FT Road wheels -Part one - From our Archive - Inside Track | Renault TSF Tank Kent

The Tank Museum’s rare prototype Renault FT road wheels were in very good condition. This condition was surprising given that the vehicle had been used well into the 1930s and had been left outside for a number of years when it had ended its service career. With the kind permission of the Tank Museum we removed the left hand suspension of the FT to provide us the opportunity to research and record these rare items. Our two Renault projects – the FT and the TSF had no running gear and access to the Tank Museum’s FT was crucial to progress the projects to authentic running condition. A small section of the wooden idler wheel and one of the road wheels, were sent for analysis at the Crick Smith institute. The analysis was to examine what preparation and paint and had been used on the idler wheel and whether the shiny paint on the road wheel was original. The road wheel was cleaned sympathetically revealing a very shiny grey, relatively thick layer of hard paint. This paint residue was found in the protected areas of the wheel possibly indicating that the original application had been worn off through use on the exposed areas. We wished to understand whether the wheels had originally been painted or left in original steel when originally assembled. The results of the analysis were not what we were expecting. The wheels had been electro plated in a metal material. The shiny dark grey is not paint but what remains of the metal plating process. This was a remarkable find as the process had only just been invented and was not in widespread use in France at the time. The images show a side section of one of these samples. The layers on the road wheel surface are described. This proof is quite remarkable. Replication of the process on our new wheels would be dependant on further analysis of wartime FT road wheels. Did these wartime FT road wheels undergo the same coating process before they were assembled on the suspension? We may opt for the more sensible route of coating the wheels in a hardy corrosion resistant paint matching the original coating as an alternative.

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