BELARUS DT75M Any Comments !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[taurus MK1]

Here we have one of two DT75m crawlers. This is a later version with the UK fitted cab.Different to any others i have seen due to its colour and decals.This was brought for its tracks mostly, in checking her over might be better than the older one i have which is fitted with the Russian truck cab,which is far more interesting. Approx 200 entered the UK in the 70s,so they say.Unique features, running gear which comprises of to sprung bogie units, the drive sprocket and idler are off the floor, the bogie units carry the weight, which enables faster speeds and smoother ride. A 2 stroke electric start donkey engine enabling -40 cold starts!!!!!!!!!!!! A pretty crude machine, but very very succesful in its home land where they produced thousands and thousands.....The same factory as the famous T34 tank. Not too sure on the rear linkage, something that needs some real sussing out !!!!!!!!!!!!
Something of interest, any other owners about on this site?????????

Cheers John

[BulldozerD11]

Hi saw one at Holcot Steam and vintage rally looked quite tidy had an MF plough on the back. And a big cab with all Russian instruction lables. Tracks are an interesting design as well.

Not sure which PC the photos are hiding on as i should have one of the linkage with the plough on some ware.

Dave

[Fowler VF]

If I remember rightly the engine bears a remarkable resemblance to the old IH engines in the B100's. The Belarus crawlers certainly have the same ability to make you curse on a cold morning. The Russians sometimes had licences to use engine technology or bought old production lines, but frequently just copied them. You are right the running gear was tank based, even the open tread grouse plates are a hangover from that.

There are thousands of these things scattered throughout the former Soviet republics, I spent time in Moldova in the 90's and every state farm literally had a pile of them. On one farm I counted 60 but only three were usable! There were a variety of different makes with a variety of cabs but the basic design was the same. When working they were good simple basic machines that were actually fairly reliable; most of the problems were due to the operators just not caring for them at all. If the machine was broken then they couldn't work, someone else would fix it and they got paid anyway, so why bother to look after the thing if the alternative to bashing up and down some vast field in a noisy rattly machine was sitting round the stove in the workshop?

Russian system of supply of new kit to state farms was that the state decided what was needed and sent the annual allocation of new kit, this meant that farms frequently got equipment they didn;'t need. I went to one farm that had been delivered 5 new beet harvesters and a cotton picker, only trouble was they didn't grow these crops and never had! The system also required an annual scrap allocation to go back (no such thing as trade in) and frequently a pile of new kit would arrive and immediately be cut up and sent back as the scrap allocation. Same thing happened with overseas aid, there are piles of these crawlers and bizarre things like snow ploughs dotted all across Africa. The factories kept churning the stuff out because the government kept moving it, I came across a vast machinery park in the Czech republic full of never used Romanian excavators, thousands of them. Some of these had been there for years and there were trees growing up through them. The site manager said that the machines were worse than useless and therefore they never bothered to send them out so the yard just kept filling up as each new batch arrived.

[komatsu d475-1]

Hi John,
I have been a regular visitor to poland for the last five years and have seen a lots of crawlers which look like this one but never took any picts which i will do on my next trip.The equipment there has come on leaps and bounds the last 3 years but i remember when i first went there u would wonder how they got any work done with what they had but sometimes looks can be decieving.Thanks for the pict and heres a couple of a vt34 recovery vehicle/self propelled winch based on the t34 in a railway siding near lodz in poland

[taurus MK1]

Hi Mervyn, perhaps you could bring some tracks back in the old suitcase on your next trip!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for the photos.



Cheers John

[RichardJW~]

There are thousands of these things scattered throughout the former Soviet republics, I spent time in Moldova in the 90's and every state farm literally had a pile of them.

Hiya Fowler, where have you been in Moldova? I had a few trips around the place back in the late '90s, I was down in Kowsheni mainly but travelled up around to Siroki.......and some memorable trips across the transnistriya including one trip when one of the soldiers on the border post stuck his bayonet in to the tyre of our Landcruiser.

Richard

[Fowler VF]

Richard


I was based in Chisnau for a month or two, working for the World Bank to give a report on the agriculture of the region. My bit of the report wasn't very positive; apart from the fantastic soil the rest of the infrastructure was completely shot. Beautiful country but everything falling apart, some really heartbreaking stories of what had happened there, if you could get the old guys to tell you about the Stalin era. They called the place, Russia's little garden, and they certainly took all the best produce. Some of the wine was fantastic and the fizz was not too bad either, you had to be careful because there was a lot of real rubbish about as well.

The old Soviet system of checking on their state farms was to send round teams of inspectors and political advisors. The farms used to deal with this by laying on very lavish lunches and copious amounts of booze in the hope that they sent the team away in such a merry state that they wrote a good report. Great thing for us was that we were seen as the new political advisors and that we needed to be dealt with as well. I have never eaten so well, embarrassing in some ways as the place was so poor. When you arrived on site you were given a shot of vodka and we were advised by our team leader that it would be extremely rude not to down it one and that without the respect of the people we were visiting we wouldn’t get our work done. Only problem was that once you had done it once the exercise would be repeated again, through the morning. By lunch time you would be glowing nicely, which was helpful as it was very cold and all the heating had long been switched off once they had to start paying for the gas. At lunch you would be given a single glass and then they would start plying you with a variety of local wines, spirits etc, because you only had one glass you had to keep draining it or end up with a disastrous cocktail every time they came round with another type of drink. I was usually OK with all this but some of our team had not gone through the years of rigorous training that I had and would frequently pass out over lunch. The upshot of all this was that I was about the only one that could keep up with the locals and therefore the only one that they would (or could) really talk to after lunch. My workload therefore kept going up in proportion to the amount of drink I took. It was fun though!!


I am impressed that you went through transnistriya, real bandit country! We were never allowed near it on official business and were strictly warned off even thinking about going there on our days off. We used to visit nearby villages and I remember one of them where the manager of the farm had row upon row of lorries and miltary vehicles, which he was trying to sell us. He said he took them in part exchange from the Russian Army units that had been left behind in transnistriya, in exchange for food and wine. The farm manager told us he was glad that he wasn't any closer to the border otherwise the bandits as he called them would have just taken his stuff and no p/ex. The frightening thing was that this guy showed us stacks of kalashnikovs, RPG,s and other gear that he had traded as well and was keen to sell for dollars, he was hinting pretty heavily that he could lay his hands on virtually any military hardware or ammo we might like. Given that the 12th army had a nuclear capability that is pretty scary.

Nick

[RichardJW~]

Nick,

We were travelling out of Kiev so had two options, either come in at the top of the Moldova and down thru or go down the Odessa road and swing a right and go thru Transnistriya. It's a grim old town when you drop down in to it.....like the place that time forgot. But it seems most of the Molovan electrical energy comes from them (Transnistriya/Russia). There was usually grief with them ....some how, somewhere. Either the insurance wasn't right or the transit docs were wrong, there's one stretch of no-man's-land that cross a very high bridge over valley, very scenic apart from the soldiers wearing sunglasses and brandishing guns with their tanks covered in camoflage netting at either end and barrels pointing towards oncoming traffic, of course they always stopped us took the passports and walked off then asked if we wanted to make a donation to someone's birthday party.....in fact it was this that sparked the knifed tyre incident when the translator told him to go and basically jump off the bridge
The last trip I was late getting away from Kiev, 2pm I think it was, after trouble sorting a temp. export doc. so hit the border at about 6:30pm.....anyway after the usual shenanigans with the Transnistriyan people we came to the Moldovan border post at around 7:30pm got everything stamped and then tried to buy the mandatory car insurance from one of their collegues because world-wide policy doesn't cover them, the cop said the guy we needed to see had gone home and asked why I didn't have insurance, well that's what we wanted to speak to this guy for......so he then fined me for not having it!!!
Anyway onwards to Kishinev and take up residence in the Hotel Dacia......a 5 star compared to the Cosmos.
I made a mental note that I should stop at one of the police check points to pay ecology tax for the car, however it wasn't until the last day of the trip when I got stopped coming back in to Kishinev, put my hands up, gave it the 'big sorry' and said I'd be delighted to pay it......off I went to their station, paid up and on the road again, back to the hotel pick up my stuff and onwards to Kiev. Anyway cut a long story short on the road east out of the city I got stopped again and asked to show ecology tax receipt, proudly showed the cop the paper from the morning but he pointed out that it ran out yesterday!!!!....oh what joy!!!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria

[Fowler VF]

Richard

I had forgotten all about the ever present birthday present syndrome!

First time I flew in, on Air Moldova, was an eye opener. We all had our paperwork in order, visa’s etc, but when we checked in, at Dusseldorf I think, the little man behind the desk shook his head sadly and said that these were the old visa’s and that they were no longer valid and that we now needed the new type and we should go to another desk that he pointed out to us. There was no-one at this desk when we arrived, but very shortly up popped the same guy wearing a different hat, his face brightened up as he handed us a little form and explained that if we filled it in we could get a new visa. We duly filled in the form and handed over the 10 dollar fee. Again he shook his head and pointed out the small print at the bottom, the 10 dollar fee was if you purchased the visa in Moldova, it was 200 dollars if you purchased it anywhere else. We did try to point out that it was therefore impossible to get a visa to go to somewhere if you had to be there in the first place. Wiser but poorer we handed over the fee. As we went to board there was the same guy again with yet another hat, taking our boarding passes, we got on the bus out to the plane and there was the same little guy supervising the loading of luggage. We joked that he was probably the pilot as well; he wasn’t but he was the chief steward!

The Air Moldova plane was interesting, hand painted on the side was the logo and name, complete with nasty drips and runs in the paint. Quite clearly underneath was the Aeroflot logo, one or two of us were somewhat alarmed as to what state a second hand Aeroflot plane might be in. The interior was packed with a very motley crew of individuals, several advisors and aid officials like ourselves, lots of swarthy peasant types and a sprinkling of thick set guys in black leather coats and shades with suspicious bulges under their coats. The whole plane smelt and looked dirty and damp, it had that sort of damp, sweaty, stale smoke atmosphere of a site caravan on a wet Friday afternoon. The plane took off with a lot of shaking and rattling and once we were up and away the pilot announced in broken English that this was a no smoking flight, at which point 90% of the people on board, including the chief steward (that little man again) reached for the fags and the air was filled with that nasty black Russian tobacco smoke.

The customs hall at Chisnau (Kishnev) was grim, we were made to stand in lines in a freezing concrete hall for hours as each one of us was interviewed, searched and checked. Through an open door at the back I could see our friend, the check in man, visa specialist, baggage handler and chief steward, sat round a stove with a crew of the customs men drinking and laughing. No doubt he was handing over the share of the visa loot. Also present were most of the guys in the leather coats who had been on the plane, presumably handing over their birthday presents so that they didn’t have to go through the rest of the customs procedure.

I guess there must have been some sort of aid programme to get the police force up and running properly. I have never seen so many police on the streets, and they all drove around in black Jeep Cherokees with smoked glass windows, their smart new black uniforms included a sort of black stetson and shades plus most of them seemed to tote not one but two pistols, one on each hip. The suitcase full of Marlboro that I took out with me was a great help in getting around the place!!

Getting back out was the final lesson in how to be shafted by the system. Having checked in we were all herded into the waiting lounge, a truly horrid, windowless concrete bunker, very intimidating. A gang of “customs officials” plus gun toting security guards came into the area and started re-examining the paperwork of anyone that looked like a non local. It would seem that virtually everyone had failed to complete some specific form on arrival, (all of us swore afterwards that we had never been given one). The upshot was that we couldn’t prove how much cash we had on us when we arrived and there was a law that prevented anyone taking cash out of Moldova so therefore anything we had in our pockets now belonged to the “state”. Most of us had been out there long enough to know that you can’t beat the system and just swore under our breath and coughed, one silly fool kicked up a fuss and was escorted off to make his official complaint. We later heard that not only did they make sure he missed that flight but they messed him around and made him miss the next one as well. Given that the flights were only once a week they made sure the message got round everyone on the European aid circuit to keep their heads down and accept the status quo.

I wouldn’t have missed that job for the world, learnt a lot and met a lot of very decent hard working people in a truly fascinating country. One day I’ll get back out there.

I think we have gone way off the original topic of the Russian crawler but this has brought back a lot of memories for me. Somewhere I must have a stack of photo's of all that equipment out there, I must see if I can find them.

Nick

[RichardJW~]

Yep, absolutely bang on, Nick.....I can just imagine it.....puts life in to perspective when you have experienced it, don't you think

right, so coming back to the thread........

Here's a few various brands


Out of Kharkiv (Ukraine)


Its got Kazakhstan stamped in to the bonnet, but never heard of the brand


A Volgogradski, about 150hp


And a tracked Yenesay combine for cutting rice