Former pilot, and now head of the KAMAZ‑master team Vladimir Chagin in an interview with , he recalled his most difficult repair of his career.
Chagin is the Dakar marathon rally record holder in terms of the number of victories in the truck category, he has seven titles to his credit.
– Do you remember your most difficult repair in your racing career?
— There were many such cases, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, when KAMAZ-master was in its infancy, we were learning how to make cars. One of the most brilliant episodes was the Dakar in 2005, where we were at the top of the truck classification. If I’m not mistaken, on the eighth day of racing we had a gas seal between the cylinder block and the cylinder head.
We stopped as the temperature started to rise – the antifreeze leaked. We think: This is most likely a rally, as coolant is circulating through the engine block. But we decided to fight, to try to restore the car. They quickly removed and disassembled the upper part of the engine, removed the cylinder head, it is seen that the gasket was broken. And this, by the way, is a 2.5 mm thick steel ring. And we don’t have a spare, because such a defect has never happened. What to do? All around us, there is sand and stones, and nothing else!
We started walking around the truck, looking for metal thick enough to cut through the gasket. Find. It was a 90 degree bent fuel filler door. That is, a sheet of metal folded in half measuring 25 by 20 cm. And at our house we only have scissors for metal – try to cut iron with a thickness of 2.5 mm with them! And we cut that joint one by one with the whole crew. In the end, succeeded, put in place and tightened. And you need to understand one more thing: at the place of inflection, the structure of the metal has changed. But the main thing is that the car went to the bivouac, and we ended up finishing on the Dakar. It just demonstrates the technical mind, the desire to be at the finish line, the ability to quickly find the right solution,” Chagin told .
Source : MatchTV
I am Mary James, a passionate journalist and content creator who enjoys writing about the world of sports. I specialize in covering racing-related news for athletistic, one of the top websites dedicated to this topic. With my expertise in motorsports, I have been able to write compelling stories that captivate readers all over the world.
