Question: Panther tank exhaust pipes.

[PaPa Peng]

The exhaust pipes of the Panther tank comes in several combinations.
There is the plain single pipe per exhaust manifold and then there are
smaller branch pipes on the sides of the main single exhaust pipe.
What are these smaller side pipes for?

[Gerald Owens]

The Panther D and A models had a problem with the exhaust manifold
overheating. Since the carburetors were notoriously inefficient,
dangerous amounts of unburned fuel would accumulate in the exhaust,
and when the engine was shut off, fresh oxygen would infiltrate up the
exhaust pipe, mix with the fuel vapor, and explode in the overheated
exhaust system. The short term solution on mid and late production A
models was to add two air intake pipes on the left side to cool the
manifold. Later, the exhaust system was redesigned to run cooler, and
the two pipes were dropped. When modeling a Panther tank, the exhaust
pipe should be shown as rusted by heat, but the two narrow cooling air
pipes flanking it would not be.
Gerald Owens

[Anlushac11]

replying to PaPa Peng, Anlushac11 wrote:
Early Panther tanks had problems with exhaust manifold overheating. The
solution was to have a fan pull air in and blow it through a shroud around
exhaust manifolds and exit out ear of tank. The Panther D's and early A's had
the two exhaust manifolds but on left side are two additional smaller pipes,
these are the outlets for the hot air that was blown over exhaust manifold.

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