At the end of May 2011 in Irkutsk at the central stadium "Trud" the 7th regional festival of auto tuning BaikalMotorShow (BMSH-2011) will take place. We present to you one of the participants.
LEGEND OF THE STEPPE
The moment of truth came when, after a voyage through the dusty hills, we stood next to the sparkling Land Cruiser 100. The iconic Japanese SUV looked like an innocent toy next to the creation of Vyacheslav Zolotukhin from the once closed city of Krasnokamensk. That’s when we fully realized the scale of this super SUV, 5.8 meters long, 2.3 meters wide and the same height. After all, judging by the ease with which the car just literally fluttered over the slopes and rocks, it is difficult to imagine that it is based on the chassis of the well-known GAZ-66 military truck. Vyacheslav has known good cars for a long time; back in the 90s he was involved in transporting them from the Far East. I had more than one Japanese SUV at my disposal; I drove a lot of things on them. And over time, I wanted much more than standard factory solutions could offer, even in the class of heavy jeeps. Tuning? No, it didn't suit me. I wanted, so to speak, a conceptually different level, something like a Mega Cruiser, but with my own ideas about comfort, capacity, reliability, maneuverability, and so on. So it came to the need to build your own car, freely using the achievements of the domestic and Japanese automobile industry.
The foundation of the project was the GAZ-66. Of course, not by accident, but very consciously. This Soviet “blockbuster”, of course, has its own miscalculations: a useless engine and gearbox, and the very layout of the car with a heavy cabin and an engine above the front axle is an extremely poor solution in terms of weight distribution. But the “shishiga” also has its own wonderful sides, especially in military models produced before 1975, when the car was made only for the defense industry and really to the conscience. In addition, the light army truck was designed with the expectation of being dropped from the air. The main advantages are a strong but “flexible” frame made of 6 mm steel and strong axles with free axle shafts and effective self-locking differentials. One of the disadvantages for “civilian” use is the constant engagement of the front wheels, the axle is switched off only in the transfer case. But this problem turned out to be removable with skill. In general, the bare chassis of the GAZ-66, with the engine, gearbox and cabin removed, became an inspiring start for the design. So to speak, the skeleton is ready in the rough, and with the full preservation of the wheelbase. But the heart and body of the future “King Kong” were parts... also from trucks, but now Japanese, and medium-duty ones at that. The engine from the five-ton Hino is a 6-cylinder diesel engine with a volume of 7.5 liters. Atmospheric, completely cast iron, with in-line mechanical equipment, with a timing gear drive - a beauty! The 6-speed gearbox is from him, but the transfer case remains original from the 66th, but Vyacheslav went through it and replaced our “square” bearings with imported analogues, after which the noise noticeably decreased.
A huge hood on gas struts opens up the vast engine compartment. The only thing that is not native to the 7.5-liter Hino diesel engine is the air cleaning system - it was borrowed from KamAZ. And the cone adapter to the engine air pipe is made from a tank shell casing!
The bifurcated exhaust tract is not for showmanship - it was necessary to use two compact “cans” of mufflers instead of one bulky one. In front of the rear axle, a 180-liter ZIL-130 tank is placed completely unnoticeably and additionally protected.
Do I need to clarify that adjusting the power unit required other fastenings and modifications to the frame cross members? In addition, the frame was “trimmed” at the edges. But it is important to note that the heavy diesel engine, for reasons of proper load distribution, was shifted as far back as possible. In turn, this had a positive effect on the design of the body itself, which, according to all the canons of classic jeeps, turned out to have a forward axle and a short overhang. At the same time, the relatively bulky engine does not “stick out” high - to reduce the center of gravity, it is located as low as possible, for which it was necessary to modify the sump. And the diesel engine did not “climb” into the cabin at all, like in the same Hummer.
Vyacheslav Zolotukhin from Krasnokamensk has a Toyota Land Cruiser 100 in his park, but for off-road travel he created his own version - Mega Cruiser Russia
UNIT CHANGES
Why is there some kind of Hummer, the cabin here is not a Spartan booth, but a spacious and cozy one, one might say, a cruise cabin with a magnificent view. It is based on a double and “wide-body” cabin from the Isuzu Elf truck, respectively, with “its” interior, although largely modified. But the rear part, that is, the luggage part, is borrowed from the Noah minivan! To connect it with the Elf cabin, it was necessary to expand the dimensions with inserts, and make the rear window original. The front ensemble is no less interesting. The wings are made using those from GAZ-3307, the hood is original production, the radiator grille is a composite of two grilles from Prado, and the headlights are from Delica.
The steering wheel is adapted from a Honda passenger car - with the steering mechanism from a 5-ton Hino, its smaller diameter did not affect the efforts, but the steering with it is sharper and faster than that of trucks.
The “cabin” comfortably accommodates 3 people in the back, not very cramped for four, in front there is a double passenger seat from HiAce, which “spins” and folds into a table.
Both bumpers are made in-house, made of metal. In general, Vyacheslav does not like to work with plastic, he trusts only metal, and makes things from it as it should be, carefully and accurately. Using our own know-how in technology. The fit of the parts is excellent, and all the joints with the necessary welding of the elements are invisible. For example, the front doors in their original version had cutouts for the wheel arches, but now they are solid, as if they were stamped that way by a Japanese assembly line. The original wheels were remade as if “inside out”; as a result, the offset of each wheel increased by 10 cm, that is, the track was widened by 20 cm, which, given the height of the car, added the necessary stability. I installed tires from the Tiger, they are smaller and lighter than the original ones from ’66. The front hubs are made detachable, and not with the help of fast, but low-resource “switches”. Here Vyacheslav used a much more timeless design similar to the closed threaded clutches on the GAZ-69 and UAZ. It requires two special keys and five minutes of time, but everything is extremely reliable.
For reliability, the body is mounted on the frame on 12 supports; according to the Japanese experience, each support is made of three rubber pads.
Test drives revealed “raw” areas in the structure. Thus, powerful torque and power were roughly applied to axles with a large gear ratio, “tailored” for a frail gasoline engine. The car drove jerkily, with a “catapulting” effect. In jeep tuning they usually raise the number, but here it was necessary to lower it. In addition, the car shook and tossed quite a bit due to the rigid suspension - the curb weight was only about 3.5 tons, which the GAZ-66 chassis hardly noticed. Oddly enough, the solution to the first problem was found with the help of GAZ - in the plant’s arsenal they found faster main pairs that were used on buses. The second question turned out to be more tricky. At first we experimented with the selection of springs, but somehow we could not achieve a good result. Then the highlight of the program was found - shock absorbers. In addition to everything else, the truck is also a “parachutist”! Its so-called double-action shock absorbers were designed for a hard landing, the likes of which do not exist in the Dakar. Instead of the original “jumpers”, Vyacheslav installed converted shock absorbers from KamAZ. In addition, the shortest and stiffest sheets from the spring packages were removed.
The wheels of the 66th are barely recognizable: the rims are “riveted” to widen the track, the bolts are made of stainless steel, and the tires are off-road KI-115A in size 12.00 R18, used on Tigers. And the front hubs have been independently redesigned with the ability to “disable” the wheels.
CELEBRATION OF THE UNFORMAT
That’s when “Mega-Shishiga” drove as we wanted: smoothly, softly and at the same time very confidently - the traction reserve made it possible not to resort to downshifting in most cases, even in meter-long snow on the slopes. But there is a lot of snow here, and in the conditions of the hills it is formed in a specific way: somewhere the wind blows it away, and somewhere it sweeps up entire dunes. Unfortunately, our meeting with Vyacheslav took place in conditions of melted snow, but even without that we managed to taste the delights of a truly extraordinary SUV in every sense. So huge and empty, it rides surprisingly easily and softly both on broken asphalt and across the steppe, dotted with furrows and rocks. He waddles over ditches and stones like a bear, with a calm gait, energy-intensive and without any “concussion”. The owner says that if the car is loaded, then it actually floats like an executive sedan. The landscape here is, in principle, flat and hard, but 40 km from here the forest begins, with holes and ruts. Due to lack of time, we did not go there, but Vyacheslav had already visited a lot of places. Of course, the dimensions will not allow maneuvering among dense tree trunks, but in this case there is no such need - the operating conditions are not the same.
The wheel weighs 80 kg, which forced us to strengthen the spare tire bracket more than once. It folds down, which makes access to the trunk difficult, but its solid door is planned to be converted into a more convenient double door in the future.
What’s more important is that in winter you can easily go skiing and snowboarding: there are no organized trails in the vicinity of Krasnokamensk, but there are as many wild slopes as you want - choose to suit every taste, and “Mega-Shishiga” will take you to the starting point without any lift. No noise or vibration bothers us, although no serious additional insulation was done. Supplying heat to a large salon is also no problem. Yes, at the same GAZ there are examples of small-scale construction of hooded all-terrain vehicles with all-metal bodies on the Sadko chassis, but those cars are very heavy, with problematic engines - they cannot drive off-road without a downshift and huge fuel consumption. The notorious “Tiger” on an armored personnel carrier with 7 tons of live weight and an electronically controlled diesel engine is also not a competitor. And Vyacheslav’s brainchild drives everywhere effortlessly and economically - on the highway at 80 km/h it consumes only about 13.5 liters. It took a year and a half to build the car, but three years have already passed since then! And the surprising thing is that the car is still almost unknown not only in the region, but even in Krasnokamensk itself - Vyacheslav does not advertise it, he almost never comes into the city. So the BMS should become an all-Russian premiere for this Transbaikal legend. Among those rare people who know, there were those who wanted to buy this off-road cruiser for good money and even offered a Lexus LX in exchange. Vyacheslav refuses, but is ready to consider an order for the construction of similar or other interesting machines. One such new project is already maturing and promises another exclusive, but the author has not yet talked about it.
Perhaps, even among American SUVs one cannot find such “humiliations” for the Toyota LC100.
