6 x 4
How to turn a combat "Ural" into a civilian vehicle? First of all, you need to get rid of the many military options that noticeably weigh down the truck. Still, in the national economy, the main thing is not survivability on the battlefield and extreme cross-country ability, but carrying capacity, ease of use and economic efficiency. Trucks, for example, the ZIL-131 family, did not have any special problems with such an adaptation, they were initially unified with the national economic vehicles of the 130th family. But the "Urals" of the 300th series could not boast of such versatility.
The first attempt to create a truck for a peaceful life took place in 1961, when the Ural-377, minimally adapted for civilians, entered the tests. First of all, the front drive axle was removed (replaced with an axle from the MAZ-500), the transfer case was replaced with a demultiplier, a new cargo platform with three folding sides was installed and the centralized wheel inflation system was excluded. Interestingly, the Ural-377 was the first among the family's vehicles to receive an all-metal cabin, which was later installed on the Ural-375D military family (these trucks were discussed in the previous part). The obvious disadvantage of the civilian version was the excessively high loading height of the platform due to the massive 14.00-20 wheels and the spare wheel located under the body. The cargo had to be thrown to a height of 1.6 meters - even KrAZ at that time was more comfortable in this regard.
The carrying capacity, after all the simplifications, naturally, was increased to 7.5 tons (in the military version it was 4.5 tons), but the body was too short for such a machine. Long gauges loaded on the Ural-377 seriously redistributed the load: the rear bogie was overloaded, and the front axle, on the contrary, lost contact with the ground. Here, the relief of the front end due to the removal of the heavy drive axle played a negative role, and the bonnet layout itself did not contribute to the rational weight distribution of the loaded vehicle. Despite these moments, in 1965, after four years of improvements, the national economic "Ural" entered the assembly line in Miass.
But the army roots of the peaceful "Ural-377" haunted. It was also adopted by the Soviet Army. A truck capable of towing a trailer weighing 10, 5 tons, and in the version of the 377С / СН truck tractor, pulling a semi-trailer up to 19 tons, was very useful in the rear parts. In particular, the 9T254 transport vehicle was built on the basis of the Ural 6x4 as part of the Grad MLRS with special racks and ammunition boxes. And the truck tractors came in handy for moving the OdAZ-828 army semi-trailers-vans, on which they mounted the Zakazka aviation flight control points, the control of the Vector-2V and Senezh anti-aircraft missile brigades, and systems for processing data from the Pori-M radar ", As well as complexes of means of automation of the command post" Osnova-1 ".
In the interests of the national economy
"Ural-377" in 1966 evolved into a more perfect model with the letter "M". Taking into account the difficulties with a short cargo platform, it was decided to lengthen the truck by 420 mm, and the platform height was reduced to 1.42 meters due to new wheels from Omsk tire manufacturers. The diameter of the wheel has decreased immediately by 80 mm, the weight has decreased, and the width has increased, increasing the contact patch with the surface. There was an interesting experiment with tubeless tires, which, it seemed to the engineers, did not need a spare wheel at all. Here there was a struggle for kilograms of truck mass - they abandoned the massive spare wheel that raises the height of the body, and replaced it with a rear axle wheel pumping system. What if a tubeless tire punctured on the front axle?
It's simple - swap the defective wheel and the whole rear wheel, turn on the pump and continue driving to the nearest tire workshop. It is good that this idea did not take root due to the weakness of the tire itself - in Omsk, due to weight savings, they made it unreliable. In addition, the designers of "Ural" conjured over the gear ratios of the demultiplier, a direct transmission appeared, the maximum speed increased to 88 km / h, but the consumption of 93 gasoline still did not go into any frame - 73 liters per hundred. To increase the carrying capacity, they developed a version of the machine with a gable rear bogie tire on road wheels 260-508, and they tried to solve the problem with excessive fuel consumption of the ZIL-375Ya4 engine by installing a promising Ural-376 diesel engine.
At the end of the 60s they tried to “fix” the brutal appearance of the army "Ural", which is just right to be recorded in the museum of automobile glory, with a new fiberglass cabin, which, however, could not withstand the operating conditions and cracked mercilessly. In particular, on bumps, the wheel could simply split a fragile wing. Actually, and good - the cabin turned out to be too ugly. After unsuccessful experiments with delicate Omsk tires, new wide-profile O-47A with a universal tread pattern were installed, which showed an almost threefold increase in resource. As a result, after long tests and research, by 1969, a civilian truck was created in Miass, which largely meets the needs of the national economy. But it all ended before it started: it was decided to build a huge plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, and in Moscow, at ZIL, they were finishing the development of a promising cabover diesel truck, which we now know as the ancestor of the KamAZ family. As a result, the civil project "Ural-377M" was closed, reorienting the efforts of the factory workers to military equipment. This, by the way, became a serious problem already in the 90s, when the volume of military orders decreased, and there were few civilian vehicles in the production range.
Wheels, diesels and tracks
At the end of the story about the Ural family, one cannot fail to mention some exclusive cars that either did not go beyond the experimental designs, or were released in a small series. One of these was the four-axle NAMI-058 with an active semitrailer with a carrying capacity of 8 tons. A 4-stroke V-8 YMZ-238N turbodiesel with a capacity of 320 hp was installed on a twelve-wheeled vehicle. sec., providing a high power density of 12, 6 hp / t. For comparison: for the active road train "Ural-380S-862" with a gasoline engine, this figure was 7, 7 hp / t. At the same time, the development of NAMI consumed significantly less fuel - on average, one third less than their weak gasoline counterparts of the same carrying capacity.
In open sources, entertaining results of a comparative test run of the NAMI-058S-862 road train with a disconnected drive to the semi-trailer and the usual "Ural-375" on rough terrain are given. In total, we ran 43 kilometers, and the carbureted "Ural" found an average consumption of 116 liters of gasoline per 100 km at an average speed of 21.7 km / h. And the six-axle and much heavier NAMI cost 105 liters of diesel fuel per 100 km at a relatively close average speed of 22.4 km / h. To justify such an immoderate appetite, it must be said that both cars were loaded, and the off-road was with liquid clay and deep ruts. At the same time, due to the lower specific pressure on the ground, the road train left ruts of less depth than the younger "Ural", and twelve wheels made it possible to take 18-degree rises (the 375th allowed itself only 11-12 degrees). The results of the tests of the tractor showed all the prospects of this direction and, although the car was not planned for production, the developments of "Ural-NAMI" became the basis for the next generations of 8x8.
In the 70s, the Ural-592 tracked snow and swamp-going conveyor appeared at the Ural Automobile Plant, which was the most versatile among the entire line of Ural Masters. He, of course, did not know how to swim, but two tracked platforms, connected to the body by slewing bearings, provided the car with simply outstanding cross-country ability with a maximum carrying capacity of 8 tons. Actually, the car was developed at NAMI just for workers in the oil and gas industry, where, as you know, there are few roads. The prototype of the serial car was NAMI-0157, which was later unified with the aggregate base of gasoline "Urals", and by the end of the 70s it was equipped with the famous KamAZ-740 diesel engine. It is noteworthy that the design of the machine made it possible to rotate the tracked platforms independently of each other, significantly increasing the maneuverability of the truck. The first "Ural-592" left the gates of the Miass plant in 1981 and were produced before the collapse of the Union. In the 2000s, production was resumed in Yekaterinburg.
Both of the above vehicles were already equipped with diesel engines, which significantly improved the operational properties of trucks based on the "Ural-375". And the appearance of a Kama diesel engine under a long hood opened a new era in the history of the Ural Masters. What did the car eventually have more: pluses or minuses? Be that as it may, this is a topic for another story.
