Equipping the GAZ-66 with a diesel engine would, firstly, significantly improve the efficiency of the truck, and secondly, it would provide higher traction capabilities. I must say that the idea of "universal" equipping domestic trucks with diesel engines came to the management simultaneously with the adoption of the GAZ-66 in the 60s. However, just at this time, several large engine-building enterprises (ZMZ, for example) were launched in the USSR, which were designed primarily for the production of gasoline engines. The payback period for such factories was at least 10 years, which, naturally, postponed the terms of dieselization of light and medium trucks. The second problem was the lack of modern production equipment for the mass launch of the assembly of diesel engines and their components, in particular, high-pressure fuel pumps. Andrey Lipgart, the legendary designer of domestic all-terrain vehicles, called for the purchase of licenses for modern diesel engines abroad in 1967. This was largely due not only to the inability to assemble compact diesel engines with high quality, but even to develop them. The example of MosavtoZIL is noteworthy, the designers of which have been trying for a decade to create a diesel engine based on the carburetor ZIL-130.
As a result, they came to the conclusion that it is impossible to create a diesel engine unified with it on the basis of a gasoline engine: after all, the tolerances should be much smaller, and the load on the engine in a diesel engine is incomparably higher. It got to the point that the Zilovites had to buy diesel engines from Leyland and Perkins for export modifications. At GAZ, the situation was better: in 1967, an experimental NAMI-0118 with a capacity of 100 liters was already installed on the Shishiga. with. But no one forgot about the experience of the West in the field of motor building, the close attention of engineers was drawn to the German air-cooled Deutz diesel engines. There were even several business trips to Germany at the Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz AG in Ulm in order to exchange experience.
In particular, it was decided to use the so-called Pischinger workflow (which was implemented at Deutz) with volume-film mixing on the NAMI motor. Its advantages were a confident cold start, low smoke and, which is very important, the ability to work on a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel. It was not possible to buy a license from the Germans for a Deutz FH413 diesel for various reasons, and Soviet engineers had to creatively rethink the German design on their own. Since 1972, several experimental motors have been built in various variations. One of the unsolvable problems was the manufacturing quality of the fuel equipment. As a result, it was necessary to purchase Bosch nozzles for experienced motors - domestic counterparts turned out to be unusable. Then we fought with the smokiness of the engines, which we managed to cope with, but in the end the fuel consumption jumped up. In our experiments, NAMI was not limited only to machines of the 66th series - in the course of work in the mid-70s, the motors were also installed on civilian rear-wheel drive trucks.
In 1974, in Gorky, it was decided to conduct a test cycle of German Deutz on a whole range of trucks - GAZ-66, -53A and -52. Also in the Soviet Union, more powerful diesel engines of the same German brand were tested on carburetor "Urals". The results of these tests became one of the arguments in favor of buying a large batch of the famous "Magiruses" for the needs of the builders of the Baikal-Amur Mainline. And since the development process of our own NAMI-0118 diesel engine was openly skidding, it was decided to buy a license for FL912 in-line engines for GAZ cars and FL413 V-shaped engines for Urals. Later in Gorky, the German engine will be renamed GAZ-542.10, the cylinder will be bored to 105 mm, the power will be increased to 125 hp. and even in 1978 they will be launched into an experimental series.
Here it is time for us to get acquainted with the novelty of that time - the promising GAZ-3301 truck, designed to replace the obsolete Shishiga. The paradox of the car is that it was not a direct analogue of the GAZ-66, since the carrying capacity increased by half a ton, and the weight of the car increased by a whole ton. As a result, the gap between the light truck UAZ-451/451 and GAZ-3301 only increased, and the niche in the army remained unoccupied.
In the previous articles of the cycle, the promising GAZ-62 truck was mentioned, which can be conditionally considered one of the predecessors of the Shishigi. This truck was originally intended for the Airborne Forces, could take on board 1100 kg and was even accepted into mass production. In terms of the aggregate characteristics, the car was only slightly inferior to the German classmate Unimog S404, but at some point it suddenly did not like the military leadership of the USSR. How did this happen? The fact is that from 1960 to 1964. The commander-in-chief of the ground forces was the famous Marshal Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov, who decidedly did not like the GAZ-62 at one of the shows. When Chuikov asked about the possibility of replacing this "nedotykomka", he was told about the upcoming two-ton GAZ-66. What followed:
"Can a car with a carrying capacity of 2 tons carry 1, 1 tons of cargo?" “Maybe,” the engineers replied. - "So hurry up with the development of the GAZ-66!" - snapped the marshal. - "And this" nedotykomka "is urgently removed from the conveyor!"
The car, of course, was immediately removed from the factory, and with it the promising single-drive "lorry" GAZ-56, which was based on the "nedotykomki" units.
And now the new GAZ-3301 further increased the gap in the slender row of wheeled military equipment of the Soviet Army. This was demanded by the Ministry of Defense: the dimensions and mass of the towed guns gradually increased (on average, up to 3 tons), and there was not enough Shishigi everywhere.
GAZ-3301 and the project "Ballet"
The cabover GAZ-3301 with a carrying capacity of 2.5 tons passed acceptance tests in 1983-1987 and differed from its predecessor GAZ-66 in increased ground clearance to 335 mm and a slightly elongated cargo platform with a flat floor. In addition, an important difference was the aforementioned 125-horsepower diesel engine, capable of digesting not only pure diesel fuel, but also various mixtures. It was possible to fill in a mixture of A-76 gasoline and diesel fuel in a ratio of 70% to 30%, and the higher-octane AI-93 gasoline was diluted with diesel fuel one to one. On average, the car consumed only 16 liters of fuel per 100 km, which was a truly revolutionary breakthrough for Shishiga - this provided an incredible 1300 km in range. Simultaneously with the base model, the northern version with an insulated cabin also went in the series.
The cab itself was in many ways a simplified version of the GAZ-66 design with all the inherent flaws: cramped, inconvenient location of the gearshift lever and the need to tilt the cab to service the engine and transmission. In addition, apparently, no one took into account the sad experience of the Afghan conflict, when the cabover GAZ-66 performed poorly in a mine war. For the car, they even managed to develop a standard sealed K-3301 body made of reinforced polystyrene foam, as well as its low-profile version. But the GAZ-3301 adopted for service did not go into the army in 1987, and this did not happen in 88 and 89. The motor production was not ready, and in 1990 the Ministry of Defense refused from the successor of "Shishiga" due to the banal reason of insufficient funding. Although there is still a version that, after all, the sane minds in the leadership of the army understood the futility of further development of "Shishiga". And on August 18, 1992, the conveyor of the Gorky Automobile Plant stopped for the first time in 60 years …
It is noteworthy that since 1985, the third generation of GAZ-66-11 has been produced at GAZ, which became the last for the legendary Shishiga. An upgraded ZMZ-66-06 with a capacity of 120 liters was installed on the machine. with., as well as a new winch and shielded equipment. In addition, there were 125 hp ZMZ-513.10 carburetors. with. - this is how the GAZ-66-12 version was obtained with new tires and a carrying capacity of up to 2.3 tons. In the GAZ-66-16 version, the carrying capacity was increased to 3.5 tons due to the rear dual-slope wheels. The last model was even tested at 21 Scientific Research Institute in 1990, but things did not go beyond the manufacture of an experimental machine.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, orders for a military four-wheel drive truck fell to a minimum, the plant had to invent various civilian versions. However, as we know, it was not the peaceful Shishigi that were called to save the Gorky Automobile Plant, but the Gazelle and a half-lorry that arrived just in time, which became a real symbol of the revival of the domestic car industry.
The last attempt to revive the morally and technically obsolete GAZ-66 was a project codenamed "Balletchik", during which the Ministry of Defense in 1991 financed the installation of the mentioned air-cooled diesel engine on the car. Only now the number of cylinders in it was reduced from six to four - after all, "Shishiga" was a whole ton lighter than the promising and stillborn GAZ-3301. The new naturally aspirated engine was named GAZ-544.10 and developed a very modest 85 hp. with. But "Shishiga" with such a power plant turned into a low-speed tractor, so they also developed a version with a turbine with a capacity of 130 liters. with. It was he who was put on a prototype truck named GAZ-66-11D or GAZ-66-16D (different sources write differently). "Shishiga" from the "Balletchik" project could boast of seats from the "Volga" GAZ-24-10, a steering column from the GAZ-3307, which all together somewhat improved the terrible ergonomics of the driver's workplace. Later, several cars were assembled with motors of varying degrees of forcing, which passed preliminary tests on the basis of 21 scientific research institutes. By March 1992, the requirements for the car were mostly fulfilled and the pre-production truck received the final name GAZ-66-40. Two years later, the first three cars were built with five-speed gearboxes and reinforced transfer cases. But everything went badly for testing - both new diesel engines and new boxes turned out to be unreliable.
It took a lot of time to eliminate the comments, and only in February 1995 they started state tests, but the bad GAZ-5441.10 engines ruined everything again - gases burst from under the cylinder heads, oil flowed mercilessly and valves collapsed. The gears were also regularly knocked out, the tires were worn out excessively, and the cab of the truck turned out to be full of holes - in the rain water seeped freely inside. Here, the extremely low level of equipment assembly at the Gorky Automobile Plant in the 90s, as well as defective components from subcontractors, fully affected. As a result, GAZ-66-40 demanded the elimination of a number of identified shortcomings - and this was recorded in the conclusions of the state commission. But in 1997, the diesel engine plant in Gorky was closed, the Balletchik development project without an engine turned out to be meaningless, and two years later the carburetor GAZ-66, nicknamed by the people and the army as Shishiga, was finally discontinued.
For a little over forty years, 965.941 copies of the GAZ-66 series were built in Nizhny Novgorod. But the concept of the car is still alive today, it is in constant development. However, this is another story.
