer axle seals and shims. These are the seals that go between the bearing and the backing plate to keep the grease out of the brake drum. They're made out of cardboard or something organic The rear end is #1141544-53 with 16 spline shafts. I've been searching around, but nobody seems to speak "old Plymouth" unless its an 8.75" rear end under a muscle car. I'd really like to find the shimming procedure, the recommended gear oil for the pumpkin, and a source for the seals.

My son was given a Panzer back in the early 90's, he got it running then sold the Panzer and a 1947 Allis-Chalmers to a man in Mass, who had drove here to buy the Allis, saw the Panzer and bought that also

All content is owned by Unwinnable and the fine folks who contribute to it, so just back up off it Mr. Sticky Fingers. Support criticism with your clicks, quality publications with your bucks and always tip your bartender.

I totally agree. But in my opinion all 3 of them should return. They are a part of this game, and always will be. Gaijin cemented this fact in the moment they made the tanks aviable to players back then. Now it is only fair to have them come back for everyone.

The Panther II is real, just that what we have in-game is not real but the result of mixing up information on the vehicle, and in fact the Panther II is more real than the Flakpanzer 341 since the hull was not only built but is still around today it is currently located at the US Army Armor and Cavalry Museum at Ft. Moore, Georgia, it was captured by the Americans and they put a Panther G turret on the vehicle since the vehicle lacked a turret when they found it.

Their existence in the game is a fact. And Gaijin decided to add the Panther II their way, not some copy paste Panther G or VK. You should accept that. Additionally, all 3 tanks are still being worked on through continuous bug fixes. So what would make more sense, bring back what is already readily aviable, or invest a ton of additional work and time to appeal some historical

accurracy nuts?

Another fact is that Gaijin originally did not intend to remove them, there is atleast 1 Twitter post about the Panther II proving this. Only due to the coercion of oppressive accurracists the tanks were removed.

I call this tractor "Thermal Event," which is slang in the engineering world for "It caught fire." Luckily, the only thing so far that has caught fire is the flames coming from the exhaust pipe.

My longtime friend, Tom Lackey, built this tractor about 20 or so years ago. It started life as a T205, but Tom put a single wheel front end on it from a Model A that he had for parts. With these changes, it is technically a T102. It went through many changes, but he said he couldn't get it competitive. I bought it from him about 8 years ago or so, and put a snow plow on the front. I used it for about 5 years to plow snow first in my subdivision, then my driveway out in the country.

After selling another T60 puller (also built by Tom) and a T75 named "Rat," I decided to put this together to have some fun with.

I built a front weight bracket using T6 aluminum tubing and a weight machine extrusion/weights out front. The rear bracket with weight machine weights was used when I plowed snow. I modified the rear hitch a bit, and built a pulley guard and wheelie bars out of aluminum diamond plate. A new battery, straight pipe, wheel spacers and tires from my first puller, "Bad Company," round out the package.

This past summer, I built a new front weight bracket and tore this tractor apart to fix a leaking rear end. I documented the process, and will be posting a series of pictures soon. During the tear down, I rebuilt some chassis items and addressed some areas to make the tractor pull better.

Back in 1998, I put together some pulling tips based on my experience with a T65 back in the 1980's. Reprinted below is that article. I've had a lot of questions lately about hitch setup and other factors, so pulling seems to be getting more popular. Please take a look at the tips below and let me know if you have any questions or something to share.

This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the Sega Saturn's U.S. launch, along with the anniversary of one of the most memorable rail shooters of all time: Panzer Dragoon. To mark the occasion, MegaPixel Studio has recreated Panzer Dragoon with high definition visuals, offering long-time fans a new way to experience a classic favorite while introducing a new generation of gamers to one of Sega's most memorable franchises of all time (which is saying a lot, given Sega's legacy).

In some ways, Futatsugi says, Panzer Dragoon didn't play to the platform's core strengths. It was an immersive, fully 3D shooter, yet Futatsugi notes that "the Saturn was made to be the ultimate 2D hardware." Nevertheless, he says the Panzer team found a way to harness the Saturn's quirks to the benefit of the game. "We were able to use [its smooth scrolling] to our advantage when we made things like backgrounds. Unlike on PlayStation, it gave a really expansive feeling to the world."

Rather than feel like the product of compromise, though, Panzer's world instead comes across as organic and distinct. It mashes together flying battleships and dragon-mounted combat through dusty valleys and imposing fortress cities, unifying all these disparate elements into a cohesive whole. Futatsugi credits designer Manabu Kusunoki for defining Panzer's setting, explaining how it evolved in layers through the creative back-and-forth between the designers and the corporation.

One thing we really wanted to push through with this game was a lot of content that didn't seem 'normal'," Futatsugi says. "When we got the design doc through the higher-ups at Sega, it was based on a traditional fantasy setting, but that's simply because that kind of thing was easier to get approved. Afterwards, we started to explore what kind of world would make sense for a dragon to exist in. So we branched out from there and got rid of all the stuff that we thought was too run-of-the-mill."

Although dragon-based fantasy tends to factor heavily in western media, such as works like Ann McCaffrey's Pern novels, Futatsugi looked closer to home for the core of his game's story. "One sort of thing we had in mind was something that's popular in Japan: The 'grammar' or rules of robot anime. You have this regular boy who suddenly finds a robot and gets pulled into different situations. We thought we would take that, but instead of it being a robot, we'd use a dragon." In other words, he says, there's more Gundam than Game of Thrones in Panzer Dragoon.

Despite these decidedly eastern influences, the Panzer team reached out to a legendary western illustrator to help sell the game: French comics artist Jean Girard, aka Moebius. In Japan, Panzer Dragoon sported an evocative cover with art provided by Moebius, though Sega of America scrapped those illustrations in favor of CG renders. "Moebius didn't have any role in the creative direction of the game," Futatsugi notes, but adds: "Kusunoki-san is a huge fan of Moebius, and you know, I'm sure he was influenced by Moebius in some ways. When he heard that [Moebius would be involved in the game's marketing], he was absolutely over the moon!"

Futatsugi admits that Moebius's entire involvement in the game was in itself a case of the team shooting for the moon. "Toward the end of development, Sega marketing came to us and asked, 'If you could have any artist create illustrations for the cover and promotional game, who would it be?' We said Moebius, and Sega said, 'Well, it doesn't cost anything to ask.' And Moebius went ahead and did it for us. No one was more surprised by that than us!"

Although fans have long expressed disappointment with the chunky pre-rendered artwork of the U.S. game, Sega's choice isn't hard to understand. After all, as Futatsugi notes, the entire concept of playing a great-looking 3D game on consoles was wholly novel in 1995, and Panzer was the work of a team probing the absolute leading edge of home console design. "At the time, the arcade was the cutting edge," he says, "but with Saturn you could finally play 3D games at home. A big part of making Panzer was us trying to catch up to other amazing 3D games in the market, like Virtua Fighter. We figured since we were working on this new hardware we could do these amazing things... but we also had no experience to draw on, so we had to figure things out as we went, which was quite the challenge."

"We started making Panzer Dragoon right after joining Sega, about two years after we joined the company," he says. "We didn't even have the hardware to work on at first! We were making plans for 3D games on workstations. Development kits weren't coming along well, early on. We had this long period where we couldn't start development on the actual game. It was in this period where we put a lot of work into developing the world and the background. That's when we developed the [in-game] language. As a result, it ended up being to our advantage that development came along so slowly!

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