This Soviet Nuclear Megatruck Was A Complete Joke. Or Was It?

designed under Auto secrecy the Soviets began development of a massive tractor in complete Shadow Road testing it From Dusk Till Dawn with Western tires categorized for a huge dump truck as the largest Soviet military vehicle the maaz 7904 had to utilize a ship engine and had several inherent fatal flaws that prematurely ended the progress certain military items are too large to be developed simply behind closed doors and require more than just night testing to prevent disclosure in the early 1980s during the pig of the Cold War the Soviets continued the arms race and started working on a massive missile carrier it was purposly constructed for the energy heavy lifa system for The Bu and spacecraft merely as a guise for the entire program in reality it was just another cold war attempt to intimidate the other side serving as a basis for the new groundbased missile rt23 system a rocket with 10 Warheads weighing 100 tons with a range of 10,000 kilomet during the USSR era the Minsk Automobile Plant was responsible for all kinds of wheed military vehicles but this was the most ambitious and largest task at the time the first and only prototype was ready in 1983 measuring 33 m in length 6.8 m in width and weighing a staggering 140 tons all this heavy steel was meant to carry up to 220 tons resulting in gross vehicle weight rating of 360 tons in total equal to about 60 African elephants the chassis was equipped with three 2xo trolleys to cope with such weight but the Soviets were unable to produce such tires for their ambitious project they turned to the Japanese Bridgestone to develop 51 in tires capable of bearing 30 tons of weight each each tire was 2.8 m in diameter the Soviets even told them that they were for a new mining dump truck just to disguise them at least the sovet engineers learned a lesson from the non-amp zil 135 and used independent hydropneumatic suspension on this vehicle the power maaz 7904 Engineers employed an intriguing solution inside there were two engines with the first one being the yams 238f a 14.8 L turbocharged diesel delivering 330 horsepower typically used for regular trucks here the V8 ran all the accessory systems such as steering brakes and power generation the main for stroke V12 unit was derived from a marine diesel power plant made by Zesta and was mounted between in the cabins originally the m351 name suggest a61 lead of displacement but the 7904 is set to be propelled by a 42.4 l variant producing 1,500 horsepower its power was transmitted through two four-speed Transmissions To All Wheel as mentioned the first prototype was built between 1982 and 1983 and underwent tests in late 1983 testing was strictly coordinated with the vehicle only being deployed at night and only if there were no foreign spy satellites over belarussian territory after covering approximately 550 kilm it was disassembled and transported way to cosmodrome boner in Kazakhstan for the second stage of development it traveled an additional 4100 kilomet revealing significant design flaws a maximum speed of only 27 km/ hour two few axles to cope with immense weight and a massive turning radius of 50 m it also exhibited poor handling and could only be driven on soft offr terrain due to a flawed wheel bearing design the ma 7904 was the largest wheel military vehicle ever made in the USSR development was halted after serious issues were discovered and due to the launch of a new replacement project the maaz 7907 was designed more thoroughly from the early development stage while it had twice as many wheels it was smaller in every Dimension and used a more advanced propulsion system with gas cine engines serving as generators to power traction Motors the maaz 7904 was left unattended for so long that severe rust eventually led to its crapping in 2010 fortunately the video game mudrunner does feature this behem [Music]

Channel: VisioRacer

Views: 46,988

Keywords: VisioRacer, engine, sound

Id: -LiOEcbtNbg

Length: 6min 18sec (378 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024