When I was at Fort Ord we had an Officer Professional Development tour of the FMC Corporation factory up the road in San Jose. FMC was then making the Bradley as well as the M113 family of vehicles, of which the M548 was one. I asked the FMC guy who ran the test track why the M548 had such reliability problems and he said they checked each and every one before it left the factory, so it must have been Army maintenance that was to blame.
Getting a bit off topic here, but it is your thread, so hopefully nobody minds much. I recall thinking mine was a pain in the neck, but I always chalked it up to the fact that the 113s in my platoon drove all over the place. The 548 basically drove from AA to AA and then maybe did a Volcano mission then back to a hide site or the AA. So, anything that was getting ready to go on a 113, you'd find it pretty quick. The 548s tended to sit around more, so problems got a chance to fester. I also remember one of the mechanics saying to me that the 548s were a little harder to get into to work on and that there were easier leak paths for rainwater to get in to corrode things that aren't supposed to corrode. That jives with my vague memory of starter problems with the one in my platoon.Originally Posted by Pete
Also, when you change the center of gravity of the vehicle, I'd bet you change how it responds to abuse as well. Plus the thing was loud as heck to ride in, and having the crew compartment so far forward and high up (as compared to the 113) made for a bumpy ride.
On the whole, it was less than reliable, but not a "tremendous maintenance headache" on the order of an AVLB, CEV, or M9 ACE.
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