"Ural-5920" - a car that does not need roads

Crawler snow-sweeper "Ural-5920" for the first time descended from the conveyor of the automobile plant of Miass in 1985. The main purpose of the conveyor was the carriage of goods in particularly difficult terrain, including wetlands and snow-covered terrain, at air temperatures from -40 to +60 degrees Celsius.

Description of the ATV

The machine was a design assembled by the so-called carload scheme, that is, when the driver and passenger in the car's cabin are located directly above the front wheels (in this case, caterpillars).

At the same time, "Ural-5920" was structurally divided horizontally into two parts:

1. Frame with engine mounted on it, cab, cargo platform and transmission elements.
2. The chassis, which consists of two separated caterpillar carts, on which the frame with all its components was installed.

The controllability of the car, as well as the possibility of overcoming large crossings of the terrain, was provided by the ability to turn bogies around the vertical axis, as well as their ability to move (swing) in the longitudinal direction.

Suspension torsion type provided a good smooth running snowball. Caterpillar wheels were wheels with tires, the cavity of which was filled with a sponge mass instead of air. The crawler tracks themselves were reinforced with steel cables to increase strength and reduce stretching.

"Ural-5920": technical characteristics

• The maximum weight of transported goods was 8 tons.
• The weight of the cross-country vehicle is 22.5 tons.
• The average specific pressure on the surface of the ground at a full load of the machine is 0.22 kg / cm2.
• The limiting speed on hard ground is 30 km / h.
• The average amount of fuel consumption per 100 km is 100 liters.
• The steepness of the climb is 58%.
• The depth of the water obstacle being overcome is 1.8 meters.
• The developed power of the power unit is 210 l / s.

"Ural-5920" turned out to be quite a successful car, often surpassing its characteristics foreign counterparts. But the merit in this only partially belongs to the designers of the Ural automobile plant. In fact, the inventors of the all-terrain vehicle were completely different people.

Beginning of work on the ATV

The question of creating a new snow-mobile carrier with a good load-carrying capacity arose in 1960. At this time in the USSR began active development of uninhabited territories, and the purchase of conveyors abroad was unprofitable because of their high cost. Therefore, the top management decided to create a domestic all-terrain vehicle. The corresponding instructions were received by the designers of NAMI. And to accelerate the work, several copies of imported cars were purchased, so to speak, for the sample. At the same time, the domestic all-terrain vehicle, in addition to being not inferior in performance to "foreigners", it still required to maximally unify under the existing production cars. This would allow for the production of an all-terrain vehicle to use already produced units and units. In addition, it would reduce the process of training drivers for a new transporter, due to the identity of the components of the new and production models. That is, the car could be managed by any driver with experience in the operation of conventional trucks.

The development of the all-terrain vehicle began in 1970, and by 1972 an experimental snowblower appeared, which received the NAMI-0157 BK index.

"Ural-5920": factory models and prototypes

NAMI-0157 BK was created on the basis of the serial URAL-375D. Virtually everything that was attached from above, starting with the engine and ending with the details of the frame and cabin, was borrowed from the base URAL. The leading bridges were taken from ZiL. The original design solution was rubber rollers and sprockets, which were located in crawler carriages in pairs.

Conducted tests of the conveyor showed that the direction in which the engineers-engineers moved when creating the snow-sweeper was right. After some modifications, there were two more samples of all-terrain vehicles, with NAMI-0157M markings. It was NAMI-0157 and became the prototype of the snow-storm "Ural-5920".

In 1974, the Ural Automobile Plant was given all the documentation on the developed machines in order to establish their serial production.

But before putting the snow-sweeper on the conveyor belt, the plant produced five experimental vehicles "Ural-NAMI-5920" for testing on the run in the Tyumen region. The conditions in which the prototypes were placed, soon revealed a number of shortcomings, namely, the two-row arrangement of the rollers resulted in the clogging of the space between them. As a consequence, the caterpillar blade began to fall off. Also, the tests revealed an insufficient clearance, which is why the cross-country ability of the all-terrain vehicle was reduced. As a result, instead of the planned 6000 km of the run, experienced machines passed only half, after which they were returned to the plant for refinement.

The following samples with fixed defects and fully ready for serial production received the factory index "Ural-5920".

Unsuccessful series

With the advent of the 80's, the country's economy was declining, and the planned mass production of snowmobiles never happened. It turned out that snowmobiles were not in high demand. No dignity "Ural-5920", the price of the car, which was significantly lower than the cost of analogs, did not attract buyers. The declared annual volume of 8000 cars (which was planned in the 70s), in the 80s limited to 150 pieces. As a result, the conveyor was removed from the conveyor production, transferring it to a stacker, which was very expensive. As a result, this led to a complete halt in the release of Ural-5920.

The return of the snow-swamp creator

The production of Ural-5920 resumed only in 2002, although it is no longer in Miass, but in Yekaterinburg, at the plant of the special machinery Continent. The engineers of the plant introduced a number of changes to the basic design that improved the operational characteristics of the conveyor. The all-terrain vehicle was replaced by a more powerful YaMZ-238 M-2. The swivel mechanism received a new hydraulics. Of modern materials, caterpillars were also made, increasing their strength, and, consequently, the service life. All these changes have raised the load capacity of the machine, while the pressure coefficient on the surface of the ground has not changed. The plant began to produce ATVs in various variations and layouts, which increased the scope of its application. Thus, thanks to the efforts of the "Continent", Ural-5920 was reborn.