It's Saturday morning and while I'm waiting for the gunk to clean the limescale off the shower (well what else do you do on a Saturday?) I thought I'd offer you this little story about a trip I did back in 1989 from Munich to Moscow with MAN and MAZ. At that time MAN was selling 12-litre engines to MAZ for its top-weight tractor (that's it on the right) so some PR bright-spark decided to run two MAN artics to MInsk, where MAZ was based, then having been joined by two MAZ tractors, we'd continue our journey to Mosciow where yours truly would bail out and flight home. The outward bound leg took 10-days at a time when there wasn't much mobile phone coverage east of the West German border (and not much around there either!)
At the end of the trip (which I made with four other journos from across Europe - talk about a polyglot bunch) we ended up parking the trucks in Red Square by St Peter's Basilica - I wouldn't try it now. Remember this was before the well came down...) Now click through here for more...
Having crossed the East German border into Poland at Franfurt an der Oder we then spent a night in Poland before starting early and trundling through to the Russian border where I recall we had to transit before 8:00 in the evening or wait till the next day. This is yours truly doing something to the MAN's electrics. I can't for the life of me remember what the problem was (and no I wasn't disconneting the limiter...) although as we hurrried through Poland I seem to remember we did pick up a speeding ticket...
Arriving at the MAZ plant in Minsk we got to interview the MD, the political commissar and the chief engineer. I think the poltical commissar answered most of the questions - including the ones that weren't addressed to him! That and the fact that at that time the market for new trucks in Russia was a staggering 500,000 a year - and most of which was being met by the domestic suppliers under a 'five-year plan' sort of arrangement whereby one manufacturer built rigids, another artics, then another tippers and so on...the chief engineer was a larger version of Oskar Homolka if you know who he was! Larger than life and great fun.
After a night over we then hitched up the two MAZ tractors to a couple of dodgy test trailers and hit the road... I was driving one of the MAZ trucks with their own test trailer - the MAZ looked like an original Iveco TurboStar on the ouside and a Scammell Crusader on the inside.. I emntiond the Iveco resemblance to the chief enginer and he got quite shirty. No MAZ is MAZ!" he shouted at me. Anyway as we were going around a clover leaf entry to the autoroute to Moscow I noticed my trailer leaning over in a rather alarming manner! Gingerly I straightened up and stopped and went to investigate... Whereupon we found that the support arm (hanger bracket) for the leaf spring on the trailer's leading axle had come away from the chassis... On closer investigation it was obvious it had happended before as the old 're-weld' marks were there to see!
Anyroadup to cut a long story short we eventually made it to Moscow where we parked up at the enromous transport yard and complex belonging to the major state-run operator Sovtransavto... Whereupon the next day (after a rather late night) one of our 'team' and (no it wasn't me) managed to drop the front end of one of the MAN's down the inspection pit, shearing off the nuts on the bottom of the U-Bolt holding the front axle to the springs...
After having eventuially extricated the truck (I can't remember how... But it involved a lot of shouting and gesticulating) we could see the damage to the U-bolt and it was obvious the truck couldn't be driven with the axle 'loose' like that. So what do do? Well the Russians took one look at it, pulled out the damaged U-bolt and took it into their massive workshops where one of the fitters took a piece of mild steel bar, bent it to the same shape (as you can see in this picture with Thomas Arzburger from MAN's demo centre) as the MAN U-Bolt, threaded both ends, hammered it back through the axle flange holes and air-gunned the nuts back on. tight! Job done. I often wondered how they managed to get it out back in Munich! But boy could those Russian guys improvise!
At the time Sovtransavto were running a mainly Merc fleet and here's one of them. My apologies for the rather poor picture quality but I've had to scan them in from an old copy of Transporama, the Belgian magzine - the late Leo Nuyens was one of the journos who came with me. It was he who nicknamed me 'Mr Schnell' on account of I didn't like hanging around, although those Russian roads certainly made rapid movement 'interesting'.
It was also on that trip that I drank so much vodka at the official dinner (what with all the countless toasts and so, and that's my excuse m'lud) that I actually ended up seeing double. Not a good idea. That night I had to stand under a cold shower for two-hours before I could eventually lie down. By then at least the bed had at least stopped flying around the room... But that's a story for another time. Fortunately I wasn't driving the next day...
Interesting stuff Brian and "thanks for sharing" as they say. And for the real clever clogs amongst your anorak army what model is the little yellow MAZ on the plinth outside the MAZ works and what engine did it have? An even bigger pie if anyone can give us the model 'emblem'.