Cabovers

Yea man, these new trucks have ungodly ammount of engine power and torque ratings, but the drivetrain is, like the brits say," posh", a bunch of garbage.

I remember the Tatra T 813 8X8 of the 1970's, that with a crappy 17+liter naturally aspirated aircooled engine that was developing only 250bhp and some 900 ft/lbs torque, you moved 100 Tone loads on almost 100% gradients on winding serpentine mountain roads with hardly any pavement in some places.

Now we've got 750bhp, 2400 ft/lbs torque that basically spin the wheels on good dry pavement at only 25% gradient, digging holes in the asphalt and blowing tires trying to pull on a 100 T load.

You still have to use multiple tractor units cause of reduced ground adherence and really crappy reduction ratious in the drivetrain.

Where is the advantage? Maybe on flat and superior autobahn road surface that allows you to work those 750 ponies and really heat up and blow up little trailer tires at a high rates of speed.

I'd rather still use that T813 of the 70's and get the big momma where it's suposed to go in the driver's seat, without spendind the time under the trailer and truck replacing blown tires, U joints, drive shafts and clutches.

Tatra still has the best in the world driveline for on/off road heavy haul aplications. It's just that the engines are still somewhat underpowering the Tatra trucks.

Oh well, in heavy haul the engine power it's not as important as the proper gearing and ground adherence properties.

 

i agree on your post except some things

real heavy haulage truck have wet clutch , which than makes no strain on clutch u joints drive shafts as well as gearbox, drive tires and axles

tatra just recently introduced hub reduction axles which i would say are esencial for anybody who is considering offroad and heavy haulage

also when pulling hard tatra front axles go down and this reduce surface of tires to road

 

it is very hard to use conventional truck with long cab as twin steer , hard to put lot of weight on front this needs than long wheelbase....

maybe this is reason

 

Say what? "Tatra recently introduced hub reduction axles"????

Dude, I had a T813 8X8 Kolos and I know exactly how that thing was made!

The tranfer case(tower design) on which the trany was bolted on(in the midle of the truck) had the 1/2 gear split in the upper part, and the three settings on some models for direct, redused and deep reduction. and you had more ratio reduction in the half swing axles "diff" and some more reduction in the hub planetary gears!

What are you talking about?

You could really take that truck and set everything in LOW and pull a brick house off its foundation!

With the in cab, while in motion, tire inflation controls wou could literally increase road adherence in seconds by decreasing air presures in the tires and at a switch of a button, actually two red rocker switches right in front of your right hand on the dash you engage the 8X8 and diff lock for those no pavement near 100% gradiants.

Don't start explaining to me the T813, cause you'll lose this argument!



PS: Oh ya, I gues that it's a pleasure to hear that engine RPM go up just to pump oil in that toque converter!
Beautiful Allison thanys that keeps the engine constantly at 2000RPM even when you go at 1 mi/hour!

Nice, really nice!

I guess that I'm just a stubborn old fool, that likes the big iron engaging steel on steel all whe eay to where the rubber meets the road!

I know, it takes skill to drive that old stuff, unlike n'our days when thy like to put people just off the street in this trucks, and be able to drive them without an oz os skill!

Brave New World we live in!

 

Yea, you can hardly shift any waight on the steer axle in a 379 pit for example, cose of the configuration of the conventional design.

These pits are always in the max 10-11k lbs on the steer axle even whaen loaded at max. Legaly you can only be at 79k lbs GVW cause it's imposible to put that extra 1000 lbs on the steer.

 

Once again, you get what you order



Westbound:

Lets say that I don't agree with your thoughts, hope that's okay?
But I think US would turn it's economy over if it just stopped fighting stupid unnecessary wars.

More OT don't know if you are interested
Finland has a population of a bit over 5 million and very badly situated on the map for businesses
The biggest exporter from my region is probably Wärtsilä, engines for ships and power plants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOgq6Rgtz8c

 

about commercial trucks not military

 

you cant get crawler , and volvo manual is not up to level of engines , so only solution is to take slower diff ratio...

edit: what is that L? some kind of maneuvering mode?

 

He, he.....good one!

What's wrong with military trucks?

They work, dont they?

Oh, i know, not sa comfy and not as much plastic allover the place like in the commercial trucks!

LOL

Military trucks works for me!

PS: Just paint bright orange or red over the olive drab and you'll end up with a commercial truck!

LOL

 

It might stand for LOW! (L)

I don't know, just guessing!