Minnesota Focus Owners Club

19-Delta wrote: Hope this works,
M1114 UpArmored HMMWV.
6.2L Turbo Diesel
M2 .50 cal machine gun
Sat comm equipped radios
Weight: ~5 tons
"hardened" to stop 7.62mm and below rounds.
Fuel economy? Hell if I know, I ain't paying for fuel!

19-Delta wrote: No, the HUMVEE is all American. The design goes back to the mid-late 80's. US Army wanted something to replace the M151 "Jeep" that had a bad tendency to roll over and kill everyone. The first HUMVEEs were the M1025 (basic 4 door ute version) then the M998 came out and they had the "turtle back" hatch and were the gun truck version, in addition to those there were two door versions, ambulances, and many other varieties based off the same aluminum platform.

Many mods and years later they are now on the M1114 UpArmored version. The original engine *NOT a dura-max; was based off the gas 6.2 which was converted to diesel. Remember this is mid-80's technology. Then when they started throwing on all of the armor packages the crappy GM plant couldn't pull it. So they did what any of us would do...threw a turbo on it, upgradded the tranny, re-mapped ECU it and called it a day.

Still not the best solution, the current versions can do about 65 on a flat highway, they suck on hills if you can't carry any momentum up, but the tranny (auto) is a beast. In low range it will pull the truck up a near vertical wall, can send 100% of the torque to 1 wheel *17,000lbs if you use brake/throttle modulation (of course you will snap 1/2 shafts like crazy if you have the wheel turned or allow it to spin), can be used as a hill decent brake, and actually does not cause us any real issues here.

The engine has a tendency to run "hot" right around 250 in mid summer, we cut some ventilation holes in our hoods, then added hood scoops from old Soviet bombers to pull in the air. Looks mean as hell, works even better. Of course, our current command does not like anything that makes soldiers lives or equipment "better" unless they thought of it, so they blew a complete hissy fit and ordered 6 new hoods to replace our "damaged" ones.

Auto grenade launcher? Yep, one of our other trucks is equipped with the Mk.19 40mm automatic grenade launcher, good weapon system, but not the best to use in villages or cities. Better off with a 50 cal or our 7.62mm M240's.

Oh, any we ain't going to be "dropping" it anytime soon as the only way these things get stopped *aside from IED's; is getting high centered. They have a skid plate/armor, that runs the length of the under carriage, so if you have any speed or going downhill, you can slide it over the bump until your other wheels get traction again. Getting a 13,000lbs fully combat loaded truck unstuck can be a real pain in the ass.

Cheers,
Tim