Kori Pontoon Marsh Buggy

The Kori Pontoon Marsh Buggy is a heavy amphibious work vehicle built by the Kori Corporation to carry people and materials from staging areas to work sites in wetlands. It is routinely customised to carry cable plows, cranes, winches, lift platforms or geophysical drilling rigs; Kori had some 25 years' experience as a Caterpillar equipment manufacturer for amphibious excavators.

Design

The machine rides on two large pontoons, each 8.8 m long, 1.52 m wide and 1.76 m high and weighing about 8.2 tonnes. They are built of Cor-ten steel, which resists corrosion in brackish water far better than ordinary structural steel, with reinforced bottoms for rough ground and five independent watertight compartments each, so the pontoon stays afloat if one is holed. Tracks of extruded aluminium channel shoes run on three strands of heavy roller chain around each pontoon, in channels hard-faced to match roller wear.

A Caterpillar 3208 DITA diesel of 245 hp (182.5 kW) drives variable-displacement piston pumps feeding independent hydraulic motors and sealed planetary final drives for each pontoon, so each track can be driven forward, in reverse or counter-rotated. As a basic personnel carrier the buggy weighs about 23 tonnes, carries 3,636 kg, exerts only 0.137 kg/cm2 (1.4 psi) on the ground, develops up to 10,847 kg of drawbar pull and travels at up to 4.8 km/h.