"Tractor" diary. Elgrand from Siberia. E50.

dognero · Mar 21, 2022

Nice to see the old girl is keeping you busy mate.

George322 · Mar 21, 2022

It sound like he is keeping the young girl busy as well.

ELSib · May 6, 2022

Good afternoon friends. While Elgrand is driving, doing the work of a truck (planting season), and I have the opportunity and free time at work over a cup of tea with lemon to tell you about my history of car ownership.
You ask why? I don’t know, I want you, my friends, to understand the “culture” of the Siberians, our love for wildlife, respect for the ancestors and peoples who lived here and live in their faith (Shamanism, Buddhism).
Let's start.
Part 1. Childhood, UAZ.
I was born and live in the Irkutsk region, Irkutsk. My city is located on the Angara River, which flows into Lake Baikal. The location of the city is ideal - it is only 100 km to Lake Baikal, there are many rivers Irkut, Oka, Lena, Angara, Ushakovka, Olkha, Snezhnaya, Belaya, in general, there are a lot (about 30 rivers). Almost all of these rivers are mountainous. There is a lot of forest, coniferous forest - majestic cedars, pines, firs, fir, various types of juniper. I really love the coniferous forest, it breathes freely and somehow especially.
My father, even in his youth, went hiking (train - tent - taiga). When he got a UAZ-469 car, I had no choice, I went with him. UAZ-469 1982. My father bought it in 1999, I was 10 years old. It was a military UAZ decommissioned from “conservation” (which means that it was stored in a military unit for a very long time), with a disassembled engine. My father has a lot of experience in car repair before UAZ, he had a lot of USSR cars (Zaporozhets, Moskvich 412, Lada 2107, 2105), he also had foreign cars Toyota Vista 1992, Pantiak Grand America, etc. On long summer evenings, my father and I were repairing this UAZ, as it constantly broke down. It was my first experience of driving a car and the first experience of "unscrewing nuts" on a car. In terms of off-road characteristics, UAZ is a Monstr. There is no comfort, the interior is iron, the roof is tent, there is no hydraulic booster. All that is there is a powerful frame, a body, 4 wheels and a carburetor engine. In general, it's like your Defender. In the USSR and Russia, the UAZ 469 was called a “goat”, because having a spring suspension, it was unrealistically stiff and moving along the highway, it bounced like a goat) In general, they drove this goat through the taiga (picked berries, mushrooms, hunting, fishing) - wild Siberian tourism. The goat stayed with us for 3 years, where he just was not and drowned in the swamp, and overcame the serpentine, rolled down into the river during the night. (I will try to take photos of the goat and trips from my parents, scan them ... I have long wanted to do this).
This is how my love for wildlife, for large square 4x4 cars and their repair was laid. Here are photos not of our UAZ (will be later), I found about the same UAZ, the same color and roof.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/nUutZd13Sf2rhA1j7
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ycDtPVWrLeHPi8Kv7

Sorry for my English.
Boris.

ELSib · May 6, 2022

Part 2. Japanese drive. Our region The Irkutsk region borders on the Far East region, only about 5000 km from the city of Vladivostok. The end of the 90s for the Eastern region and for our Siberian marked a new automotive era. All residents from the East to the Urals saw and felt what a real car is..
Let's compare. In the 90s, the average resident of our town could only dream of a car in general! The 90s were gloomy .. The heyday of crime, drug trafficking. Of course, the iron curtain collapsed and Western culture began to come to us en masse (I consider myself to be part of the MTV generation, this particular channel, programs, love for music that turned a blind eye to the general horror of the 90s). Thanks to this Western culture, I was able to see how people live, what kind of houses and cars they have. Bewitching watched TV shows (Friends, Seinfeld, Taxi with Edie Kaufman, The Benny Hill Show, Monty Python (classic), The Muppet Show (forever in my heart) and much more). In general, it seemed that there was still some kind of hope ... It was possible to buy a new Lada 2107 or 2105 from the factory. But it was possible to buy at the car market an almost new Japanese car like the Nissan Skyline of 1995, without running through Russia. Feel the difference?? Lada 2107 is a Fiat body of ancient years, 4 wheels. There was no steering wheel, doors and a stove (air conditioning, climate control, ABS, Airbag, etc. were not there to this day, only since 2017 something similar has appeared in Lada). Skyline is a classic and I think it needs no introduction.
Our flatmate had a Nissan Safari in the back of the U60. It was then that I fell in love with this car and still consider it the best off-road vehicle in Japan (sorry Toyota lovers, I appreciate the land cruiser and it is really a great and legendary car, but Safari was the first). How do you understand the spirit of freedom and choice let at least the car was present))).
Father buys in 2002 Nissan Terrano 1993 .. the legendary diesel engine TD27 (hello QD32), turbine, automatic transmission. Having traveled to Terrano as a passenger, I no longer wanted to get out of it .. It was a ship .. My father started his own business and Terrano became a good assistant to him in this. Trips to nature have become rare, but memorable. Terrano endured everything that Russian roads and off-road prepared for him. Of the breakdowns was only a small crack in the windshield. Until 2005, Terrano served our family, then my father sold it to his good friend, and ...
.. My father bought a 1995 Nissan Patrol with a TD42 atmospheric diesel engine, manual transmission .. It was brought from the Arab Emirates on leasing to an oil company in Siberia .. And in Irkutsk, my father bought it when the company was updating its fleet of cars.
About Patrol will be a rather large and separate part. This car then I took over from my father and it was my first independent experience of owning a car.

ELSib · May 6, 2022

Part 3. Heavy equipment.
Nissan Patrol.. Legend.. Immortal.. Eternal.. Duncan McLaut in the SUV universe. You can kill him if... you can't... And so .. TD42 diesel engine .. In-line atmospheric 6-cylinder engine. Cast iron block, cast iron block head. What else is needed? A mechanical winch driven by a power take-off (our patrol did not have a mechanical winch) .. This engine is able to withstand several overheats (personally verified), while maintaining the factory compression parameters ... It is able to process any diesel fuel, from the very outskirts of Siberia, made in self-made "samovars" (checked personally). 2 fuel filters, 2 oil filters, 2 batteries with a capacity of 105 Ah. Starts up to -40 without preheating (checked personally). In 2009, I already grew my hair, wore a leather jacket, listened to heavy metal, black metal (classic English hard rock, classic Norwegian black metal). And so the father decides to buy Defender 90 2008 release. Selling a patrol is a crime. So I embarked on a gamble and took over Patrol. By 2009, Patrol had already seen a lot .. I got it already in a tired state, and obviously asked for suspension repairs .. I decided to add a little tuning and with my friend we began to make “power” tuning from metal. So I mastered welding ....
Some metal:

"Tractor" diary. Elgrand from Siberia. E50.

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