The crawler snow and swamp vehicle "Ural-5920" first rolled off the assembly line of an automobile plant in Miass in 1985. The main purpose of the conveyor was the transportation of goods in particularly difficult terrain, including wetlands and snowy areas, at air temperatures from -40 to +60 degrees Celsius.
All-terrain vehicle description
The car was a structure assembled according to the so-called carriage scheme, that is, when the driver and passenger in the car's cab are located directly above the front wheels (in this case, tracks).
At the same time, the Ural-5920 was structurally divided horizontally into two parts:
- A frame with an engine, a cabin, a cargo platform and transmission elements mounted on it.
- The chassis, which is two separate tracked carts, on which the frame with all its components was mounted.
The controllability of the car, as well as the ability to overcome large intersections of the terrain was provided by the ability to turn the carts around the vertical axis, as well as their ability to move (swing) in the longitudinal direction.
Suspension of the torsion type provided good smoothness of the snow and swamp. The track rollers were wheels with tires, the cavity of which was filled with a spongy mass instead of air. The caterpillar tracks themselves were reinforced with steel cables to increase strength and reduce tension.
Ural-5920: technical specifications
- The maximum weight of the transported goods was 8 tons.
- The mass of the all-terrain vehicle is 22.5 tons.
- The average specific pressure on the soil surface with a full load of the machine is 0.22 kg / cm2.
- The maximum speed on hard ground is 30 km / h.
- The average fuel consumption per 100 km is 100 liters.
- The steepness of the climb is 58%.
- The depth of the overcome water barrier is 1.8 meters.
- The developed power of the power unit is 210 l / s.
The Ural-5920 turned out to be a rather successful machine, often surpassing its foreign analogues in its characteristics. 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.
The beginning of work on the all-terrain vehicle
The question of creating a new snow and swamp vehicle with good carrying capacity arose in 1960. At this time, active development of uninhabited territories began in the USSR, and the purchase of conveyors abroad was unprofitable due to their high cost. Therefore, top management decided to create a domestic all-terrain vehicle. The corresponding instruction was received by the designers of US. And to speed up 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 not being inferior in characteristics to “foreigners,” it still needed to be unified as much as possible under the existing production cars. This would allow in the manufacture of an all-terrain vehicle to use the already produced units and assemblies. In addition, this would shorten the process of preparing drivers for the new conveyor, due to the identity of the components of the new and serial models. That is, any driver with experience in operating ordinary trucks could drive the machine.
The development of the all-terrain vehicle began in 1970, and by 1972 there was an experimental snow and swamp vehicle, which received the index NAMI-0157 BK.
Ural-5920: factory models and prototypes
NAMI-0157 BK was created on the basis of the serial URAL-375D. Almost everything that was mounted on top, starting with the engine and ending with the details of the frame and cab, was borrowed from the base URAL. Leading bridges were taken from ZiL. The original design solution was rubber rollers and sprockets, which were located in caterpillar carts in pairs.
Conducted tests of the conveyor showed that the direction in which the development engineers moved when creating the snow and swamp vehicle was correct. After some improvements, two more all-terrain vehicles appeared, with the markings NAMI-0157M. It was NAMI-0157 that became the prototype of the Ural-5920 snow and swamp vehicle.
In 1974, the Ural Automobile Plant was given all the documentation for the developed machines in order to establish their serial production.
But before putting the snow and swamp vehicle on the conveyor, the plant manufactured five Ural-NAMI-5920 prototypes for testing in run tests 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 led to clogging with dirt of the space between them. The consequence of this was the crawler track gathering. Tests also revealed an insufficient clearance, which reduced the cross-country ability of the all-terrain vehicle. As a result, instead of the planned 6000 km of mileage, only half of the prototypes were tested, after which they were returned to the factory for further development.
The following samples with eliminated drawbacks and completely ready for serial production received the factory index "Ural-5920".
Failed series
With the advent of the 80s, the country's economy began to decline, and the planned mass production of snowmobiles did not happen. It turned out that snowmobiles are not in high demand. No advantages of the Ural-5920, the price of the machine, which was significantly lower than the cost of analogues, did not attract buyers. The declared annual volume of 8,000 cars (which was planned in the 70s) was limited to 150 units in the 80s. As a result, the conveyor was removed from the conveyor production, moving to slipway, which was very expensive. As a result, this led to a complete halt in the production of Ural-5920.
Return of the snow and swamp
Production of Ural-5920 was resumed only in 2002, though it was no longer in Miass, but in Yekaterinburg, at the Continent special-purpose machine plant. Plant engineers made a number of changes to the basic design that improved the conveyor’s performance. The engine of the all-terrain vehicle was replaced by a more powerful YaMZ-238 M-2. The swivel mechanism received a new hydraulics. Caterpillars were also made from modern materials, increasing their strength and, consequently, their service life. All these changes increased the carrying capacity of the machine, while the pressure coefficient on the soil surface did not change. The plant began to produce all-terrain vehicles in various variations and layouts, which increased the scope of its application. Thus, thanks to the efforts of Continent, the Ural-5920 was reborn again.