tatra-kolos said:
Hello to All,
I am a brand new member, having stumbled upon this site through a search for info on English manuals for my vehicle. I have the German language manuals for the Tatra T-813 KOLOS, but computer based translations of a technical manual can be less than enlightening.
My truck is a 1980 Tatra T-813 8x8 with the 7 person cab, and stake-bed rear. Unfortunately, I have not yet shipped it home to South Florida from Europe, where it has been sitting for some time. Eventually I intend to convert it into an off-road motorhome, by adding a 20' shipping container on the back. It will be perfect for exploring Australia & Africa with my family. In the meantime, it will be quite the project.
I look forward to the fun!
- Any advice would be most welcome. I am particularly interested in information about shipping from Europe, and sources for tires and tubes
- Has anyone added an intermediate overdrive gearbox to any of the trucks (between the gearbox and the transfer case/differentials)? If possible, this should allow higer speeds/lower RPMs since our vehicles will usually be traveling with much lighter loads than they were designed for.
- I am very happy to have found such a great site with a community of like-minded crazy people. THANKS
Good to hear from another tatra owner, the best place for manuals is the guy in alaska he can get you everything you need except for the workshop manual, if your interested in that pm me and I can let you know what I have.
I dont know too much about shipping vehicles over but I dont think its a big deal from what I have heard. How did you go about finding yours in Europe if you dont mind me asking. There is another guy on the web that is half way through converting over a tatra 815 into a motorhome and is now selling it (too much of a project I suspect).
It sound like a fun project and Ive done similar projects like that with other trucks and it is a lot more work than I initially thought it was, all in all from my experience I think you are by far money ahead and defenitily time by buying a nice bumper tow r.v. maybe a 16 or 18 footer I would get a aluminum framed one with fiberglass sides and pull the axles off and mount it on the back of the tatra and spend the rest of your time customizing it to make it look like it was built on there. If you have the energy and TIME to do it with the container more power to you, but like I said from my experience this is the way I would go about it, ive seen other guys do it and it can look really nice. I actually saw a guy do it with about a 35' 5th wheel trailer he flipped backwards so the part that would usually go over the bed of the pickup was in the back and he made a hydraulic liftgate so he could drive a small car up and raise it up to fit under the r.v. It looked really trick.
As far as adding the overdrive the drivetrain on a tatra is like nothing I have ever seen, all the drivelines ,axles etc are incased in a huge tube emersed with oil (for protection) so just adding gearboxes etc would be a huge challenge if not close to impossible.
As far as getting more highway speed you can't really go bigger tires to drop r.p.ms because there isnt much clearance left for the indipendant suspention and you would end up limiting your offroad ability if you did. The other thing is they are very slow and as soon as you hit any kind of a hill etc you instantly lose power and have to start doing a lot of shifting, there is a splitter which makes it nice but there is a lot more shifting and its a lot slower than I had anticipated, even with no load, it also drives a lot smoother offroad than on road. also once you start up a hill its not easy to shift up unless you do it with the splitter, so once you are in a gear you are pretty much stuck in that gear till you get to the top of the hill (usually going slow and holding up traffic), unless you get really good at shifting it like you would a semi, even though it has a syncronized tranny.
The only other thing that is a bit of a negative is it is so LOUD in the cab you cant hardly talk to anyone . Wow I thought my old duece was loud.
I think you have a great idea with the motorhome ,personally I dont like going very far at all on the road its just so slow especially when you hit the hills, so depending how far you have to drive to get to your offroad destination. Anyway this is a bit about what I think of them dont mean to be negative at all it has pros and cons, but overall I love them.
I havent found a good source for tires that is reasonable on price, if you run into a source let me know, because the 1500x21 tires arnt something you can find local from what I have found. Other wise I do have about 4 overseas contacts for parts, it just takes a while to get some of them, I have quite a few spares so in a pinch if you need something let me know what you need. You definitily need the manuals from Dick at All terrain truck and equipment they are $250 but very worth the money, if you want the complete mechanics workshop manual let me know and we can work something out with that.
otherwise welcome and keep us posted!!
