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Unimog Axles


BlackMamba

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I strongly suspect in a demonstration of Russian commitment to overcome his legs were only attached by velcro - its almost a reclining driving position, the navigator seemed to spend most of his time running,

Winch is mechanical driven by chain and sprockets, steering is two double action rams (one on each "arm")

Width is somewhere similar to an SJ

chain through the arms down to driveshafts, I can only suss the drive as being a diff in the centre driving each side linked together, short wheel base would keep that relatively happy and only one locker required to lock the whole drive train

Air suspension meant he could jack it up for clearance or lay it down for the fast stuff - beautifully engineered, seriously effective - a real pleasure to watch B)

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are the chain drive sprockets for the winch the ones we see in the picture with the bonnet off? In which case, did he have an additional clutch for the winch?

as best we could all make out the front sprockets are winch drive through a dog clutch, more spying is going on as we speak but its a tricky bit of kit :ph34r:

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Ah... ok, on the right lines then.

Chain drive inside side swing arms, shaft drive from ends through tubes to wheels ?????

Canted for more ground clearance! Nice jobbie!

Yeah, but that's my point, if you 'cant it for clearance' all of a sudden you need 2 flexi joints per corner that weren't there a minute ago = more failure points. For such a small amount of clearance, why bother?

I'm still unclear as to which bit moves when it steers - the arms can't pivot at the body due to the suspension being attached and the chain 'preferring' to go in a straight line... :huh:

Sounds like it works great - I'd love to crawl around it!

Al. Mummy! Mummy! I want one! :P

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think of the impact forces the axles is seeing Al..

it has a swivel housing at the end of each front arm for steering :)

It does? Ahhh, ok I thought they looked kinda fixed, i don't think I've seen a pic where it's actually steering.

Cool. Al.

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Jez, if I was going to build something like this I'd look at a peice of ex military kit that's readily available to source the drive train. You'd get shaft drive down both sides and gearboxes at each corner. The donor vehicle had about 150 bhp, used 9.00 x 16s and weighted about 4 tonnes so strength isn't an issue. You'd need a differant main gearbox as you don't want pre-select (do you????) but it might well work. And the vehicle is........

...... A Daimler Ferret scout car

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If it's not hydro (still think it's worth pursuing),

I have been pondering over this, A farmer friend (who is into self build 4x4) reckons that he can get hold of crop sprayers that are breakers quite easily for £1500 - £2000.

Perhaps not up to the riggors of Jez's world, but could make an excellent toy/trialer?

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Jez, if I was going to build something like this I'd look at a peice of ex military kit that's readily available to source the drive train. You'd get shaft drive down both sides and gearboxes at each corner. The donor vehicle had about 150 bhp, used 9.00 x 16s and weighted about 4 tonnes so strength isn't an issue. You'd need a differant main gearbox as you don't want pre-select (do you????) but it might well work. And the vehicle is........

...... A Daimler Ferret scout car

Ferrets have what is known as a "H'' transmission system. Basically they have a single conventional differential behind the gearbox approx at midwheelbase. The halfshafts of this differential each go out to a bevel gear box on each side and then individual driveshafts go for and aft to right angle drives at each wheel. The problem is that on Ferrets,in spite of all the engineering and complexity, the single differential is not lockable, so that when a wheel loses traction and spins, the other wheel on the same side spins too, and both wheels on the other side go on strike and do nothing. The other problem is transmission windup on hard surfaces because the front and rear wheels on each side are permanently driven together without any front to rear differential.Windup really eats up the fragile bevel boxes apparently.I think the Ferret operators manual recommends that the driver alternately run each pair of wheels on each side on the soft shoulder of the road every 5 miles or so to releive windup .I don't know how you do that without driving on the wrong side of the road occasionally. The only thing I like about Ferrets is that they have epicyclic hub reduction, and a couple of years ago I unsuccessfully searched for a set of Ferret hubs to build a facimile of the Roadless Traction Land Rover, sometimes called the Forest Rover.

Bill.

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.....and weighted about 4 tonnes so strength isn't an issue.

dont confuse weight with strength though Will <_<

*listens for Dan muttering in the backround*

Rog - for trially based stuff hydro would be cool, donkey motor mounted wherever you wanted slugging into a pump, infinately variable speed.. :unsure:

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Bill, I've got a good friend who runs a couple of Ferrets both on and off road and its surprising how well they do. Appart from the HUGE weight they're very capable off road and make a good recovery vehicle. They'd happily get all the places an open diffed LR would. As far as wind up goes its never posed a problem on these 2 vehicles and they're never curbed; its much more of an issue on his Saracen (6x6 with simerlar transmission). The transmission's also pretty bullet proof; after he accired one of the vehicles he wen't to go and check the oil level in the main gearbox (the filler plug and dip stick were hard to get to) and found the dipstick was totally rusty! :huh: It ran fine before and hasn't caused problems since!

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Bill, I've got a good friend who runs a couple of Ferrets both on and off road and its surprising how well they do. Appart from the HUGE weight they're very capable off road and make a good recovery vehicle. They'd happily get all the places an open diffed LR would. As far as wind up goes its never posed a problem on these 2 vehicles and they're never curbed; its much more of an issue on his Saracen (6x6 with simerlar transmission). The transmission's also pretty bullet proof; after he accired one of the vehicles he wen't to go and check the oil level in the main gearbox (the filler plug and dip stick were hard to get to) and found the dipstick was totally rusty! :huh: It ran fine before and hasn't caused problems since!

Will, I know a bloke from Dorset (Richard Watton) who once had a 6x6 Stalwart. He made front and centre axle disconnects to make it 6x2 when used on road. The Stalwarts and Saracens had a Detroit No Spin in the single differential, so windup would be a bigger problem.

When the Australian military sold off their Ferrets many years ago, a few were bought by farmers hoping they would make a resonable tractor, but the mechanical gear reduction was quite tall, around 34:1 and quite a few cooked the fluid flywheel when trying to pull heavy loads.

By ''Curbed'', do you mean bouncing off curbs? I read somewhere that was another method of relieving windup stress on them when driven on sealed roads.

Bill.

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Frazier stopped going the portals some time ago, they had a couple of sets left over about a year back but at £7.5k a pair for what the extremely honest and very nice bloke on the phone described as "they were a nightmare" I dont think they are going to be a lot of use :( the steering computer on the other hand........... yummy, crab, track, follow, rear or front steer - very very cool

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Just thought I would advise that I have just had a friend in Malaysia let me know that he is reluctantly abandoning a Volvo C series 6x6 restoration project and will therefore have 3 Volvo portal axles for sale (and other bits if wanted). These are the 7.14:1 ratio axles. He is looking for USD 4,000 for these so that even when you add shipping costs, it's a deal.

I will be on holiday the evening of the 12th onward for two and half weeks and will not be checking in here, but if you are interested, PM me and I will see it when I get back.

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Will, I know a bloke from Dorset (Richard Watton) who once had a 6x6 Stalwart. He made front and centre axle disconnects to make it 6x2 when used on road. The Stalwarts and Saracens had a Detroit No Spin in the single differential, so windup would be a bigger problem.

When the Australian military sold off their Ferrets many years ago, a few were bought by farmers hoping they would make a resonable tractor, but the mechanical gear reduction was quite tall, around 34:1 and quite a few cooked the fluid flywheel when trying to pull heavy loads.

By ''Curbed'', do you mean bouncing off curbs? I read somewhere that was another method of relieving windup stress on them when driven on sealed roads.

Bill.

Bill, yep, the service manual for the Saracen states that you should bounce the vehicle off curbs every few miles to relieve wind up. Its a bit impractical, though, as you tend to scare other road users and pedestrians rather a lot :unsure:

I've never looked on the Saracen but on the Ferret going 4X2 is pretty easy: just lift 2 covers in the cabin and remove 2 propshafts.

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