Gusev Odyssey 6x6

The Odyssey amphibians are a series of home-built six-wheel-drive cross-country vehicles made by Anatoliy Gusev of Angarsk, near Lake Baikal in Russia. He built the first in early 2006 and a second a few years later, and the machine described here was nearly finished in summer 2009. Each new vehicle used parts from the one before. The Russian magazine article in the archive calls the latest one bigger and more mature, and notes it had no name yet, perhaps "Odyssey-2".

Design

As on the Alvis Stalwart and the ZIL-4906 cosmonaut-recovery vehicle, the three axles are equally spaced. This 1-1-1 layout removes the ramp-angle limit and spreads the load, but makes the transmission and suspension harder to design. Gusev steered both the front and the rear axles. The rear steering, worked by UAZ track rods, can be switched off for normal road driving. The suspension uses his own design of trailing transverse arms, a development of the LuAZ-based layout of his first machine. The vehicle runs on 35x13.5-16 Maxxis Mudzilla tyres.

The engine is a 2.0-litre Nissan CD20 diesel of 76 hp and 132 Nm, with a Nissan five-speed gearbox. Drive passes through a Niva transfer case, a home-made second transfer case for the rear axles, LuAZ differentials with locks, and hub reduction gears built from ZIL gearbox parts. The overall gearing is very low, so the machine climbs easily but is slow. The reporter estimated a top speed of about 40 km/h, and conditions inside were noisy and hot. The body was intended to carry up to ten people and a good deal of luggage.

Afloat

At the time of the article the hull still needed sealing. Propulsion afloat was to come from two propellers taken from Vikhr outboard motors, fed by an extra transfer case. The reporter wondered whether the vehicle, at over three tonnes fully loaded, would float high enough. During testing one suspension arm broke, and the machine was tried on Lake Baikal over the summer.

The article closes with notes on the ZIL-4906 "Sinyaya Ptitsa" (Blue Bird) search-and-recovery vehicle and the non-amphibious ZIL-4972, as the nearest factory-built relatives.