Advice on US tracks please

[Airborne01]

I don't usually build US AFVs but I'm thinking of building my Tamiya M40 SPG that has sat in my stash for a while; this will sound ridiculous to some but are the main track elements metal or some hard rubber compound? I haven't found any reference to their composition in any of my reference material (almost exclusively German) - I'm erring on the side of steel but I don't want to spoil the end result by a glaring schoolboy error. Many thanks in anticipation!
Steve

[Guest]

Both :smiling3: It has T80 tracks, and those had steel outer faces and chevrons but rubber inner surfaces. From the Sherman Minutia site:

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There were three types of Sherman HVSS¹ tracks: T66 was all-steel with a waffle pattern on the outside, T80 is the above, and T84 was similar but with a much wider chevron, and with both inner and outer faces of rubber.

¹ That’s the later type of Sherman suspension with double roadwheels at each station and wide tracks, like the 155 mm GMC² M40 has.
² Gun Motor Carriage, the American term for “self-propelled gun”, not General Motors Corporation

[Scratchbuilder]

I would go with the tracks supplied in the kit for WW2/Korea. But later in their life they were fitted with the hard rubber chevron tracks T48 because the earlier tracks were tearing up the roads.

[Guest]

For the Second World War, T84 would not be correct: they went into production too late to see service there, even in the Pacific. For Korea, they would be possible, but I don’t recall seeing them much on vehicles in photos. Pages 894 and 898 of the second-edition Son of Sherman show M4A3 (76 mm) HVSS tanks with them in Korea, though, so it’s certainly an option for a model. The T80 from the kit is definitely safer ground, however.

[Airborne01]

Jakko, Mike,
Thanks Gents!, thanks for clearing that up!
Steve