I bought an Academy 1/35 scale M1A1 Abrams tank and discovered the track wheels on the left side and the right side are not aligned symetrically (like a car with wheels on each side that are not aligned). It seems that it is not a manufacturing defect, can anyone explain why the wheels are not aligned to each other?

(Only the first 2 wheels and the last two wheels are aligned to each other, the wheels between the first and last are not aligned)

Thanks, I hope you guys can understand what I've said.

A tank has a torsion bar on each road wheel arm that runs the width of the tank. Therefore, the road wheel arms must be offset. The torsion bar is a long twisted metal bar (they are handed, one side twisted in one direction, the other side twisted opposite) with splines on the ends to anchor the bar. The twist of the metal is what keeps the road wheel arm down.

RobG

Those have large, internal rotary shocks to keep the road wheel arms torqued down.

RobG

http://www.alanhamby.com/suspension.shtml

Its one of the Tamiya RC tanks but you can see on the chassis how torsion bars work. The swing arms for the wheels are staggered.



Here is the bottom of a plastic Tiger tank kit that shows the swing arms themselves clearly.