Hello from Russian Truck owner

[Heyupluv]

I am a female, Neil is the Male.

I think I will go for diaroheea colour, hopefully that will put them off.

Pat

I think that is a good move

Mel

 

[Zoltan Gaz66]

Heyuplus

Love that bus,the red and white strips are fantastic, and it has a side opening door.

Zoltan, we are looking at a MB 1017a because it comes with the pivoting subframe. Plus on the positive side there are thousands of Mercedes Benze trucks out there, so theorotically more parts available around the world.

Absolutely love the look of your truck it looks mean, which will be great for wild camping.

Pat

We were originally going to try and get our under 7.5 tons, but Neil has taken his HGV licence just in case. We have friends who have managed to convert theirs to under 7.5 tons. But with the plans we have I think it will be under 7.5 tons without water and fuel.
But were are constantly looking for ways of achieving the under 7.5 tons mark.

The Mercedes is a good choice and as you say you'll find parts everywhere if you need them. I think my box weighs about 1.5t on a 3 tonne truck. Add some clutter and its easy to see the difficulty of building everything down.

Neil's done the right thing getting some training. Nothing like the baptism of fire for me of going to collect my purchase (Scarborough to Kent) and jumping into a unknown LHD truck with zero offside visibility, curious road manners and a crash gearbox

Are you planning to build the box yourselves? When I was in DAF mode I was thinking this way but by the time I'd added up the huge pile of materials the Gaz became cheaper and cheaper. Plus I was impatient to drive the truck and didn't want a year long project on top of the other years of projects.
The Russian insulated boxes pop up cheaply from time to time and if you want a side door they are easy enough to fit in, a number of the Russian Truck forum members have chopped their boxes around a great deal.

The Russian boxes have about an inch of high quality foam between the skins (ply/foam/ply/aluminium) and the floor is about 2 inches thick with a ply/foam/ply sandwich

That red and white truck looks like a Russian box on a MB chassis (Nez de Cochon?) Brilliant colour scheme. The danger of mine is it might get mistaken in a more hostile environment. A coupe of Aussies overlanding in a Gaz were running through Syria and Jordan and repainted theirs quickly on the road to detune its military looks

The other problem I have to face for my trip is getting an export license as it is ex military and some EU countries are a bit funny about ex military stuff

Good to hear of your plans :thumb:

 

[Pat4Neil]

We are going to have our classified as a motorhome. Not sure about self building the body, we have priced up the box being built in Germany (loads of dosh) but better resale value. However we have a contact in England who is willing to build to our specification. We will be doing everything else, and easily envisage it taking a year, plus trying out.

It is a dream we have had for a long time and has so far been 18months in the planning, will buy the truck later part of next year. Strip the vehicle down and general maintenance and modifications, paint the chassis.

The have the body built, we are going for a crawl through, as when camped up wild somewhere across the world, I want to be able to escape. It has a gun hatch too, but that was going a bit to far

Sounds like your box is insulated can you stand up in it, and walk about easily. Because we are going to spend a lot of time in it, constantly for several years it has got to be comfortable and functional.

Anyhow I am suppose to be packing the motorhome, for the offski.

Pat

 

[Zoltan Gaz66]

I'm a whisker under 6 foot and I can stand in the centre of the box although I keep banging my head on the clumpy Russian lights

Thinking of getting one of those tank commander hats

I really want a crawl through just not sure how best to achieve it: plus insulate it and ensure chassis flexibility, oh and my cab tips

I almost fell off my chair when I saw the prices of the Unicat overlanders

The fun for me is the tinkering although in the interests of getting mine done I have bought some things rather than make them

Enjoy your trip, offski or off + ski?

 

[pappajohn]

"Presently the Gaz does a scarily low 10 mpg"

welcome to the wonderfully scary world of the gas guzzler !
sounds about average for a large V engine

6.8ltr petrol V10 Ford Triton ...... 10mpg ...8.5mpg on gas:Sad:

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[Zoltan Gaz66]

Thanks, I was going to ask what sorts of consumption figures people were achieving both with the 2.5 and 2.8 turbo diesels in the newer vans and the US RV V8's and V10's

What doesn't help mine are the aggressive offroad tyres and 4WD. Apparently there are some free wheeling hubs made somewhere? but you would then lose the central tyre inflation system which is particularly useful off road. Each additional mile per gallon is worth fighting for on a long run

Looks like I'm doing the LPG thing for the time being with a 140 litre tank. I lose one fuel tank and one of the 4 battery boxes. All replaceable later on if I go somewhere with no LPG. For the time being LPG will be available where the Gaz is going

 

[pappajohn]

my last eurobox was a 2.8ltr turbo ducato @ 3.85t which gave around 26mpg.....25mpg towing a small corsa.

the Rv at 7.5t has 3 lpg tanks..70ltr, 70 ltr and 55ltr...total 195ltr...but, for reasons as yet unknown, i can only get 135ltr in which gives me around 240 miles before switching back to petrol.

 

[rainbow chasers]

Great little truck! Mate had a Zil for a while - but that was too big! Run them for free if you find a local recovery company that will let you take away the contaminated fuel. Not sure if the gaz is fussier or not - but they are closely related, so might be worth seeing if they are multi fuel or not.:thumb:

 

[Zoltan Gaz66]

Most of the Russian trucks will run contam quite happily in fact it probably runs better on it if you can find it. I don't want it to get addicted to free or cheap fuel otherwise it might get picky when we are away