page_title: H-drive
section_title: Daimler scout cars
hierarchical_section_title: H-drive / Daimler scout cars
caption_attribution_description: English: Tanks and Afvs of the British Army 1939-45 Daimler Mk I armoured car
context_page_description: An H-drive drivetrain is a system used for heavy off-road vehicles with 6×6 or 8×8 drive to supply power to each wheel station.
  H-drives do not use axles but rather individual wheel stations, usually carried on a punt chassis. A single differential splits the drive into separate left and right drive shafts, which each run fore and aft inside the bottom corners of the chassis. At each wheel station a bevel box drives the half shaft out to the wheel.
context_section_description: The first major production of the H-drive and the greatest numbers produced were for the British Daimler Armoured Car and Daimler Dingo scout cars of WWII.
  As relatively small four-wheeled vehicles, these used a simplified layout of the H-drive. A single wide casing housed the differential and transfer box, with four articulated driveshafts running to bevel gear boxes inboard of each wheel. The use of bevel boxes, rather than DAF's worm gears, required the final drive reduction to be placed in the hubs, using an epicyclic reduction in each hub. This had the advantage of reducing torque in the driveshafts, allowing their unsprung weight to be made lighter.
  In later years a similar layout would be used for the Ferret scout car. This had an even more compact layout, with the gearbox and transfer case within a single housing. The driveshafts were articulated with Tracta joints and epicyclic reduction gears in the hubs.
  An advantage of the H-drive was the low overall body height as the hull could sit between the suspension units, rather than above axles. This was demonstrated by the Canadian Lynx Scout Car, a derivative of the Daimler Dingo but using conventional Ford axles, which was a foot higher overall (70 in, 1.8 m vs 59 in, 1.5 m).
caption: Daimler Armoured Car
exif: {}