Voyager 44A

The Voyager 44A, nicknamed Itik-Itik, is a privately built amphibious 4x4 intended for long-distance world travel by its owner and his wife. It was inspired by earlier amphibious adventurers such as Ben Carlin's Half-Safe. The owner first dreamt of it in 2000 and started building in 2002, expecting the job to take six months and cost $50,000. By early 2008 it had taken more than ten times as much of both.

Design

The owner chose to build in the UK because of the Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) route to road registration. Work started from the mould patterns of Tim Dutton's Commander kit amphibian but was extensively modified. The drivetrain, solid axles and leaf springs came from a Suzuki Samurai, and the 1.4-litre common-rail diesel from a Toyota Yaris. These are mounted on a mild-steel tubular internal chassis inside a hand-laid glassfibre and foam sandwich hull. Air-operated front and rear differential locks help it get up and down riverbanks without a winch, assisted by three 2.2 m glassfibre bridging ladders. Afloat it is driven by a single 250 mm Ultradynamics jet pod through a power take-off from the transfer case. At first it steered in the water with its front wheels, with a rudder planned for later.

The vehicle is 5.36 m long and only 1.67 m wide. It weighs 1,484 kg at kerb weight and has a gross vehicle mass of 1,820 kg. Seating is limited to two to save weight, though there is room to sleep inside. The design targets were about 120 km/h on the road and 6 knots (about 11 km/h) on water.

Construction

The work passed through several contractors. A minimal shell first drove under its own power in late 2005, and the vehicle was completed at an engineering firm in Worthing, West Sussex, after a chassis redesign that followed torsion tests. In February 2008 it was largely finished and had been track-tested at Thorney Island. SVA testing, water trials and off-road trials were still to come. The archive's photographs record off-road trials, testing afloat and surf entries, as well as problems such as a damaged jet impeller.