HARTUNG steel wheels at Silk Road 2017 Rally

Cross Country Rally Silk Road is one of the main international rallies. It is summer off-road rally. This year it was held within the territory of 3 countries: Russia, Kazakhstan and China. Technical support specialists of Nizhnekamsk KAMAZ-master team followed the team through Silk Road 2017 in trucks, equipped with HARTUNG wheels.

Typical Russian weather and complex route could not interfere with KAMAZ-master team to win the rally and to demonstrate high proficiency for the second time. Absolutely all prizes in trucks category were won by KAMAZ-master team members: 1st place – Dmitry Sotnikov, 2nd place -Anton Shibalov, 3rd place - Ayrat Mardeev.

Trucks is a separate category in cross country rallies. The beauty of this category is that the participants are common tractor trucks and rallying offroad vehicles, designed specially for DAKAR and Silk Road. The rally truck bed is almost empty – all spare parts are in the rally support truck. This time new four-axles rally support truck К 3850 of Nizhnekamsk KAMAZ-master team, equipped with reinforced HARTUNG wheel of special design, was loaded with not only spare parts, but also tyres and service equipment.

Cryochamber, which makes possible to cool for a short period of time outer layers of skin up to -150 Celsius, also followed the team on HARTUNG wheels. KAMAZ team was the first to take with them “express frost” to pick up the pieces team members, exhausted with heat..

‘’Rally support trucks are loaded with spare parts - from small to large fragments of chassis or steering to their maximum. In case of accident or failure rally support trucks are prompt enough to reach the team truck and eliminate the failure. Another one question is what’s more difficult – to be the number one or follow the team in the loaded support truck, keeping up with the team truck,” – CHKPZ head of engineering department Andrey Ivanov says.

Requirements to wheel disks are strict as for rallies new modification of support trucks is designed. Now it is four-axle truck with wheel arrangement 8х8 and load capacity 32 tons. The aim was to produce reinforced pressed wheels with size 20x10 for tubeless tyres. This wheel structure was patented by CHKPZ 2 years ago and currently there no analogues in Russia.

For KAMAZ-master we developed additional reinforced wheel structure, which allows to raise payload up to 6,5 tons.

Silk Road 2017 Rally is over and we’re looking forward to next year rally!