Delta project
The Delta project was a big export order for the (West) German commercial vehicle industry in the 1970s to supply 9,500 trucks , 1,000 tractors , loader - trailers and spare parts worth a total of around 1.1 billion DM to the Soviet Union . The vehicles were mainly used to build the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) as a branch line of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Transsib) . Some of the vehicles, after being used again in railway construction in the 2000s, are still in use today on construction sites or oil fields in Siberia, as well as being misused as long- haul tractor units.
The truck order
Represented by the Soviet "Allunions-Handelsgesellschaft", the Soviet Union ordered around 9,500 heavy trucks from the then commercial vehicle manufacturer Magirus-Deutz in 1974 , which were used to build the Baikal-Amur Magistrale as a branch line of the Transsib through Siberia . These were to Langhauber with air-cooled KHD - diesel engines (type Eckhauber the third generation as presented in 1971 on the market). Two variants without delivered substantially all-wheel drive : a tri-axial with ten-cylinder - V-type engine with direct injection type F10L413 with 290 hp and a gross vehicle weight of 26 tons (types M290D26K 6x4 and M290D26L 6x4) and a biaxial smaller also direkteinspritzendem eight-cylinder V -Motor of the type F8L413 with 232 HP and 19 tons gross vehicle weight (types M232D19K 4x2 and M232D19L 4x2).
In order to achieve a cheaper package price, the Soviets did without the all-wheel drive that was available from the factory and did not order the top model of the series with the designation M310D26AK 6x6 or M310D26AL 6x6 and 305 hp, which appeared in 1973 . In order to still achieve good off-road mobility , all vehicles were equipped with differential locks on the rear axles . For the expected heavy use, they also all received two raised air intake pipes and additional headlights next to the grille on the bumper . The orange color scheme was also uniform , as this is best visible in snow . The supply contract was signed in Moscow on October 2, 1974 .
In addition to Magirus-Deutz's extensive experience in the manufacture of heavy and robust construction vehicles (which at that time made up around 60% of Magirus-Deutz's total production), the engines in particular were a main reason for placing the order with this manufacturer: Due to the extreme sub-zero temperatures in Siberia a requirement of the client to deliver trucks with an operational readiness of −45 to +30 ° C. The air-cooled diesel engines from Magirus-Deutz manufactured by KHD had a decisive advantage over the water-cooled engines used by almost all other well-known commercial vehicle manufacturers in the world , since air-cooled engines have no cooling water that could freeze in winter or boil in summer. Magirus-Deutz achieved operational readiness for its trucks down to temperatures of −57 ° C. This enabled the company to assert itself against competitors from Japan , West Germany and the Eastern Bloc , who had also tried to win the major order from the Soviet Union. The other European and Japanese manufacturers dropped out because of the lower resistance to cold of their water-cooled constructions, the manufacturers from the other Eastern Bloc countries also did not achieve the required operational readiness at low temperatures and also had insufficient production capacities. This was especially true for the Tatra Mountains from the former Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic ) and TAM from the former Yugoslavia (now in Slovenia ), which also manufactured air-cooled diesel engines (in the latter case, curiously, under license from Magirus-Deutz).
Irony of history: Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz (KHD) , the parent company of Magirus-Deutz, its air-cooled engines had in 1942 during the Second World War developed because the Wehrmacht urgently frost-proof motors for their vehicles for the Russian campaign needed, which at launch In 1944 there was still no mass production of these truck engines and the number of units was therefore limited until the end of the war. And now (around 30 years later) this invention, originally directed against them, was benefiting the Soviet Union for a prestigious major building project of historic importance.
In order to be able to fulfill the largest order in the company's history by 1976, as required by the Soviets, Magirus-Deutz had to employ around 800 additional employees and, in some cases, work special shifts. On November 19, 1976, the order was completed and the last truck rolled off the production lines by rail towards Siberia. Most of the vehicles (since they were manufactured from 1975) had the Magirus-Deutz logo and an IVECO emblem in the top right-hand corner of the radiator grille when viewed from the front, after the company and other manufacturers in Europe had this new commercial vehicle run by Fiat that year -Corporation had joined.
The superstructures for the trucks also came from Germany: Tipping skips , loading platforms , box bodies with mobile workshops for the location-independent maintenance and repair of trucks and construction machinery , concrete mixers , timber transporters , side loaders - cranes for loading and transporting up to were placed on the chassis from Magirus-Deutz 24 meter long pipes and liquid tanks were installed. The companies Kässbohrer , Klaus Multiparking, Kögel , Köpf Fahrzeugbau , Meiller , Orenstein & Koppel , Rhein-Bayern and Joseph Vögele worked on the superstructures .
After the client had miscalculated the performance of the ordered trucks and it turned out that fewer trucks were needed for the work to be performed than had been ordered, about a third of the Magirus-Deutz delivered were not used to build the BAM, but for others Tasks used within the Soviet Union, e.g. B. for the development of oil fields in Siberia . Even after the end of the BAM construction, the trucks continued to prove their worth under the toughest geographical and climatic conditions.
Some of the Delta project trucks are still in use today (as of 2006) in Russia (especially in Yakutia ), either on construction sites or on oil fields. The dump trucks were also used again in the 2000s to build the Amur-Yakut Magistrale , the approximately 1,100 km long branch line of the BAM from Tynda to Yakutsk , which was halfway completed by 2010 . The other trucks are mainly used in the three-axle version for other purposes than long-distance tractor units.
The tractor order
Unsettled also in Germany commercial vehicle manufacturer Faun was given the additional task 86 rugged and off-road four-wheel - tractors to build. These were hooded tractors of the type HZ34.30 / 41 with 326 hp from a V12 Deutz engine, also air-cooled. The vehicles held a lifting capacity of 60 tons and were together with low loader - semi-trailers from Kögel delivered.
The Faun tractors, which, like the Magirus-Deutz trucks, have proven themselves very well due to the air-cooled KHD diesel engines, are still in use today on major construction sites in Russia.
literature
- Dieter Augustin: IVECO Magirus - All trucks from the Ulm plant since 1917. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-613-02600-7 .
- Bernd Regenberg, Paul-Ernst Strähle: The truck album MAGIRUS. Podszun-Verlag, Brilon 2005, ISBN 3-86133-388-0 .
- Till Schauen: Eastern expansion - 9500 bulls for Siberia , in: Last & Kraft, issue 6/2016, October / November 2016, pp. 8-17